Co-Founder of Omnia: Work Experience
A long time ago, our teacher, Mrs. Bain, introduced us to this project. She told us to start thinking of small, medium, and large problems in the world that we could start a business to fix. From that point on I was interested. She told us we, the students, would pitch our small, medium, or large problems in the world, and four would be voted on to be the founders. The first time I tried to think about problems in the world, I had lots of trouble. I could not just come up with a problem on the spot. Because of this, over the next months, I decided to write down problems that came up for me, and I would use one of these for my pitch. I decided to go with my problem of not spending my gift card money. Something I thought was just an idea to gift a pitch. Turns out it was more than that.
I had no real emotional connection to the problem because I thought it was just a little thing I went through. Turns out, it was more. My classmates started kind of hyping my idea up, so then I got excited. I became a founder and got to recruit my team. This was an experience to remember. Each of the four founders stood in the corner of the room and went through an unorganized, speed interviewing process. Fortunately, I was able to secure great hires. I was so excited to invite Pedro Chiesa, Michelle Margolin, and Stella Goldberg to the squad. Personally, it was a real rush "hiring" classmates to work with me, and I felt a little bad for those I did not "hire." This was an important experience because that is what happens in the real world. After the little drama, we got to work.
One of my biggest takeaways from launching this business is how good it feels when people buy into your idea. In the beginning, I was hesitant and felt a burden because it was technically my idea to solve the unused gift card problem. We knew that our project was going to hard because people have tried to fix our solution, but clearly (since there are 3 billion dollars of unused gift cards each year) it has not worked. Luckily, soon my nervousness/burden went away. Within a few classes, all three of my new teammates were excited about the gift card industry and the gift card problem. Although we had many ups and downs coming up with a solution, research was not difficult to find because we figured out this issue is very prevalent. Our biggest question, though, was what is the actual issue?
From our research, we found that even though there are 3 billion dollars of unused gift cards, no one is upset. Gift card receivers view their gift cards as free money (which it kind of is) so they do not fret over not using it. Retailers are more than okay with this issue because after all its is just more money for them. From our early interviews with Nathan Erhlich, Senior Manager of Gift Card operations at Home Depot, and Dustin Dykstra, Area manager of eight Shake Shacks, we learned that breakage (unused gift card money) is a tiny portion of retailers revenues, but money is money so they don’t need to solve this issue. On the other hand, Dustin and Nathan said in common that they want people to use their gift cards. This is because it will be more traction in their stores, and people using their gift cards means they are having a good customer experience and will likely come back. Finding this out was key. We knew there was unused gift card money, and retailers would not be against us creating a business to make using gift cards easier for people.
After many, many struggles… almost leaving the whole gift card thing entirely, we were able to come to a solution. Our solution would revolutionize the way of using gift cards. Instead of struggling to remember your cards, or not being able to fit them all in your wallet, you could now combine them into one card. We came up with the idea, people should be able to carry all of their gift cards in one. Boom. An aha moment. It was amazing to have such an aha moment as a group. We all went from stressed and scared to positive and hyper. While we were all talking about leaving the whole gift card thing, I blurted out the idea, let's create a card that stores all of your gift card data in one. Pedro, who was mostly for switching our entire thing, actually said, "wait, that is low-key genius," and that was my favorite moment I have ever had in school.
Our idea - Omnia. Omnia is the first word in the Latin phrase for "all in one."
Over the next few days, we built off our ideas and decided that our product would be like the master lock of gift cards. You could store all of your data on one card. This card would connect to an app on your phone where you can check your info like the amount left on the card, which cards you have, expiration date, your gift card history, and a location feature that could alert you when near a store you have a gift card at. To continue our path, we interviewed many experts in the field. Stella was our communication/get interview point person. We talked to Laura Parker, Gabriel Resendez, Marina Hodges, and more (more into depth on each of these people on slides 7, 10, 11, and 12 in share out 3).
These interviews were key in helping us find pain points and figuring out if our MVP was viable. Turns out it was. Next, we continued to analyze our survey that got 140 responses to find our target market. From our data, we decided that 18-24-year-old students would be our target early adapters (look at the diffusion of innovation).
Looking back on it, we all did so much work and all played integral roles in the team. I feel like each of us did a little bit of everything, while we each had a bit of a focus. Stella's major contribution was communicating with the experts. Pedro took lead on the organization (mapped out the final deliverables and final page document amazing) and designing the app in proto.io.
Michelle was the deepest thinker. She took notes on all of our interviews and feedback and was the best at processing what was going on. My biggest contribution creating and analyzing graphs of the survey data, and I think helping the team vibe stay positive throughout all the stress.
This process has had so many ups, downs, left turns, and right turns. It has been exhausting and exhilarating. Tiring and stimulating. I can't imagine how much work goes on in starting a business in more than 4 weeks.