CS3216 : Week 9

Hi guys! Sorry that I didn’t update the previous week so for this week’s edition I’ll be publishing two posts! The highlight for part 2 would be

1) NUS practicum and innovation grant pitch

2) Full team meeting

3) Mistakes that we made prior to propagating

4) NOC connect roadshow

5) Promo video film.

• Pitch

Let me recall where I stopped last week. Oh, yes it was at the pitch to NUS enterprise so I shall start from there. Pitched to NUS enterprise for the innovation grant on Monday and I must admit that it was my first time pitching to a panelist of 5 with some investors within the panelist.

Was I nervous? Well, kind of and not really. I was nervous the start but somehow as I started pitching, I reverted to my presentation style. I feel that it’s important to be genuine and just be ourselves when we present and I’m not fond of putting up a front that isn’t myself. Perhaps I’ll need to do that someday as some investors might prefer a more professional outlook but okay we shall see as we progress.

Some key takeaways from the pitch:

1. Be clear when describing your application flow!

• Perhaps a good way to present this is to explain it using user flow story
• Visual tells

2. Saying that you’ll use Facebook/ Instagram for marketing with $ is like spanking yourself in the ass

• It depends on the nature of your solution but using advertisement might not be the wisest choice to spend the money. Furthermore, the funding might not be sufficient to sustain this marketing cost and the conversion might not justify its cost.

3. Be firm

• Ok I feel that this can be subjective depending on investors. For me, I believe in humility and thus I do not like to “argue” my points but instead, accept arguments that I’m not able to give a good rebuttal. A feedback that I got is that I should be more firm even when questions are shot because by giving in, it might give the investor an impression that I am unsure of what I’m doing.

What’s the FINAL outcome of the grant? Heh check out Part 3 !

• Full team meeting

  

We had our first meeting at the hangar today. The main agenda is to get everyone to know one another because I strongly believe in a homely working culture.

• WEBSITE DOWN!

Just when we just had a viral content that is achieving more than 100 shares, and gaining traffic of 1000 views a day, our website went down! *Panic button pushed! *. This is because we wanted to connect the current domain to our new application for NOC connect on Saturday. However, our plan backfired as we didn’t deploy and test it on a staging server prior to connecting. Hence, when there were issues with connecting the backend, BOOMZ, server down, our current website cannot be displayed due to propagation time (24-48hours) and we are not able to showcase our new application during NOC connect.

The point to note here is to deploy and test on a staging server before releasing and note that DNS propagation takes time!

• NOC connect roadshow

  

Thank you, NUS NOC for the opportunity! This is our 2^nd road show where we got REAL with users. The interesting thing about doing road shows is that we get more familiar with our application as we share with more people! Also, we did validation by talking people and through these conversations, we got to understand more about the needs of our users and ways which we can improve our application.

On a side note, I was extremely touched by a friend who mentioned ExchangeBuddy during his speech upon receiving his scholarship. It may be a simple act but it made me feel that what I’m doing thus far was recognized and serve as a motivation for me and my team to push harder.

 

• Promo video filming

  

How do we make it viral? The answer to this is to ride with the trend! However, this can go either extremes. Finger cross that ours would be at the better end! Did some basic filming, voice recording and editing. Wait out for our promotional video!

 

That is all for part 2! Check out part 3 on Pre-Launch !