Week 8- Entrepreneurship

I am currently enrolled in the course Entrepreneurship 301 at Benedictine University with Professor Jodi Houlihan (LinkedIn below).  In the class, we were changed from students in a group to entrepreneurs creating a business.  My team and I have created the company A-1, and together we came up with an idea that will solve the germ infested technology problem that is growing faster then technology itself.

Our company started with an idea of a self cleaning handrail machine that would occasionally clean public handrails in order to keep them clean.  We quickly found out that creating a solution before finding out if there is an actual problem is not a good business model.  Research became A-1's top priority.  We started by learning more about germs.  We conducted interviews with many people including multiple Benedictine Microbiologists and an employee from P&G.  All of the research conducted lead our company to the next business decision.  We changed out focus and strated seeing the problem that we needed to solve.

We moved our focus from handrails to touch screens for many reasons, including; softer surfaces are more common for germs, some of the most harmful germs are found in grocery stores from uncooked meats, and the volume of human contact is much higher on touch screens with the new technology wave.

So, our company developed a new process to consistently protect touch screen users from the fecal infested technology. Yes, over 50% of self-check out screens actually have fecal bacteria on them. And this is not all, there are millions of germs on these screens that can be harmful to the user.

We have created our first prototype. In this process, we struggled with getting the idea into a physical product. One of the hardships we went through was explaining what supplies we needed for the prototype because we didn't have anything to show them visually. We learned that any prototype is better then nothing because it gives others a visual to what the product is. Finally being able to put something together was a huge step for us. Currently, we are in the process of receiving constructive criticism on our prototype in order to further our idea into a working product.

So far, this class has shown me some of the struggles that entrepreneurs go through to get a company started. As I have said before, becoming an entrepreneur and starting my own company is my dream. Now that I have personally gone through some of these business experiences, I can say I feel more confident in being able to make my dream a reality.

http://www.ben.edu/
http://www.ben.edu/facilities-management-planning/planning-construction/daniel-l-goodwin-hall-of-business.cfm
http://www.ben.edu/college-of-business/undergraduate/entrepreneurship.cfm

Professor

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodihoulihan/

Team:
Yaju Mahida- https://www.linkedin.com/in/yajuvendra-mahida/
Frank Greco- https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankgreco24/
Ken West-