The Online Workshop II of Academic Working Capital presented the last stage of the program – the business model test – to the 25 groups. The students participated in the first day of the Online Workshop II, on September 23rd, straight from their cities, through platforms such as Google Hangouts, Google Drive and Slack. In addition to the AWC team, the online event counted on lectures of Rafael Gonçalves, founder of the company Tegris, and Henry Suzuki, managing partner of the technology consultancy Axonal.
AWC coordinators, Marcos Barretto and Diogo Dutra, welcomed the participants and explained how the final stage of the program will be. “We are going to stop thinking about problem and solution for a bit and start thinking about a pretty serious structure of what is your business and how are you going to keep it alive after AWC”, Diogo said. The coordinators presented the elements of Business Model Canvas, talked about strategies of first sale and operation for value delivering and introduced two new decks, which the groups have already started to fill and present: the business model test and the business experiments decks.
In the first lecture of the day, Rafael Gonçalves showed how companies looking for scalability can build a capital structure, explaining revenue models such as professional investment, crowdfunding and sale or strategic exit. He presented different metrics to understand the business performance and use it as comparative basis in the market, showing the company traction – the capacity to predictably create profit. “There are many metrics for startups, but traction is something that everyone understands in any place in the world”, he highlighted.
On his turn, Henry Suzuki highlighted the importance of planning with regards to the product’s intellectual property, focused on patent. “Who has to understand about intellectual property is not a lawyer, is not an external advisor, is your team”, he stated. Patent has a positive weight in the moment of closing deals and looking for investors, as it assures the product will not be copied by other company during a certain period. Henry detailed what is the meaning of a patent, how to define its coverage and start the patenting process and mentioned practical applications, in addition to answer the students’ questions.
Marcos and Diogo wrapped up the day reminding what is expected from the groups until the Investments Fair, on December 13th. Until the second day of the Online Workshop II, on October 7th, the groups have to upload the updated decks in Google Drive, perform the first 15 contacts with potential customers to start the sales funnel and keep up working on the prototype of critical function of their solutions.
