In this blog post, Ben Harks details his experience at the JPEC Summer Incubator program. What began as an idea for a sleep watch became a crash course on creating a startup and an introduction to a whole new area of study. Read on to learn more!
In the summer of 2023, I was accepted into the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (JPEC) Summer Incubator program. The summer incubator is an 11-week business intensive with the purpose of refining a business model and determining viability. I joined with my business, Aurora SleepWatch LLC. My business's mission was to reinvent the alarm clock. We planned to do this by designing a watch that can monitor your sleep cycles to predict the perfect time to wake up the user. They would benefit by waking up more refreshed and avoiding grogginess in the morning so they could be more productive with their day.
Ben pitches a better alarm clock.
Coming from an engineering background, rather than a business background, I quickly found that I had a lot to learn. As an engineer, my focus is typically to develop a solution that meets a need. This notion of development was promptly turned upside down for me. When you are developing a business, you let the needs shape the solution. In this program, you are assigned multiple experienced mentors whom you work very closely with in developing the business. All of my mentors passionately agreed about one thing: customer discovery determines whether or not you have a business to pursue. Instead of developing a watch or an app, I learned to talk to people about their problems and let them describe the solution. If you can figure out what people want and make that, you are much more likely to succeed than if you create a business in a vacuum and try to sell it. They taught me how to interview people. I went out to businesses, I walked downtown, I made phone calls and spent most of my time talking to people so I could really understand what consumers want. I pulled on threads, asked for suggestions, and queried for existing solutions. The most important skill through all of it was learning to listen. Let the people talk and the ideas will flow.
My four goals for the semester were to learn how to acquire funding from pitch competitions, research product market fit, file an LLC, and to begin lining up beta testers for my business. These were not only the requirements for the program, but the challenges that every young startup faces. While I knew the end goals at the beginning, the path to getting there was what I expected the least. The repetition of our elevator pitches every Friday and the feedback that I would get from the rest of the cohort is an experience that not only helped me raise money for this venture, but also taught me valuable skills in public speaking and communication of ideas. The depth of researching a product market fit and the willingness of complete strangers to be helpful were shocking to me. I even managed to get a number of those strangers to agree to product testing down the line.
Ben winning the People's Choice award.
All in all, I learned more than I ever thought I would through the JPEC program. I went into the incubator expecting to focus on the tech aspect of a tech business and was pleasantly surprised to learn that business isn't as simple as I thought it was, but that it is accessible to everyone. I plan to continue being involved in the JPEC center and have since referred multiple of my peers to them as the best way to make their vision a reality.
Author bio:
Benjamin Harks is a Mechanical Engineer and Computer Science Graduate student hailing from Marion, Iowa. At the University of Iowa, he researches cystic fibrosis with the Mobile Technology Lab. Ben joined the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center during his undergraduate degree, following his mission to solve real problems in everyday life.
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