Entrepreneurship journey so far:
I enjoyed the journey of entrepreneurship which incorporate a variety of knowledges to apply technology, business, finance, marketing to real-life problem solving. I enjoyed working with my group which is very supportive and passionate about the project we're working on.
Highlights:
We nailed down the patent we want to work with quite early so we could had more time doing customer reviews, market research and explore the potential of the patent.
We designed our company logo and team logo!
Lowlights:
We had some trouble contacting our potential customers since we're a B2B startup. So we spent lots of time looking for opportunities to talk to people in the related fields.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Weekly update 12
The journey is nearing it’s end. Do you think you’re ready?
We're pretty much ready with the contents and in the progress of simplify and beautify our deck. Some more details about financial table and money we're planning to raise need to be further discussed and finalized.
Team Dynamics
We have a great team dynamics when we gather up, discuss confusions and split the tasks.
Venture Dojo Feedback
Since people who are interested in entrepreneurship are very likely to join venture dojo and take courses on Venture Dojo in the future, an online forum or a social ecosystem can be a great v2.0 feature.
We're pretty much ready with the contents and in the progress of simplify and beautify our deck. Some more details about financial table and money we're planning to raise need to be further discussed and finalized.
Team Dynamics
We have a great team dynamics when we gather up, discuss confusions and split the tasks.
Venture Dojo Feedback
Since people who are interested in entrepreneurship are very likely to join venture dojo and take courses on Venture Dojo in the future, an online forum or a social ecosystem can be a great v2.0 feature.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Week11 update
What keeps you up at night regarding your project?
P&L form, TAM, SAM, SOM. We tried to do more researches to get more valuable and valid data for our five year P&L form and numbers for TAM SAM SOM. We looked into proxy and cloud security companies' annual financial reports to get reasonable references. This part took most of the time and efforts after we hammered down our business model and customer interviews.
What we're doing in the coming week?
Finalize P&L form and company timeline
Team Dynamics
We meet weekly to discuss the confusions and work hard towards the final pitch deck. We finalized out TAM SAM and SOM and broke the target market down to two phases.
Venture Dojo feedback
The contents are pretty well organized. The pace of the course is moderate. More real company cases based on the theory would be really helpful to understand and apply the theories in practice.
P&L form, TAM, SAM, SOM. We tried to do more researches to get more valuable and valid data for our five year P&L form and numbers for TAM SAM SOM. We looked into proxy and cloud security companies' annual financial reports to get reasonable references. This part took most of the time and efforts after we hammered down our business model and customer interviews.
What we're doing in the coming week?
Finalize P&L form and company timeline
Team Dynamics
We meet weekly to discuss the confusions and work hard towards the final pitch deck. We finalized out TAM SAM and SOM and broke the target market down to two phases.
Venture Dojo feedback
The contents are pretty well organized. The pace of the course is moderate. More real company cases based on the theory would be really helpful to understand and apply the theories in practice.
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Week 10 Patent Analysis
Technology
Oblivious RAM (ORAM) software prevents attackers from determining which files (or portions of files) the client is accessing by concealing a client's access patterns to data residing in a cloud environment.
Elements & claims
1. A method of concealing access patterns to electronic data storage, the method comprising:
(a) within at least one server device configured for providing data storage services to at least one client, securely partitioning electronic data storage having N data blocks, each data block having a size of B bytes;
(b) wherein said electronic data storage is partitioned within a partitioning framework into a plurality of P smaller electronic data storage partitions having a size of N/P, and in which P is equal to √N data blocks;
(c) performing electronic data storage access concealment, in which each block is randomly assigned to any of the P partitions, and whenever a data block is accessed during data accesses for reading a data block or writing a data block by the client, the data block is logically removed from its current partition and logically assigned to a fresh random partition selected from all P partitions, with the client tracking which partition each block is associated with at any point of time; and (d) encrypting data by the client when data blocks are stored on the server; (e) wherein the client repeatedly sorts and shuffles subsets of said data blocks in each partition during data accesses.
21. A system for concealing access patterns to electronic data storage, the system comprising:
(a) at least one server configured for servicing at least one client with data storage services;
(b) at least one client configured for accessing said server for performing write and read accesses of data blocks from said server;
(c) wherein said server and said client are configured with a computer for executing programming for carrying out steps of access concealment, comprising:
(i) securely partitioning electronic data storage in said at least one server to have N data blocks having a size of B bytes;
(ii) wherein said electronic data storage is partitioned within a partitioning framework into a plurality of P smaller electronic data storage partitions having a size of N/P, and in which P is equal to equal to √N data blocks;
(iii) performing electronic data storage access concealment, in which each block is randomly assigned to any of the P partitions, and whenever a data block is accessed during data accesses for reading a data block or writing a data block by said client, the data block is logically removed from its current partition and logically assigned to a fresh random partition selected from all P partitions, with the client tracking which partition each block is associated with at any point of time; and
(iv) encrypting data by the client when data blocks are stored on the server;
(v) wherein the client repeatedly sorts and shuffles subsets of said data blocks in each partition during data accesses
Venture Dojo feedback
The website structure is pretty clear and easy to follow as it divides to course lists and user profile, thus users can easily get access to courses they register and track their progress as fast as possible.
The course search bar on top of the course page is slightly too wide which can block part of the video and affect the viewing experience.
Home page's design is decent and clean.
The videos can't load successfully.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Week 9 Personal Blog
What did I want to do this last week?
Conducted customer interviews, read "Business Model Generation" and figure out business model
What did I learn?
Learn to use the resources nearby. I conducted face to face interviews with CEOs of two big data startups I'm currently working for. One is called Tesloop which provides city to city travel in Teslas, another is called CognitiveLeap which aims to improve brain health worldwide. They both have to deal with lots of data everyday but are also lack of funding to hire security engineers. In this case, our product would be their first choice - agile and cheap.
Issues?
I also reached to technical directors/senior security engineers in big data and analytics companies on LinkedIn, but didn't hear back yet. I'll keep tracking of these potential customers.
What am I planning to do this coming week?
1.Keep track of potential customers on LinkedIn
2.Think more about channels, key activities, key partnerships
3. Sketch the mockup using Balsamiq
Conducted customer interviews, read "Business Model Generation" and figure out business model
What did I learn?
Learn to use the resources nearby. I conducted face to face interviews with CEOs of two big data startups I'm currently working for. One is called Tesloop which provides city to city travel in Teslas, another is called CognitiveLeap which aims to improve brain health worldwide. They both have to deal with lots of data everyday but are also lack of funding to hire security engineers. In this case, our product would be their first choice - agile and cheap.
Issues?
I also reached to technical directors/senior security engineers in big data and analytics companies on LinkedIn, but didn't hear back yet. I'll keep tracking of these potential customers.
What am I planning to do this coming week?
1.Keep track of potential customers on LinkedIn
2.Think more about channels, key activities, key partnerships
3. Sketch the mockup using Balsamiq
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Week 8 Personal Blog
What did I want to do this last week?
Conducted customer interviews & surveys, finalized value proposition canvas.
What did I learn?
It's harder to conduct customer interviews for B2B than for B2C. Instead of getting customers data from online surveys, we need to reach out to representatives of the companies we're targeting and sometimes we can't get replies at all. I reached out to two senior security engineers but didn't get response. But we never know what we'll finally get from this process so it's still worth a shot.
Issues?
Since the product we're marketing is a relatively abstract product. The reliability and effect are kind of hard to prove to the customers right away, so doing UX testing on MVP is hard to implement in real life.
What am I planning to do this coming week?
Try to figure out how to make a MVP or other alternatives we can use to better show the product. Dig deeper into business model for the product.
Team Dynamic:
We split tasks and good collaboration over all. We also make sure everyone is on the same page as we move forward.
Conducted customer interviews & surveys, finalized value proposition canvas.
What did I learn?
It's harder to conduct customer interviews for B2B than for B2C. Instead of getting customers data from online surveys, we need to reach out to representatives of the companies we're targeting and sometimes we can't get replies at all. I reached out to two senior security engineers but didn't get response. But we never know what we'll finally get from this process so it's still worth a shot.
Issues?
Since the product we're marketing is a relatively abstract product. The reliability and effect are kind of hard to prove to the customers right away, so doing UX testing on MVP is hard to implement in real life.
What am I planning to do this coming week?
Try to figure out how to make a MVP or other alternatives we can use to better show the product. Dig deeper into business model for the product.
Team Dynamic:
We split tasks and good collaboration over all. We also make sure everyone is on the same page as we move forward.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Week 7 Personal Blog
What did I want to do this last week?
Settle down primary business model with my team, find our primary customers and hook up with them if possible.
What did I learn?
I learned that it's very important to get a clear understanding of the product value proposition before diving in to figure out the customers. A product or startup that doesn't kill user's pain or create new gains in the industry can't be a good startup. And such startup is harder to survive and scale.
Issues?
Our primary customers are medium size companies and any companies that have recently established their cloud-based storage. Since we're B2B type startup, it's kind of hard to contact other companies and get feedback if such an abstract software isn't available in the market yet.
What am I planning to do this coming week?
We'll narrow down our customer lists and make online surveys/mockup which can give us helpful feedbacks and reach out to our customers.
Team Dynamic:
Good collaboration and we make sure everyone is on the same page as we move forward
Settle down primary business model with my team, find our primary customers and hook up with them if possible.
What did I learn?
I learned that it's very important to get a clear understanding of the product value proposition before diving in to figure out the customers. A product or startup that doesn't kill user's pain or create new gains in the industry can't be a good startup. And such startup is harder to survive and scale.
Issues?
Our primary customers are medium size companies and any companies that have recently established their cloud-based storage. Since we're B2B type startup, it's kind of hard to contact other companies and get feedback if such an abstract software isn't available in the market yet.
What am I planning to do this coming week?
We'll narrow down our customer lists and make online surveys/mockup which can give us helpful feedbacks and reach out to our customers.
Team Dynamic:
Good collaboration and we make sure everyone is on the same page as we move forward
Monday, February 27, 2017
Team Dynamics
We've been through some hard time contacting the professor. We've set up meetings with inventors of two patents we decided to cross out. The first one is Robotic Exoskeleton, which is licensed and not available unfortunately, another one is myshake which we found hard to commercialized. The patent we're finalizing is ORAM technology.
We still haven't heard back from the inventors though we've tried to contacted them several times. So far, we have good collaboration within the team, we distribute tasks to every team member, communicate and share information on Facebook messenger and work remotely on slides together. We meet physically when needed.
A brief of ORAM and its market
One major problem in the industry now is that organizations and individuals simply encrypt data that they upload to the cloud which is not enough to ensure confidentiality. Without decrypting the data, attackers can recover the information on the cloud storage services. Short for Oblivious RAM, ORAM conceals an individual's access patterns to cloud data, thereby adding an additional layer of security. ORAM can be positioned as a security feature to enhance existing cloud storage services such as the ones by Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google.
While software like ORAM already exist, they are inefficient and require individuals to transfer gigabytes of information in order to upload a few megabytes of data. Some of our competitors in the market secure the data across the entire lifecycle of the cloud, starting with securing the data centers in preparation for migration. As such, solutions to the ORAM problem have not been commercialized, and ORAM technology would be introduced to an entirely fresh market.
ORAM software can be also offered as a third party service, or can be provided as a service out of the cloud. Companies are currently spending an upward of $5000 per application per year on cloud security features, not even including the cost of human labor.ORAM could potentially reduce the amount of engineers needed, thereby reducing costs. As more companies move into the cloud, the need to secure privacy becomes greater. Hence, ORAM is positioned to step into what could amount to a billion dollar marketplace.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Rejection Challenge
The Rejection Challenge is a team building activity in which teams compete to trade for increasingly valuable items. The activity involves strategy and interaction with complete strangers.
Each team was given a clear, plastic box, and an hour to trade it to something better. My team, the Big Six immediately took off, and upon seeing all the other teams walk downhill, proceeded to climb uphill for better pickings. We chose to expand our resources at a career fair first. The career fair required a $15 entrance fee for each person. Janette negotiated with the people at the entrance, allowing our group to slip in for free.
We made it clear to the first person we met at career fair that we were not there for the purpose of networking. When we explained the rules of the game to him, he accepted our box and gave us a company bag with a handful of 8GB USB and some other swags. We left the career fair with water bottles and Swiss Army flashlights and notebooks.
We then decided to target thrifty stores on Telegraph Ave. We experienced several rejections--Party City, Amoeba, Sheng Kee, but also gathered with over $60's worth of physical items without sacrificing too many of our resources. Our new acquisitions included a $35 blanket, a $15 wooden snake, a $10 ring, white-out, gently used moisturizer and several other trinkets.
Takeaways:
1.Target the right group. People who have the resources and authorities are more likely to make a good deal especially if you also have the things they want .
4. Got no? Try again. A no is not the end of the world. This is also the right attitude when pitching ideas to VC.
Each team was given a clear, plastic box, and an hour to trade it to something better. My team, the Big Six immediately took off, and upon seeing all the other teams walk downhill, proceeded to climb uphill for better pickings. We chose to expand our resources at a career fair first. The career fair required a $15 entrance fee for each person. Janette negotiated with the people at the entrance, allowing our group to slip in for free.
We made it clear to the first person we met at career fair that we were not there for the purpose of networking. When we explained the rules of the game to him, he accepted our box and gave us a company bag with a handful of 8GB USB and some other swags. We left the career fair with water bottles and Swiss Army flashlights and notebooks.
We then decided to target thrifty stores on Telegraph Ave. We experienced several rejections--Party City, Amoeba, Sheng Kee, but also gathered with over $60's worth of physical items without sacrificing too many of our resources. Our new acquisitions included a $35 blanket, a $15 wooden snake, a $10 ring, white-out, gently used moisturizer and several other trinkets.
Takeaways:
1.Target the right group. People who have the resources and authorities are more likely to make a good deal especially if you also have the things they want .
2. Be clear and straightforward. It's important to establish a certain degree of trust by being honest. After we explained our mission, some storekeepers even took the extra time to find items that they could offer us.
3. Offer value when possible. Water bottles were very popular among storekeepers, as were sports-related goods like Frisbees and footballs for entertainment usage.
4. Got no? Try again. A no is not the end of the world. This is also the right attitude when pitching ideas to VC.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Value Proposition and Market Needs
To analyze market needs, answer the following questions:
1.who your solution is intended for?
2. how customer will benefit
3.why this is a priority for potential customers?
4. If having more than one customers, For whom will you optimize?
5. why this is a priority for your company?6.Is solving this problem sizable and interesting enough?7.what risks, if true, would derail your initiative?
Value propositions articulate precisely the beneficial user-centric outcomes you are promising to deliver a specific target customer, for the problem you claim to solve.
To figure out a good value proposition, we can follow the following steps:
1.Start with a problem statement
Set context for what the problem you aim to solve is and why it matters.A short Problem Statement explains precisely the pain-point or unrealized opportunity the target customer experiences today.
2.Make sure you’re addressing a meaningful need
Are you Solving a Real Problem? Challenge yourself
3. Define about three propositions per target customer
A customer can easily comprehend a few value proposition statements. The fewer and the less you're convincing
4.Value propositions are the reasons people buy
Step back from the specific features or details of the solution at the moment and focus on the "why" not "what" or "how".
For the patent we chose ORAM:
Value Proposition:ORAM enhances the security of cloud storage data and reduces extra human labor for cyber security.
Market Needs:Organizations and individuals encrypt data that they upload to the cloud, but encryption is not enough to ensure confidentiality. Cyber attacks are still major pain points for lots of companies and countries.
Competitor: current solution providers either scan and strengthen application security from the development stage or enhance the security by encryption, tokenization and auditing.
3.why this is a priority for potential customers?
For the patent we chose ORAM:
Value Proposition:ORAM enhances the security of cloud storage data and reduces extra human labor for cyber security.
Market Needs:Organizations and individuals encrypt data that they upload to the cloud, but encryption is not enough to ensure confidentiality. Cyber attacks are still major pain points for lots of companies and countries.
Competitor: current solution providers either scan and strengthen application security from the development stage or enhance the security by encryption, tokenization and auditing.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
My Top 6 Patents
If this warning system will be widely used and can effectively predict disasters, tons of accidents will be effectively avoided.
As wearables become more important in workout, a sweat profiles would offer more valuable insights for professional athletes and sports lovers.
Not only will this help people who need to carry heavy loads and people with walking defects, it will also be another selling point for backpack manufacturer.
This could effectively boost tissue regeneration for people with diseases, patients after surgeries and elder people.
This can be widely applied to all digital devices for visual correctness and information privacy.
Can be used in immersive language learning app and tourist translation apps.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
what excites me and the kind of people I want work with
As a Comp Sci and Cog Sci major student with experience in product management and full-stack development in the industry, I'm looking forward to working with people who are passionate about applying the new technology to solve real-life problems thus to create positive effects in the society and other people's life. People with diverse skill sets, mind-blowing ideas and the intent to work on things promptly are what I'm looking for in the team formation. I'm open to new ideas and I'd love to meet people in person to further discuss about their passion and plans.
Monday, January 23, 2017
About Me:
I'm a junior studying computer science and cognitive science. I'm a passionate full-stack developer, a designer and fast-learner. I'm particularly interested entrepreneurship, product design, development and management. At leisure, I enjoy learning new things, exploring the world, art design, music and sports.
I've worked as a Product Manager and Software Engineer Intern at SOHU.com last summer break. I defined and drove product vision of features for the Beta version of SOHU Central Web Mobile App. Partnering closely with software engineers, group product managers, UI designers and market operations, I gained experience in driving optimal user experience for mobile customers. Next summer, I'll be interning as a PM at Microsoft.
Class Project Vision:
I'm thinking about working on a project relating to technologies and their social application such as robotics, computer vision etc. I look forward to collaborating with my fellow students to explore the commercial value of these technical patents.
I'm a junior studying computer science and cognitive science. I'm a passionate full-stack developer, a designer and fast-learner. I'm particularly interested entrepreneurship, product design, development and management. At leisure, I enjoy learning new things, exploring the world, art design, music and sports.
I've worked as a Product Manager and Software Engineer Intern at SOHU.com last summer break. I defined and drove product vision of features for the Beta version of SOHU Central Web Mobile App. Partnering closely with software engineers, group product managers, UI designers and market operations, I gained experience in driving optimal user experience for mobile customers. Next summer, I'll be interning as a PM at Microsoft.
Class Project Vision:
I'm thinking about working on a project relating to technologies and their social application such as robotics, computer vision etc. I look forward to collaborating with my fellow students to explore the commercial value of these technical patents.
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