Politecnico di Milano is an interesting school to study in. Sometimes I don’t quite get what is the purpose behind the way things are, but in the end, it teaches me a lot of things before I realize how. It forces the students to learn it really really well. In this example, I will explain to you how I learned how to make a Business & Marketing Plan.
Last semester, I have taken a course called “High Tech Startups: Creating and Scaling Up”. Basically, during this course, we were expected to create a High Tech Startup from scratch and present it to a jury that consists of people from the academy and the industry. I said basically, but IT WAS NOT A BASIC THING.
(Click here to directly download business model and presentation.)
For this startup project, we decided to address the big problem of bike thefts! I didn’t know bike thefts are so big problem all over the world until I started this project. Here is a statistic for you to understand the depth of the problem:
“More than 2 Million bikes stolen in North America each year ~= 1 bike every 30 seconds”
(Source: project529)
So, there is a problem, but what is our solution?
To solve this huge problem, we have come up with an innovative solution. Using the materials that are used in the airplane industry to create a strong, almost unbreakable strap, attaching it to the bike with a retractability mechanism that gives people the bike lock that everybody needs! Safe as a vault and flexible as a seatbelt!
So was born Cyclips! An innovative bike lock that is durable, flexible, and practical. Easily distinguishable from the others kinds of locks.
When you have a product this good and innovative, it is much easier to market it, which I was in charge of. I was mostly responsible for the business strategy and marketing aspect rather than the technical since we already have aerospace and mechanical engineers in our team.
Here is the solution, Business, and Marketing plan ready to download.
The details of the product, our business model, strategies and marketing plans are explained in our Cyclips Business Model and Cyclips presentation.
[…] Bike-sharing is the best option for people who like to be more eco-friendly but worried that their bikes are going to get stolen. I understand the size of this problem since I have done another project just on bike locks and my research for that project revealed me how many bikes are being stolen every day. Look here to check it out: Cyclips – Business & Marketing Plan. […]