Day Ten: Kicking It Into High Gear

Today ten is sponsored by Caitlin Anderson the Director of Communications at Picmonic. Thank you Caitlin for the support!

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." - Zig Ziglar

Today, we kicked it into high gear. The past nine days we have spent our time learning about Draper, getting use to sitting in bean bags and brainstorming ideas. However, today we picked the idea we want to pursue for the remainder of the semester. Although our mentors insured us that this idea will change and morph over the semester but its a good starting point.

So the next question is, " once you have an idea what the next step?" Three words, Business Model Canvas. While brainstorming our ideas we reached out people who were ether industry experts or potential customers and asked questions about the current solutions and pain points. Using the information and insights gathered we started to create a business model canvas.

It can be a little overwhelming to think of the next steps after creating an idea but the Business Model Canvas helps you to think about each sector of a business. Who is my target market? how am I going to reach them? What resources am I going to need? After you can answer all these question the canvas helps an idea become a organization that is able to manage a variety of different revenue streams.

After spending all morning on the Business Model Canvas and learning from case studies of companies like Disney and amazon with got a little distracted with off shore companies. I am not really sure how the topic came up but we finished the day with watching documentaries about how companies like Google, Apple and Starbucks are able to avoid taxes through tax heavens like Ireland.

The best part about attending Draper University so far as been this opportunity to explore different interest. With the structure of the program students are able to ask mentors questions that lead to new learning opportunities. It is pretty rare in a traditional classroom setting, to have the ability to adapt the learning curium to the student interest. They keep us on our toes here at Draper and every encouraging to always be asking questions.

Cheers,

Courteney