The Workshop II of the Academic Working Capital program in 2016 has started in São Paulo (SP), on the morning of July 18th. About 60 students, from the 26 groups participate this year, gathered to listen to lectures, participate in dynamics and discuss their business models. The Workshop II will last until July 20th in the auditorium and rooms of the Electrical Engineering building in the Polytechnic School athe University of São Paulo (USP).
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The schedule began with the welcome of the USP professor Marcos Barretto, academic coordinator of AWC. Then, the mechatronic engineer Diogo Dutra, AWC content coordinator, reviewed the structure of the program, noting that the theme of the Workshop I was user obsession and the need to conduct real experiments. Citing the American entrepreneur Steve Blank and the creator of the Pokémon GO game, John Hanke, Diogo showed that, from now on, students will come out from a solution model to a business model with the target of estimating their profit.
On the panel “From product to business”, Diogo quickly explained the Business Model Canvas tool. “At the end you will look at the revenue and cost and think: does this gives business or don’t?” He told the story of the North-American startup Pair Eyewear, which produces customizable glasses for children. After going to the field and doing surveys and interviews, Pair Eyewear entrepreneurs have totally changed their business model. “You need to keep this curious look, this look that doesn’t simply accept the first interview, which makes rigorous testing”, he said.
After the initial lectures, the groups went to the rooms and worked in their business models; then, they were divided into new clusters according to technology or market proximities. This is the first time that all groups of 2016 meet personally, since the Workshop I was conducted online for groups of the 2nd call.
Later, all of them returned to the auditorium and attended the lecture of Rogério Nogueira, CEO of Weka and partner of the startups Coworkers and Captr. Rogério talked about marketing and sales strategies and ways to acquire and convert customers. “How am I going to attract and what is going to be my actual conversion to these people? This will be in the business plan. And it is important to test this business plan”, he stated. “Selling is something you learn.” Rogério spoke of the skills he considers necessary to be a good seller, as discipline, ability to communicate, creativity and investigative capacity. At the end, the students made questions and the entrepreneur gave books and tools tips.
The second panel of the day was on markets and revenue models. The AWC monitors coordinator, Artur Vilas Boas, who is also a member of the Entrepreneurship Center of USP, showed examples of companies with different revenue possibilities from the simple sales model (rent or sale with maintenance, licensing/franchising, freemium etc.). “Calculating the size of the opportunity is pricing times sizing”, he explained. Arthur went over some points of attention for the students to reflect. Back to rooms, the groups gathered to think about the strategy of their revenue models.
