The passion for the Entrepreneurial mindset is not only realized but cultivated through the passage of ASU’s Entrepreneurship and Value Creation course. A student named Travis Latimer, a 3rd-year Computer Science Major within the Honors College, fully realized this ideal by taking this program for the opportunity it holds. The class itself is well known to WP Carey Business students as well as Fulton engineering students alike, merging the worlds of both into one project-filled course.
The class begins with a structured lecture teaching the roles and prospects of the entrepreneurial mindset, inviting the students to contemplate what is fully involved within its practice. After a certain of time has passed groups are formed for the students to take action in their own entrepreneurial endeavors by coming up with pain points from their community. Travis and his group began customer development by first asking themselves what problems they dealt with in their daily lives then going out and asking random people about the pains within their daily lives. After a short time, a recurring theme sprung up from many of the work-based interviews; a problem with designing and connecting to the customer.
Based on the account from Mike, a local Web Business Owner, Travis, and his team learned the struggles that many design-based companies face when trying to present mockups or solutions to any type of customer. Explaining how many times some of his staff would spend hours creating a product based on the customers’ specifications only to have to spend more time later down the line because the vision of the client was not clear throughout the project. This is where the structure of Cloud Design was crafted into the solution Mike was searching for.
Through the workings of the EVC course, Travis and his team launched the startup known as cloud design. As a web-based product, Cloud design’s purpose was to ease this lack of connection between the designer and the customer to minimize time waste and increase satisfaction for both parties involved. As a concept, the product fully allows for the customer to give direct feedback efficiently and effectively in order for the business context to deliver the best product. For Mike, this was exactly the type of solution that they would need in order to save time and keep their customers satisfied.
For Travis, the experience of working in a team as well as going into the field of others’ problems gave him a valuable lesson in the structure of business moving forward. He says “Before startups and entrepreneurship to me meant risk and brilliant ideas. After working together with teammates on a project that directly sparked from the community around me, I now realize the effort and importance of value creation within a community and how to tackle it when weighing the structure of its business as well as engineering endeavors. If people are tackling a problem out there, there is going to be a solution for it, and anyone with the right mindset can solve it.”
Pitch Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_8VZclVgE4&feature=youtu.be&hd=1
Concept MVPs for Cloud Design Website