Would I Invest in My Venture?
After assessing my current venture’s financial projections, breakeven, market research, primary customer research, and existing operations, I don’t think I would invest in it yet. I would not invest in it because we don’t yet have a working prototype or a proof of concept. Before investing, I would want to see a working prototype that fulfills our claims and some sort of proof of concept via sales or research. After these two metrics are completed, I would feel comfortable investing in my venture.
Once these two steps are completed, I would invest in my venture because of two reasons. I would invest because it is a truly innovative idea that doesn’t currently exist in an underdeveloped market and because it can save many lives.
Our Milestones
I believe that we are quickly approaching two significant milestones. The first milestone is having a physical prototype. We have almost finished 3D modeling the first prototype and will be printing it sometime in the near future. We will most likely have to go through a few iterations, leading us to the second milestone: having a physical and functional prototype. Once we have this one, we will test it on users to gain feedback, improve our product, and prove the concept.
Next Steps
We still have many next steps to undergo in the development of our venture. Out of the many tasks, I believe that customer validation is the most immediate. While we know that people don’t carry their epinephrine auto-injectors, we don’t know why. We suspect that it’s due to a lack of convenient carrying solutions, but we don’t know this for sure and therefore need to test our hypothesis. To do this, we’ve created an extensive survey and plan to send it out to many different demographics within our target market. If this proves our hypothesis, then I believe that we will have established a need for our product and legitimized our business’s necessity. On the other hand, if our theory is disproven, we might have to pivot.