Hello and welcome to part 3 of the "Make a Difference Boot Camp" series! There have been some vast changes in the Bootcamp landscape, and some sour moments along the way, but don't worry, we will try to keep the joy going in the Bootcamp adventure!
If you haven't yet read into how this amazing event played out over the first five days, please check out my stories on days 1 to 3, as well as days 4 and 5.
Day 6 - 22nd of June 2023
It was 9:15am on a beautiful Thursday morning, and I was sat outside the Atrium Building of the University of Suffolk, waiting to start the third week of Bootcamp - and once again, things immediately started getting very interesting as I was led inside by the University's Enterprise Manager, Amy Volkert.
In typical "Volkert" fashion (quotes intended), I was getting a big boost of drive and motivation for the days ahead - she was once again blown away by my post on days 4 and 5 of the bootcamp and started wondering if I could start writing for other people for a living. Maybe the fantasy map blog will go on to become something else in the future? We'll see how things get on.
This week, we would have a new face on the Bootcamp block - let's introduce long-time entrepreneur and International Business lecturer, Sunil Oberoi to the stage.
The morning session was about going through the different phases of primary market research and how we would go on to create a product that has demand among customers. First order of the day was to come up with a wallet design that would empathise with at least one other participant in the room.
My idea was to create a simple digital wallet that factored in ease of accessibility (such as linkage to online services), and was wellness oriented, in that it would make the experience of online banking easier and pleasant to deal with.
The idea of mine received strong applause - except one of the participants commented about the possible security concerns regarding linking online shopping services to the digital wallet. But it just goes to show why you can't always have things your own way in life, and in the world of business.
In terms of the general atmosphere, I must say that there were some hilarious ideas being thrown around the room, as one person talked about a physical wallet in the shape of a toaster (which got everybody laughing), while another would go on to create a crazy-futuristic physical wallet with an OLED screen valued at £500 for me - although looking back at the design now, I wouldn't buy it unless I was a high-flying entrepreneur!
After that, the rest of the morning would then start to quieten down, and the swan-dive into the world of theory would begin. Nothing too crazy here, as the theory primarily revolved around the five stages of primary market research and trying to find a pain point from which we can build our business ideas from. The final goal - to turn product users into customers, and eventually into fans of the business.
For a brief moment, we would talk about our own business ideas and how far we have gotten into the world of market research. With one illustrator lined up and several people that I have managed to speak to for the fantasy map idea so far, things are going OK with me, right?
Some of the participants also came up with ingenious ways to do primary market research in the session - as one participant in the bootcamp tried some capuera dance moves as a way of trying to identify the right customers for their business idea (needless to say, there were many different reasons why many people in the room weren't interested!), while another wanted to set up a social enterprise providing high quality, subsidized food to people who find it difficult to afford basic necessities in the supermarkets. As there are similar schemes in India providing subsidised food to the poor there, it was something which resonated quite well with Sunil.
Eventually, lunchtime came, and our Enterprise Manager Amy was off to get some salad in town. As the afternoon session was looming nearer, Amy wasn't back on campus, and I was playing guard for a moment near the front entrance to the Atrium building, trying to see if she would make it back on site. And then the moment came where I thought to myself - OK, that's enough. It's back to business.
The afternoon half of the bootcamp was about going through the financial concepts that are needed to run a business - starting out with the pricing model, which describes how products should be valued. While there is no universal answer as to which pricing model should each business go for - as we all know, customer value proposition usually leads to the best results and competition-based pricing leads to wars most of the time!
This session also marked the first time that I witnessed the more sour side of the Bootcamp - as a discussion about Corporate Social Responsibility turned into a heated debate about whether businesses should be prioritising profit over community benefits. Things eventually cooled down from there, and it wasn't long before Sunil's signature icing on the cake for the afternoon started to appear - profit and loss accounts, and how it links in with the concept of cash, and paying taxes (that is, if your account is positive). In the world of business and financing, there is a saying, "revenue is vanity, profit is sanity but cash is reality!".
To save the insanity of having to hard graft the basic concepts of a profit and loss account in this post, here is a diagram of the relationship between the profit and loss account and the survival of a business (both in the customer relationship sense and in the financial sense), as Sunil broke down the following section quite nicely here:
From here, I managed to put together a basic shell of what a profit and loss account looks like, with the columns describing months in a monthly forecast for the first year of a business (for workshop documenting purposes, a scenario-based profit and loss example will appear under the write-up for Day 7).
Another subject that came up alongside profit and loss was funding that is available for startups, which ranged from government grants and idea pitching events (like the one scheduled for the bootcamp in July!), to investors and angels, and using personal savings, as well as the importance of making sure that your pitch content is believable to investors, and a little bit of talking on negotiation (something that would become useful in the workshop teambuilding exercise on Day 7).
To put my creative writing cap on, here is one piece of advice if you are looking for money to run your business:
Go. To. Government. Grant. Schemes. Before. Trying. Investors.
Quite literally, the free money is there to take if you can get it!
And finally, after further debates and questions being put forward throughout the session, the boot camp was over for the day, and I started making my way back home in the humid, cloudy weather, struggling to carry around the design thinking paper that I had written at the start of the day. Good times.
Day 7 - 23rd of June 2023
There was a slight change in the Enterprise and Entrepreneurship team scenery on this day, as I went to the Atrium building waiting to go in - and oh noes, the Enterprise Manager is not on campus. However, to try and keep the boot camp shine going, we have Enterprise Officer Hannah Page for a change!
To get us into the business plan rhythm, the morning started out with Sunil drawing a co-ordinate grid diagram, re-emphasizing why it is important to come up with a product that stands out from the other competitors that are already out on the market:
Along the way, there were also some interesting diversions along the way, with two notable ones being the TAM/SAM/SOM method of market segmentation, as well as a CAC conversion funnel explaining the seven stages of acquiring a customer.
While I was comfortable with Sunil's explanations of the conversion funnel and how the CAC calculations work, to be honest, I personally preferred Adam's way of explaining the conversion funnel from Day 5, due to the simple structuring and that model being better designed for advertising products at a lower cost (something crucial for a startup).
And let's not forget the mitigation plan - could be useful for documenting cyber security risks, among other general business risks!
Hand-drawn template of the Mitigation Plan
But in general, I must say that I actually liked the way Sunil broke down different aspects of the business plan so that it is useful for someone who is building a startup, as well as ruling out other aspects that are only relevant for businesses that are already well-established or not really needed at all. And of course, comparing the executive summary to "watching a movie trailer" made things in the session a little bit more appeasing to listen to.
And with that, boot camp was (officially) over for the week. However, surprise, surprise, this is not the end of the journal diary yet!
Originally, I was not planning on documenting the financial planning workshop that took place in the afternoon, however the amount of linkage between the workshop and the materials covered in the bootcamp sessions meant that in effect, Sunil's workshop session has now become a bootcamp extension - and so for the sake of completeness, I absolutely had to cover it!
Before the workshop, everyone was given a scenario to create a monthly profit and loss statement for a fantasy restaurant in Ipswich opening in July 2023. The restaurant is projected to receive 900 customers in the first month, with a further 10 customers in later months, and hires multiple staff members, particularly over the weekends.
Here is what I have managed to accomplish myself from that scenario:
Everyone in the room had different profit and loss calculations. On one extreme, one of the participants produced a profit and loss account that saw the business generate negative net profit throughout the entire year.
Then there was a middle ground, with a few participants (including myself!) producing accounts that are mostly negative, but generate some kind of positive profit in the final month of the first year.
And on the other end, another participant produced an account generating positive figures for all months of the year - but since businesses usually generate negative net profit in their first couple of months, I'd have to say "yeah, right" on that.
Then it was time to throw in a spanner in the works into the exercise, as the concept of cash from Day 6 then came into play, using one of the middle ground examples. It turns out that even with £10,000 cash to begin with, the amount of loss that the business is set to make at the beginning means that the restaurant is predicted to go bust by the sixth month of operation, and that the fantasy Ipswich restaurant would need a grand total of £13,000 in investments in order to keep the business afloat in the first year - getting the business to perform well is crucial at this stage!
And as we are projecting customer numbers as well, the concept of TAM/SAM/SOM market segmentation also came flying down the pipeline - as the profit and loss forecasts for the next year and beyond will help figure out the projected target market for the restaurant business.
Overall, doing the fantasy restaurant exercise was plenty of fun and it's given me more confidence in filing profit and loss statements (and eventually company/HMRC accounts) for my own business idea.
After going through the basic concepts of how business shares work (along with some real-life examples of shareholding balance in large companies), I would then go on to experience the best part of the entire day, as we had a team-building exercise simulating a FinTech startup of five people.
To stop myself going crazy writing up everything that has happened in the teambuilding exercise, here are some key moments that I've documented from this session - firstly, an attempt to negotiate 70% equity for the founder started raising eyebrows for the advisors, followed by a shares conflict between the Marketing team member and the Chief Technical Officer that was threatening to put the future of the business at stake, leading on to more negotiations with the founder to try and get things back on track. Eventually, we were all able to come up with a resolution that focused on a greater amount of equity for the CTO over a three year period - owing to the greater importance of the CTO's role over time.
Putting this exercise into simple phrases, these moments go to show that sometimes, employee relationships in startups can go sour, resulting in not enough being done in organisations to raise funding, and, unfortunately, it is one of the key causes of failure in startups.
Once the exercise was over, the workshop ended, and I began to pack up and make my way home. When I got back, I got a very big surprise in my email inbox - Amy contacted me during my lunch break to see how things were getting on with Sunil, and low and behold... she was planning on sharing some quotes from my previous blog posts regarding the boot camp across the University. Now that's a big achievement to be proud of!
And with that, the week can now be ended properly.
Conclusions after days 6 and 7
Days 6 and 7 have thrown about a completely different curveball to the first five days of the bootcamp, with a slightly different atmosphere going about in the room - in comparison to the laughter and shine experienced in the previous week with Enterprise Manager Amy, there were serious debates going on regarding a wide range of different concepts. Some were heated debates, while in others, people were using their own personal business experiences to put questions forward and that's what's really intrigued me about the style of conversation this week.
I have to say that Sunil's method of delivering the bootcamp sessions really surprised me - initially it felt like the sessions would be predominantly theoretical and otherwise quiet, but as the days progressed and we were putting things into practice (especially in the afternoon workshop session on Day 7), things began to unravel slowly and it ended up becoming a really interesting learning experience for me. I've said it before, but there's a theme going on here - every bootcamp presenter has their own interesting way of delivering sessions!
Up next on the bootcamp journey is day 8 - the pitch preparation session, which will lead up quite nicely to the Bootcamp Grand Finale. Should be plenty of fun to prepare the pitch and eventually deliver it!
Will I win a share of the £2000 prize money? Find out in the final installment of the "Make a Difference" series!
With much love,
Jakub
(p.s. to make things even more exciting, the Enterprise Manager's shining personality will return too!)
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