Private Challenge Lab Blog

My entrepreneurial journey... While reflecting on this semester, I've realized that I went from not knowing what the fundamentals behind a startup are to now being relatively well versed in the elements that go into building a business. This class has taught me several practical skills from constructing financial statements to raising money from VC's to understanding the subtleties of intellectual property, but I think one of the biggest things I've learned is how to work with a team. Understanding how to work with my team has been an important yet underrated part of entrepreneurial journey. In the beginning, we had some issues forming our team because we had 1 too many people so it was tricky trying to figure out who would be in our final team. I had to mediate some stressful situations regarding our team formation involving talking to everyone so they would understand who would be in the team if we had to cut 1 person. Luckily, one person decided to join another tea...

After meeting with my group this week, we got a good amount of work done and figured out a lot of things that we needed to address. Our to do list included addressing technology, pricing for the system, cost savings for end users, production of the product, market sizing, and scalability of the product. We researched potential competitors in the greywater recycling and solar energy business. For example, we looked at SunRun and Solar City and saw how much they priced their product. We then used this number as the benchmark that we had to compare to. The average solar system is around $25k for a 5 kW system. We figured out our pricing by first finding out the cost to produce a solar panel - about $2 per watt and they usually sell for around $7 per watt. A more detailed view of our pricing and potential revenue is as follows: Unit economics: Number: 92,000 new homes in California each year; 1% of this each year 1% x 92,000 = 920 Revenue: 920 x $16,300 =  15 M ...

Our patent is a wastewater reuse and integrated thermal building control system for residential and commercial buildings. The product is a panel placed on the walls of your home/building that is connected to your water pipes. It filters and disinfects this water using sunlight and uses this water as a thermal mass to control daily temperature swings by absorbing heat during the day and releasing it through the night. The key is photocatalytic disinfection technology - glass surfaces that resemble spheres in the panels are coated with nanoparticles that react with sunlight. This reaction releases OH radicals that can kills microbes. This water can then be reused for purposes such as washing clothes or flushing the toilet. An average family uses 250 gal a day. Most of it is greywater - all the water we've used besides toilet water. Our product decentralizes greywater filtration, allowing the homeowner to filter their own water for reuse - this saves money on water bill and signific...

This week has been a pivotal week in terms of getting our project up and running. First of all, Nick has set up a mock up of a logo design, and I am working on developing a webpage for our product. We are thinking of calling our company EcoFlow because it suggests an eco friendly solution related to water (water). The design of the logo and webpage look clean and will get across what we are trying to sell. (Nick has the image file on his computer, once I get it, I will post it here). I learned a lot after doing customer research this week. I have realized that it is difficult to get in contact with the right people at companies. I called a company called SunRun, a solar company in San Francisco, and got the contact for a customer experience specialist. Initially, I talked to a customer service representative who transferred me to the customer experience specialist. This person then told me that I would have to talk to someone in the technical side of the company to figure out if ou...