1

15/15

The amount of effort that you have put into this assignment is truly impressive. You may be the

only group that I’ve ever seen (PAS, Undergraduate, or MBA) that have done interviews, an

MVP test, and a survey for this type of assignment. Well done!

Each data source gave you unique and valuable information that you can use to refine your

venture idea and business model. I think that there is still room to really delve into how students

use (or don’t use) time management apps, and to understand the specific frictions and pain points

that you can address in honing your competitive positioning. For this, I would encourage you to

keep on doing interviews and then take what you learn to inform future MVP tests. Of course, all

of this is contingent on you actually pursuing the venture beyond the class. In terms of a school

assignment, you’ve done an excellent job.

Vanessa Lin, Jasmine Yen, Ethan Chen, Gordon Tu, Morris Wu

Professor Wry

Introduction to Venture Creation

20 June 2019

MVP Test Result

Venture Idea

The product our group creates is an “time management” app. Our venture would serve as both

assistance and training for students and employees of a company. Project management skills are

in high demand as they span all industries across the globe and reach all demographics. These
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skills are essentially developed during the stage when one is still a student, and those skills and

abilities one has in managing tasks would ultimately be the major factor that every company

would evaluate one’s potential on in the future.

As we are living under the so-called “technological era”, the sophisticated technological

advances bring us a new problem when more and more individuals have weak task management

skills as ones can easily be distracted by all these appealing new inventions that enter the market

on a daily basis. Only trying to raise up productivity by giving out an efficient and well-

organized task management system, it is still easy for people to be distracted and fall of schedule.

Our main goal is to encourage the behavior of completing every single task planned on the list

explains why our product is a “project management” venture instead of a “to-do list” venture. In

simpler words, project management types help guide projects, which generally have a final due

date and deliverable; with to-do list types, people are generally just keeping track of tasks that

need to get done but that aren't necessarily part of something that must have a deadline, as

opposing to the way projects are designed.

Our shaping of the venture into three different parts and payment systems is the most important

factor that ensures the viability of our venture. For personal use, we believe that we should make

it free because it has the most basic function and there are a lot of other strong competitors such

as Google Calendar that could attract our customers if we charge fees on usage. On the other

hand, the reason that we charge fewer fees for school membership than business membership is

due to the fact that business project management functions are way more sophisticated than the

option of school. In addition, as long as we cut our charged fees lower than competitors such as

Monday in the full-charged fees for businesses, we believe that our venture has a high potential

and viability.
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Business Model

I) Interviews With Potential Customers

From the feedback we received from Professor Wry, we believe that we need to find out

the specific group we want to narrow down on developing for instead of trying to solve all things

for all people. Thus, we interviewed four different potential users: businesses (full subscription

prices, main income), schools (full subscription prices, main income), teachers, and students

(freemium models).

Businesses: Mr. Yihmin Lin (CEO of Jtron, a SemiConductor Company)

1) Would you be interested in paying full price for our business model? Why or why not?

No. Our company already works with Outlook by Microsoft, which also does a very

similar job as your venture. However, what is different with your venture is that when

using Outlook, we are unable to link our planned schedules and progress with Google.
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This is one major flaw with Outlook, but it still doesn’t pose as too big of a problem for

the users, since it is easily solved after a purchase of an add-on feature that transfers the

data safely into Google.

2) Are you the only company that works with Outlook, and how satisfied are you with the

program and why?

No, most of the companies I work with and a lot of others to my knowledge all use

Outlook. This is because Outlook comes with the purchase of Microsoft, but you only

need to pay a little bit of additional fee to run the entire function. Their functions satisfy

pretty much all the needs for a company to run the project management steps smoothly,

and it only costs around 300NT ($10 USD) per year for us to subscribe for the full

function. I am very satisfied with the program and believe that I would not be willing to

change to another program since all my employees and I are already used to this system.

Schools: Ms. Pamela Chu (Director of Pacific American School)

1) Would you be interested in implementing this system to your school's program? Why or

why not? (regarding aspects of classes using it, teachers using during department

meetings, office staff corporations, etc.) Have you tried out this kind of system before?

First of all, I feel like there are already a lot of task/ time management apps out there, and

whatever your venture is trying to propose, it might already all be available. To be

honest, our school’s office system has been considering to use these similar kind of task

management apps, which already have a lot of similar functions to what you propose. The

main reason why we thought about using it is the inefficiency of office by simply talking

to each other to discuss on the tasks. However, we didn’t end up using it, because if I
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want to use the app, I don’t simply want to see a body that shows a status of “doing”,

“not done”, “stuck”, etc. I want to be able to have the app that allows me to make my

SOP of work load and then whenever the office staff is working on it, I can always be on

top and know detailedly on how much the work is being completed. The app designed is

way too simple, and I think what you can do is to find Ms. Mingling in our school and

have her show you the app. It is always better to refer to similar prototypes and figure out

what could be improved on and is actually needed. (It has been something that happened

a long time ago, I don’t really remember the app’s name)

2) What sorts of task managing procedures/ system do you currently implement at your

school?

For example, I use Google Sheets as a basis to track the senior college application

deadline charges right now. When I enter all the data and list out everyone’s names

accordingly, they would all be able to update their status regularly and meet all the

required deadlines. However, this is a static number, and this is my point in the previous

question. The problem I have with the system and what I observe from how you present

the app is that it only shows the “done”, “not done”, “priorities”, etc. to me. What I want

to see out of it is that it actually shows me a progress status, like 70% done or

whatsoever, or else an app like this serves little to me and it could be easily replaced with

Google Sheets or other systems. There must be a detailed progressing status such as a

flow chart or work flow illustrated to me to let me know how much my SOPs are

executed. The current design and description to me look too simple, and there must be a

lot of additional designs and functions in order to get me interested in implementing this

system to my school. I would need a “progressing supervisor” that lets me know whether
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or not every single part of work is done in detail. Take, for example, our school’s

Halloween event. During the planning period, I am in charge of monitoring the progress

of the decoration, design, event planning, implementation, and a lot more. I need to make

sure that every single detail is done right, and if I use the system and someone

irresponsible just simply puts down a “done,” there can be a problem rising from this

action (I need to supervise and monitor “in person” to be certain). This is a flaw that exist

in your system, and also a major factor on why I am hesitant in applauding for your

design. What I suggest could be a potential solution is that you can create a template for

people to base their workform on, and figure out a way to accurately track this data.

3) Would you be interested in using our app for a personal use? If so, what are the core

features you want to be incorporated in this time/ task management app?

Yes, in fact I would be more willing to use the app for personal use rather than buying

and implementing this into my school’s system. The first function I would like to see in

the app is allowing users to create a workflow (bar charts, templates pre-written so they

can easily include different work/ tasks) to see the progress of the tasks and at the same

time also see where they stand in the whole process. Since I seldom work alone, I think

Google’s functionalities are extremely friendly to me where it allows me to easily share

and access many files with whoever I work with. However, one function Google lacks

brings me to my second point I wish to see in the app. I would like to see the app send me

notifications/ alerts/ reminders when deadlines are almost up. For a person really busy

like me (running the whole school’s system and more), I really struggle to manage the

10~15 tasks I have on my plate at once. I really need a notification/ alert/ pop-up that can

remind me of what is important and coming up (send you a reminder on how many days
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you have left before you have to complete the task, show you how much you have left to

do, and tells you “hey it’s urgent, you better start working”). Knowing that right now

everyone is trying to include so many additional features into their own apps/ system

(Google could be used to sign into Facebook, Facebook could be used to sign up/ sign

into other websites), it is easy to see how everyone wants to have an all-in-one featured

system. I suggest that you can have a system that allows you to transfer a lot of different

data you have in something like Google or other places for you to manage as tasks

(automatically syncing), which would help in the aspect when you use the personal app to

manage your tasks of group works and etc. Then again, my first point would come in play

again as your app would trigger a double reminder when one teammate/ you have not

done the tasks scheduled, which would be very helpful. To further elaborate on the

collaboration parts I briefly brought up in the second point, I believe that another useful

function for the app to include is allowing collaborations within tasks with others

(sharing your scheduling). This can work through a process where you can also create

notification reminders to whoever you are working/ sharing the schedule with, and the

notification also gets passed on to them when the deadline is coming up (no need to keep

on trying to contact them and reminding them). In simpler words, it should have an

interactive function for users to collaborate with other users (i.e. when you work with

other teammates on the same project).

Teachers: Mr. Jeffery Buscher (Director of Curriculum and Instruction at PAS)

1) Are you satisfied with the current system the school uses for classes? Do you think this

app would be helpful to how classes run? (for yourself and all teachers in general)
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I'm pretty happy with Google Classroom overall, in terms of most of its functions. The

interfaces you've showed me focus a lot on tracking, while Classroom's interface focuses

more on the task itself. Having said that, I do like the idea of the "non-distraction"

function of your proposed app, to disable other tabs, but I wonder how sensitive it could

be made, because some tasks will require other tabs (for example, a research project). I

think the description you've given me and the images look better for office management,

or for a supplemental screen for something like Google Classroom, rather than an app on

its own.

2) Would you be interested in implementing this system during your classes? When working

with different departments for meetings/ assignment of work amongst teachers more

efficiently done? (maybe?) Would you suggest the school to buy this program? (why and

why not)

I do think the app shows potential for managing tasks among groups of teachers, where

you may not need as much explanation of the task itself, but rather just to track progress.

Also, it could be useful for the office, but as I noted above, I'm not sure how useful I

would find it for a classroom except as a supplement to something more along the lines of

the platform we're currently using.

3) What additional features would you wish/ suggest to be incorporated in the app? (to make

you more interested and wish to use it)

For me, something like Classroom has the advantages that it does because it manages

task by task, with the required information and handouts related to that task. Again, what

would maybe make this more useful to me is if it was something sold to Google as a

supplement to Classroom, like a planning/management app that students and teachers

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could use for whole classes. As it stands, however, it seems to lack the functionality that

is currently provided by Classroom.

4) Would you be interested to use the app for personal use (would only be simple

management of tasks but functions very much like the one described above)?

Yes, actually, I could see how this could be a useful tool for personal use to time manage

for multiple tasks, or again for an office team of adults.

5) Do you think this might be a potential training for students ability of project management

for their future?

I have mixed opinions on this. On the one hand, yes, I could see the training potential,

particularly for more visual students who need to see something like this. On the other

hand, however, I wonder if it will train the ability, or simply become another tech tool on

which they become dependent, rather than learning the skills themselves. It would

definitely be worth experimenting with in terms of trying to use it train students, and

studying the results.

Student: Lillian Shern (Student at Pacific American School)

1) What kind of time management apps do you know about? What kinds have you used?

What are the functions you like the most about them?

I know about a lot of time management apps, and I tried around 10 management apps in

total. I am personally very interested in testing out each and every one of the time

scheduling apps because I want to manage my study time more efficiently. I’ll introduce

and point out some flaws for the top three most often used and remarkable ones I studied.

Firstly, I often use the app “Forest” to eliminate all distraction from my technology when
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studying. However, regarding their only function on disabling all apps in my phone

creates a flaw where I am unable to use apps like Google to search up things. I only

wanted to disable distracting apps like gaming apps, comic apps, etc., but not the others.

Next, I also like to use “The 30-30 Schedule” to manage my studying time on different

subjects. Likewise, the app has a flaw where you are only able to set up to 30 minutes of

plan (app also disables all other apps), which is not really enough for me. Last but not

least, I also use the app “Study Bunny”. Though I really enjoy using this app originally, I

started to realize that the amount of distraction the app itself causes slowly destroyed its

purpose of allowing me to allot my study time more efficiently. The app is very similar to

“Forest”, but it adds 1 coin to your inventory every minute after you start your planned

schedules. What you can do with the coins is that you can buy stuff for the bunny, which

is exactly why it starts to become distracting for me since it makes me spend more time

on playing and decorating my bunny rather than studying. Not only so, the app does not

disable the usage of other apps, which is why I would be deleting the app soon.
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2) What kind of tasks do you normally manage with time management apps?

I use time management apps mainly to manage all of my school-related work. For

example, since I am taking summer intensive courses, I really need to pay full attention to

what is taught everyday because we have tests very often and the one year course is

shrunken to only 3 weeks. For the summer economics class, I use “The 30-30 Schedule”

to manage the time I use to review everything I learnt in class (30 minutes) as well as

previewing for tomorrow (30 minutes). On the other hand, generally when I study for

tests, I like to use the app “Forest” to completely disable all functions of the phone so I

can fully focus and concentrate.

3) Are there any additional functions you wish to implement in these kinds of apps?

(ideally)

I would like to see a well designed layout when I use a time management app since the

intended purpose for me to use these kind of apps is to be more organized and have a

cleaner and clearer outline of my schedules. As an example, “The 30-30 Schedule” has a

pretty bad design, where its messy layout makes me feel unorganized when using it. On

the other hand, another app called “Bright To-Do” has a much better layout (used for

schedule management only, like Google Calendar), but it does not have the major

functions I need. In addition, I hope to see time management apps showing the statistical

data on how concentrated I am after I used the app, and also my consistency in

completing tasks if possible.

4) Would you be interested in using this kind of app during class time? Do you have any

concerns for this?

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I would actually be pretty interested in seeing how time management apps would play a

role during class time, especially regarding group projects as you have described X-

Acute’s specialty of “project management” based style. However, through your

descriptions, I am still a little skeptical on the point of how the app would accurately

evaluate each individual’s performance and participation since a lot of times in group

work it is really hard to define one’s effort when in class (needless to say it would be

even more blurry when it is online). Nevertheless, I think it still has potential if

developed, and I’d be interested in trying it out.

5) Do you think these using these time management apps improve your capability to

manage time well? (potential for future project management skills)

Most definitely. I personally believe that I don’t have as strong of a habit to manage and

distribute my time to do work as well as others, thus I spend a lot of time on exploring

different kinds of time management apps in order to possibly strengthen this weakness.

Over this process, I felt like these apps did help me develop a good habit of more strictly

enforcing and organizing my time more efficiently (having to complete an item in a fixed

schedule under a limited time), and I am less likely to be distracted when doing work.

[Conclusion]

After interviewing experts of our major potential customers (business, schools, teachers, and

students), we believe that it is easy for us to conclude that we should choose to focus on

developing the app into one that serves for personal usage. Our major user group would be

students, and we would be choosing the “freemium” model to implement. However, if adult

users also want to use the app, it also works because they have very similar needs as students
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(they just don’t have to prepare for tests, homework, etc.; they can still use many of the functions

we develop as a management tool).

II) MVP Testing Steps + Results [Landing Page + Advertisement]

Testing

Although the assignment only asks us to choose between MVP testing and interviews, we

believe that it is really important for us to still do the MVP testing since the interviews are of a

narrow population. Since our venture is hugely dependent on customer engagement, we believe

that if our MVP testing fails, we would not be able to continue on with further development on

the venture. From the previous interview results, it is clear that we should focus our attention on

selling for individual uses (students). Since our major focus is on the student audience group to

spread the word, which is a younger generation, we decided to use Instagram and Facebook as a

platform to promote our venture.

Set-Ups

1) [Website/ Landing Page]: https://vanessalin0226.wixsite.com/xacute

a) [Pop-ups]: will pop up automatically when visiting the website

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b) Sign up for Membership:

This design would force/ alert the visitors on the sign up section instead of having

them scroll all the way to the bottom (as students, we notice that kids do not like

to read lengthy articles, what pops up first might attract their attention more).

2) [Online Promotion/ Advertisement]: targeted at student group audience

a) [Facebook Page]: https://www.facebook.com/X-Acute-2395900387114713/

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b) [Instagram Page]: https://www.instagram.com/xacute2019/

Data Analysis
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We launched all of these pages on Sunday morning (Taiwan time), and the feedback and

responses we got isn’t as high as we expected. We would start analyzing about the statistical

analysis of the social media promotions. For the two different platforms, Facebook and

Instagram, there was a really clear gap in the responses to the accounts. Facebook had way more

audience and views within the short amount of time it was launched, while on the other hand it

was harder for us to promote the Instagram account (partially because Instagram forces business

profiles to pay extra fees to promote, but Facebook is easier to promote because the account was

linked to Vanessa’s Facebook and many of her friends was interested in it and asked her more

information on it and actually took the time to read through the posts). We gained a total of 3

follower in the Instagram account, and 31 profile visits after the 3 day period we launched it. On

the other hand, the performance and reaction to our Facebook page/ account is comparibly

extremely high to the Instagram Account. We gained a total of 49 likes/ followers, 224 page

views, 2 users signing up to participate, and the posts reached 142 people (click in and view our

posters). The below are screenshots of the statistics:

Now regarding the statistics of the website, we have a total of 89 visitors (unique, meaning not

counting if they clicked/ checked the website twice), 98 page visits (some might’ve checked
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many times), and total page visits (unique visitors data) from several countries (Taiwan: 63,

Canada: 2, Ireland: 1→ Vanessa’s friend on vacation there, United States of America: 23→

Vanessa has several friends/ family there and we surveyed some college students studying in the

United States as well). In addition, what allowed us to have this amount of click rates/ visits is

also due to the fact that we required our surveyed individuals to read through the website before

they fill out their answers (pertaining to whether or not they would be interested in using our

product), which would be later explained in Part III: Surveys. The below are screenshots of the

statistics:
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III) Surveys

Although we have already been through the process of expert interviews and the respective steps

of the “landing page MVP” and “advertisements”, a major concern we have with our data is that

it is hard for us to evaluate with the tracking devices on whether some visits and engagement

records may be from bots but not actual people. In addition, though the expert interview did help

us narrow down our customer group to only between schools and students, we cannot

“generalize” results of case studies of single individuals we interviewed to represent the whole

population. Thus, knowing we will be able to generalize the results to represent the overall

population after we reach a certain amount of responses with surveys, we want to be certain to

ratify that our conclusion is correct one last time by sending out surveys to a broader audience

(guaranteed response, unlike the landing page campaign and advertisement that can only record

down the clicks and views instead of giving detailed insight on the customer needs).
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Feedback:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQpKIo6XhK5Fgdu63EarsmpznNCkOwW_b71QNALGcO0/ed

it?usp=sharing (green stands for middle and high school students, purple stands for college

students, and pink stands for adults)

After pooling from a larger sample of 100+ candidates (comprised of highschool students,

college students, and a few adults), we figured that:

1) For the first question, “Do you use time management apps? ” Since our survey includes

three different ages: “middle to high school kids, college students, and adults ”, we

predict that most of the users using time management app will be people who are

students. But based on the result we’ve got, around half of the people do use time

management apps to manage their time wisely and the ages does not affect the numbers

of users. Half of the students do use the apps and also so do half the adults. After

discussing with the group members, we think that time management problem is a

problem happens in all ages, even though your time management skills might improve as

you grow up, but the work you received will also increase at the same time.
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2) For the second question “What do you use these kinds of app for?” we observe that

approximately half of our participants (48.5%), including both students and adults, prefer

the function of “managing personal time” in time management apps. Other minor

preferred functions are “managing time for writing homework (32.7%),” “managing

study (33.7%),” and “planning trips (21.8%).” The result indicates that people who use

time management apps rely on the system primarily to organize their work or time and

other people who do not use time management apps still think that the system’s major

function is to help with work or time scheduling. Although the data gathered from this

question cannot imply whether or not the participants who use time management apps

and others who do not use the system think or predict the functions they chose are helpful

to them personally, we can still make a reasonable conclusion that people, regardless of

the usage of time management apps, expect any kinds of time management apps to have

strong key functionalities of managing time for personal use or work schedule.
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3) For the third question: “What are some ideal functions you want in a time management

app?” Based on the responses of our survey takers, we really gathered some valuable

ideas that are beneficial for us to model our product. Among the numerous answers, the

most common ideal function that the samplers provide is the reminder function. Many of

our responders wish to have the time management to send reminders to the customers and

notify them the most prioritized work to be done. Because people have different things to

be reminded and done, we will definitely provide a customized reminder system when
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making the time management app that fits everyone’s needs. Another function that many

people desire to have is a timer. Many people want to have their time under control. A

timer is going to be ideal for them because there will also be alarms to remind them the

time. Some people have concerns in terms of the flexibility. They want the time

management app to add its flexibility towards the schedules and events. Life is full of

uncertainty. There is no way to ensure what will happen and what will not. As a result, if

the time management app has some flexibility, when something happens unexpectedly,

our users can adjust some things to do and switch some over.

4) Regarding the fourth question in our survey “What time management apps do you

know/use? ” The results of our survey clearly shows that most of our respondents lack the

experience of using individual developed time managing apps. Most of the survey takers

had similar experience using default softwares through IOS and Android such as google

calendar and “reminders” through Iphone. A small portion of our samples had experience

using Trello, Ticktick, Todoist and Asana. However, most of them had little experience

using personal developed apps similar to ours. As a conclusion, our team regards this

result as a valuable information such that it reflects the limited knowledge of our industry

to the public, but still posts the great potential of our industry. If we could spread the

convenience and efficiency of our app to our target customers ahead of our competitors,

it would be a huge advantage towards market shares at a very early stage of this potential

industry and when those big contenders such as Apple and Google weren’t focusing on

this part of their development. When they eventually found out the missing piece of their

default google calendar and reminder in our app, it would be a great source of negotiation

for our little team either we decide to sell our technology to those big companies or to
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continue to run our app. Moreover, some interesting thoughts provide that the app should

be simple, aesthetic, and easy to access, which we will also take into account.

5) Regarding the Pie-chart asking ‘Would you be interested in using our time management

app?” We had a positive result that 95% of our samples will be interested or maybe

interested in trying our app no matter they had experience of using similar apps or not.

Which we can conclude that there is clearly a market in improving self-efficiency.

Moreover, following the results above we could clearly see that a great portion or our

target customers had not yet found the best app that improves their self-efficiency. This

information gives us a great motivation and great potential that shows this industry still

lacks a big enough contender. This gives us a great motive staying in the market and

continue working on the details that utilizes customer experience when the big default

apps are not moving their way further to develop their initial app.