Week 13 - Entrepreneurial Journey

I am very happy I took this course because it served as a great introduction to "how to start a company". I loved learning about patents, how to patent, and what is worth patenting, about how to create business models, how to conduct market research, how to incorporate, amongst other aspects of starting a company. Although it was a bit crammed in terms of information, because since everything was new to me, it takes longer for me to register the new information than maybe it does for someone who is already a business major.

Week 12 - The End is Near.

The Journey is near its end, am I ready?

This questions truly depends on what being ready means. Am I ready if I feel confident about the courses material and am ready to present my pitch? Or am I ready only if I would present this pitch to real investors and not as an exercise for a class?

Week 11 - What keeps me up at night

What keeps me up at night: At this point the only thing that worries me about our project is the slow start and unresponsiveness we've had with interviews. Our customers are big corporations that probably don't give a lot of attention to small school research groups just looking for some answers. If my team, or members of my team had more credibility behind us then I believe we would potentially get more of a response, but as of now we have been out of luck. 

In truth our patent inventor did conduct interviews and research on what problems existed in the orthopedic world, and came up with her research, invention and patent to solve them. But I am now in back-and-forth communication with our inventor to figure out how to talk to the manufacturing companies, who are our first customers.

Veture Dojo Feedback:

As of now I just have one comment, and it is based on the UI. When I am on the course's page watching the videos, sometimes when I click on one of the course blocks the left side (the rectangle that says the course section, the course title, how long it is, and a check mark whether I watched it or not) sometimes when I click on it it take me to the video, and sometimes I have to click on the title itself as oppose to the entire block, and that feels inconsistent. 

Week 10 - Patent Claims

The patent I will talk about here is the Quantitative tool using impedance spectroscopy to monitor fracture healing.

Claim 1 describes the electrical system which monitors the bone. It is composed of two electrodes, with an electrical connection, a variable frequency power supply, and a circuit. With these tools, it calculates the complex spectrum. 

Claims 2 through 9 indicate different aspects of claim 1, giving more specifics.

Claim 10 specifies how to indicate the degree of the healing process. BY using alternating electrical signals, between two sets of impedance spectrum, and comparing them. Claim 11-18 describe this into more detail.

Week 6, 7, 8, and 9 - Private Vlog

These videos are private, so please ask Nayaab for access and the link.

Rejection Challenge

Last week in class we spent 1 hour and a half doing the Rejection Challenge (also known as Red Paper Clip Challenge). Each team starts off with a transparent acrylic box worth 50 cents. The idea is to trade the box for something of higher quality (price), and continue to trade items until the time is up. The team that brought back the item of highest value won.

We started by filling the tiny box with some flowers we found, in an attempt to add some value to it.

Week 5 - Vlog

Week 4 - Vlog

Market Needs

This week in class we learned about market research, coming up with a value proposition, and lean startup methodologies. Our task for the week was to talk to the professors and gather more information on the patents we selected.

Week 3 - Vlog

Team Building with Lego

Last week we did a team building that involved Legos. Basically your team would be split into two (business vs engineering) and each team would receive an image they had to describe in words with no images. The initial challenge was that your bag of lego pieces probably didn't include all (if any) of the pieces you needed. The idea here was that you work with what you got. 

Week 2 - Vlog

Week 1 - Vlog

Tech Industries That Excite Me

In the big world of tech it's hard to decide what technologies and innovations to focus on. But here I describe a couple of the industries that interest me:

Education Technology:

I believe that the standard academic system is a bit of a thing from the past.

Hello World!

Hello World! And that is the cheesiest yet most stereotypical way I could start a blog. I am a programmer, originally from Brazil, and current student at UC Berkeley studying computer science. Many people say you fake-it-till-you-make-it, but