Venture Forum

Out of the nine presentations, EngineKites was the most intriguing to me. Their presentation did an excellent job of covering a number of key points involved with beginning a startup. Their journey is well represented by their slideshow in that it defines how their idea became a real business opportunity. The team's research process gave them an in depth outlook of the kite-boarding industry that they were trying to become involved with. By exploring many different channels in which to market their idea they were able to find the correct niche of the industry which they would most profit from. I really enjoyed the video they showed in the presentation which made me want to try it out!
Another presentation which caught my eye was Micasa. There idea was a good one from the start but in the end they realized that their target audience was backwards. They first focused their attention with the landlords but in the end were mainly servicing the tenants. Their presentation shows the transformation of the customer segments and the lessons they learned along the way which I thought was a good thing to show to their potential customers. They also presented their value propositions as target goals which they believed they could be #1 in each of them above their competitors, very driven approach.
Finally I enjoyed the GameSpeed presentation. Although very short I liked their product. Targeting young athletes enables these kids to develop their skills at a younger age if they wanted to pursue a career in professional sports or if they just want to be health conscience. I thought interacting with 4,000 customers was an impressive feat considering the other presentations did not come close to this number. They also did a great job presenting a step by step analysis of their business model using important statistical data, especially connecting with their target market in order to find what feasible approach to take.

Lessons Learned

• Showing the progression of the business model can be an effective tool and it shows how much change can occur when trying to find an appropriate model. 
• Clearly defining and presenting an example of your customer allows some to relate their own characteristics.
• It is OK to be wrong in early stages of development as long as you can formulate better solutions to fix these failures for the future. Most ideas don't work out perfectly.
• Presenting tests and results, even if they don not work out in your favor, is a great way to let your potential customers know that you have explored a number of options before reaching your final conclusion. 
• DO NOT put a slide like the 16th slide of the Micasa presentation!!! This slide was absurdly confusing and just looks unprofessional.

• Research is the most important tool used by all of these presentations. None of these teams would have been able to make their conclusions without the research they conducted. Researching enabled these teams to more properly define their consumer base, value propositions and what channels to utilize for their startups.