Respezy

Summer Entrepreneurship Program

Date: May-Sept. 2020

Scope: Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Marketing & Brand Strategy, UI/UX, Design Research

Challenge

As the world faced the COVID-19 crisis, we set out on a mission to improve the healthy behaviors through design and technology. After being admitted to delta v, MIT’s premier summer startup accelerator, we spent 3 months researching customers, brainstorming a high-impact product, and creating a viable business plan.

Approach

As the team lead, my role was to build a team, lead customer discovery, develop products, and formulate a business strategy to sustain our venture. After interviewing several different customer segments, we identified as our beachhead market the students returning to campus who needed assistance navigating COVID risk on campus. I explored different solutions including an electronically-powered mask, mask e-commerce platform. We decided it would be most viable to design an app that allowed students to track their activities and receive a risk assessment score. The app concept was validated by testing our prototype with customers, and formulated a business plan to generate funding from schools by providing student activity information to keep them safe.

Outcome

By the end of the summer, our team of 4 had interviewed over 100 end users, 20 different members of school leadership, and multiple experts in the field. I helped test prototypes with those users, receiving feature prioritization and feedback on our product. I then pitched our concept at Demo Day in front of members of the MIT community and investors.