In my Introduction to Entrepreneurship class, we worked on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the semester. With this, students were required to produce a viable ideation of a product or service using entrepreneurial theory. For my group's project, we produced Elder Friends, identifying the problem of loneliness amongst elderly individuals living in retirement communities along with shelter animals. Our solution was a service to create meaningful interactions between both and our mission was "We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a bond between lonely people and animal companions. We strive to create meaningful interactions by designing an experience that allows retirement communities and animal shelters to engage."


Beginning with individual ideation, we were required to think of 3-6 problems and contemplate something we would create to solve it. Then, we worked with partners to choose what problem we would like to focus on for our project. From there we created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) demo, where we presented a functional representation of our product or service. The initial idea began with what we called "Rent-a-Pet," a service where lonely people could rent animals to spend time with if they could not adopt one of their own.

Then in bigger groups of 4-5 we narrowed down our project idea and created a Market Opportunity Analysis (MOA) of the market viability for our new venture opportunity. We performed qualitative and quantitative research on our idea, including surveys for our peers, Facebook ads, interviews, and tests to then create our Business Model Analysis (BMA) to present to the class and finalize our project. From this, we evolved our idea to focus on retirement communities and shelter animals after certain feedback and rebranded to "Elder Friends." This was a great learning opportunity in trial and error and listening to where we may have "failed" and re-ideating how we can create something better.

Finally, we participated in a Business Model Road Test Pitch Competition with all of the sections of the course to present our final product to the department and our peers. Throughout the project, I was exposed to the concepts, practices, and tools of the entrepreneurial world, and used methods such as Lean Canvases, Business Models, Value Propositions, and more. I personally created the final pitch presentation and a website on Squarespace, as well as providing innovative ideas for my group. It was valuable to work on a team as we all understood each other's strengths and weaknesses and collaborated in creating a project we were truly proud of.