Working on this project has definitely taught me a lot over the past few weeks.
We initially began with some confusion on our company, which had to deal with a two-pronged consumer base (Indigenous craftsmen and the buyers–whoever they were). It initially felt like our group was spending a lot of time trying to simply understand how the company worked and the way it interacted with the market.
Though this problem somewhat persisted throughout the quarter, we learned a lot about pivoting a company and changing the solution to create a more concrete value proposition. For instance, we ending up changing a lot about our business model and pricing strategies to ensure that our values of ethical sustainability were upheld.
We consistently asked questions throughout the process, and meeting with our mentor Rekha helped us understand that we didn’t necessarily have to stick to solely an online platform as our solution (as she explained that an e-commerce platform would be quite difficult to maintain).
As a student with a technical background in software engineering, I learned a lot about ideating and shaping a company’s vision to wedge itself into a very niche market. None of us had known anything about the Indigenous crafts space, which made for some tricky market sizing and competitor analysis, but I believe we eventually adapted well and were able to make the most of our situation.
It was a great experience to learn how to make changes after discovering pitfalls and flaws in our initial solution!
