The Secret Sauce and Figuring Out How to Make Money (Hawken Project Blog #3)

 Hey!

    The past few days have been challenging, but very promising. After getting comfortable in the office and with the project's goals, I was really able to start getting work done. I started off by trying to get my thoughts and ideas onto paper. This meant I wrote the first four pages of a business plan for ESTIM8. This included things like our history, how it works, what problem we are fixing, and other miscellaneous details about who/what we are. It was beneficial to get this on paper because it allowed me to narrow in some details and focus on the project. 

    Jalen and I decided that by the end of the project we want to get to a point where we could present our whole concept to an investor to get it all started. Before we get to that point, there are many things I realized we still have to figure out. Jalen and I split up the tasks into two parts. I will tackle the business side of things, such as how we will make money, figuring out if we will, and trying to convince investors to give us money. Jalen will tackle the functionality aspect of ESTIM8. He is nailing down critical details of how it will work and benefit everyone in the higher education market.

    Besides writing a large portion of the business plan, I have tackled two other major tasks so far. The first thing I did was research and develop our financial projects. To do this I had to learn a lot. I spent a lot of time simply looking up all the things that go into a functioning saas (software-as-a-service) business. To give a brief insight, there are two elements. The first is cogs (costs of goods sold). This includes things that are necessary to keep the product functioning, like server costs. The second is customer acquisition costs. This includes things like marketing and employee payroll. I compiled a pretty detailed list of these things, so I could lay out how it will all work and estimate our expenses. I also did a lot of market analysis, so I could project how we will sell our product and how many/much we could sell. This gave me enough information to do some projections. Although it isn't completely done, a snippet of how it looks right now is pasted below. The second thing I did was a mockup of how our app will look and function. It isn't my department, but I was bored, so I did it anyway. It was interesting but tiring as well. I had to learn how to use photoshop, and then I was off. I used my imagination for most of it, while simply considering all the necessary functions of an app for college students' scheduling. Some images are posted below. 

(Revenue/expense projection model)

(Menu screen)

(Assignment screen)

(Assignment adjustment screen)

(Brief example of a schedule screen)

There are many more screens, but this is a small look into our product

    Overall, I have been really productive in this project. I realized that I can take this idea as far as I want. It all just depends on how hard I am willing to work for this to become a reality. This blog is just a brief summary of what I have done. I have an entire folder of documents that are official-looking, and many more that are just working documents as I research and develop the business side of ESTIM8. If you want to learn more about our product, I will post a link to our business plan, which isn't entirely done but has a general intro to our concept.  

Thanks for reading,

- Quinn Petersen