Week 11

For this blog post, we have been asked to answer the question: What keeps us up at night regarding our project?

I think the factor that keeps me up the most at night regarding our project is how to properly go to market with our product. As our patent relates to Autism, one of the paths we can take is to market the wearable towards individuals with ASD. One of the problems with this path is that it severely limits our potential market base, and also may begin to stigmatize our product. This would be quite unfortunate, as the purpose of our product is to help people understand their emotions, not to make them feel cornered into a medical prognosis. An alternative that we have discussed is making the product available for children with ASD in schools. While this does in fact limit our market further, the smallness of this market may serve to help us as it makes it easier for us to establish milestones and quickly expand to corner the entire market.

Other options that we have discussed are using the device for product feedback. In this case, we could license the technology out to companies conducting product testing, who would fit product reviewers with the device and measure their emotional responses to a product as they test it. This could be useful across industries, from electronics to media. However, one problem I see with this is volume: are there enough companies conducting product testing to provide a startup with the multi-million dollar revenues necessary for success? Alternatively, does product testing elicit enough of an emotional response that this product will even be beneficial?

By next week, I hope to have chosen a specific market strategy along with my team.

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