iii Community Celebrates National Entrepreneurship Month

For National Entrepreneurship Month in November, we reached out to student and alumni entrepreneurs alike to learn more about their entrepreneurial journeys.

From student entrepreneurs working on their own startups to alumni founders who are growing their businesses, the iii community shared advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, thoughtful insights into their own work, and learnings that have helped them on their journeys.

Hassan Azmat is currently enrolled in the Master of Science in Technology Ventures program at the iii. During his time in the MSTV program, Hassan has learned how to hone his intuition, inner drive, and passion for entrepreneurship to create projects and work on teams in preparation for graduation.

iii: Do you have a startup or are you working on a startup idea?

Currently, I’m working on an app that aims to optimize the carpooling rideshare segment. I’m excited to delve deeper into that area and focus on my idea. 

iii:  What is something you wish you knew before starting on your entrepreneurial journey?

I wish I knew how to take it easy in the early stages of proving a concept. I realized I didn’t need to create an entire project to prove my concept. Anything that can show an idea works is valid. I would tell myself not to waste so much time working on something that would be redone from scratch anyway if the idea proves to work.

iii:  Any other advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Passion and drive should never die down, even if things don’t work out. That drive will take you to your next thing. And then to quote Professor David Miller, “You marry the problem, not the solution.” Don’t get hung up on a solution if it’s not working out. Be ready to pivot!

Kyle Caruso is currently enrolled in the Online Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services program at the iii. During his time in the MIIPS Online program, Kyle has learned how and why to design for humans.

iii: Do you have a startup or are you working on a startup idea?

Before joining graduate school at the iii, I worked at 2 different startup companies. Currently, I oversee entrepreneurship programs at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Innovation. 

iii: What is something you wish you knew before starting on your entrepreneurial journey?

I wish I knew more about customer discovery. 

iii: Any other advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Be curious, practice empathy, and dream big!

Rishabh Banga is currently enrolled in the Master of Science Software Management program at the iii. During his time in the MSSM program, Rishabh has learned about the importance of the technology adoption lifecycle, financial literacy, and organizational behavior.

iii: Do you have a startup or are you working on a startup idea?

I am working on an idea with Prajwal Deshkar (MSTV ‘23). We are working on an infrastructure-as-a-service solution to promote equitable and accessible entrepreneurial resources for anyone, anywhere.

iii: What is something you wish you knew before starting on your entrepreneurial journey?

You can never be fully prepared for being an entrepreneur. When I started my first venture, I began with the assumption that since I had all my boxes checked (great co-founder and team who believed in the vision, a solution with a great market fit and trailblazing traction, etc.) the venture would be a success. However, the venture still failed. Part of the reason was us waiting for the perfect time for everything. 

iii: Are there skills you’ve learned in the iii that have helped you on your entrepreneurial journey?

For me, the first major learning was related to reading Crossing the Chasm in Professor Stuart Evans’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship class. The chasm refers to the technology adoption lifecycle or the transition from the early market into the mainstream eye. Crossing the chasm means the opportunity for hyper-growth and market success. 

Prakash Somasundaram is an alum of the Master of Product Development program (now known as the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services) at the iii. After graduation, Prakash worked at large Fortune 500 companies like Amazon and Honeywell, designing and launching new products across industries including healthcare, supply chain, and online retail. With the foundational knowledge gained at Carnegie Mellon University about truly understanding customer needs and building delightful experiences and using his own experiences of scaling businesses at large organizations, Prakash embarked on his own entrepreneurial journey recently.

iii: Share a few details about your startup with us. What is the concept? How long have you been running it? What are some major successes you've had? Challenges?

I founded Uba with a mission to help people eat better. At Uba, we make simple tools that promote better nutrition habits to prevent chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes and support healthier lifestyles. 

The key reason for poor dietary habits in the United States has been attributed to inflated portion sizes, imbalanced nutrition, and consumption of highly processed foods. While there is plenty of guidance available on how to improve dietary habits, we found a lack of actionable tools to enable and enforce these habits on a daily basis. 

We designed point-of-consumption dinnerware tools that provide visual reminders on ‘what’ and ‘how much’ to eat at every meal. These include simple porcelain plates with pre-calibrated sections for each food group to enable balanced meals, bowls with built-in measurements to control portion sizes, flatware that helps with eating smaller bites, and more. In addition, we have developed nutrition plans that our customers can follow as dietary guidance on a daily basis. 

We are happy about our recent successes and milestones including reaching more than 20,000 customers in the United States as well as expanding our sales to Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. We are also proud of ensuring that our products are environmentally conscious, designed, and packaged without plastics and still provide a delightful customer experience. We continue to iterate on new products based on our customer research and current challenges, managing potential supply chain disruptions, and controlling our cash flow to sustainably grow the business. 

Our products and solutions can be found at www.ubahome.co and on Instagram at uba.social.

iii: If you could share advice with your younger self, what would you say?

My advice to my younger self would be to: 

1. Start somewhere instead of waiting for the right idea. Finding a good product market fit requires that you keep iterating and evolving and the original idea usually does not work out. It also requires not holding on to your product idea but getting passionate about the problem area. 
2. Find the simplest version of solving a problem. A product does not need to have high-tech features or complexity to impress consumers on the market. Complexity creates more paths to failure.
3. Understand what you are really good at and focus on that as the business differentiator. Outsource all other functions that can bog you down.

iii: What are you working on now and what are you excited about in the future?

We are currently working on building more physical products that can help improve dietary habits both at home and on the go. We are also exploring services and software solutions that can provide our customers with ongoing guidance, help them track their daily intake, and connect with nutrition experts as needed. I am personally excited about expanding the Uba team as we grow our business and reach more customers globally. 

Peeyush Goyal is an alum of the Master of Product Development program (now known as the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services) at the iii. After graduation, Peeyush worked as a Product Manager at LeadGenius, Helpshift, and Quicksand Design Studio before beginning his own entrepreneurial journey.

iii: Share a few details about your startup with us.

At Salarybox, we are building a payroll app for Asia, starting with India. When we began our entrepreneurial journey about two years ago, we were shunned by several investors because they didn’t believe SMBs in India would pay for products. I’m extremely excited to share that our strong focus on revenue from day 0 has helped us successfully garner paying customers, helped us raise $4 million in seed funding, and shown us the path to profitability. However, building for the next billion users in India has not been an easy journey. It’s been extremely challenging to strike the right balance between innovation and relentless execution. We’ve had to learn how to set aside preconceived notions and beliefs about this audience, put each and every assumption under the microscopic lens, and unlearn what we thought was the ‘right way’ to build products. 

iii: What does a typical workday look like for you? 

I don’t think there is such a thing as a typical workday. Every day is different. However, broadly speaking, my day is spread across four core activities:

1. Hiring: finding the right folks who share similar values.
2. Building: this varies anywhere from hands-on execution to delegating work to build systems that help teams work autonomously.
3. Measuring: keeping a finger on the pulse of the business’ health and imbibing numbers day in and day out.
4. Having fun: I love the team at Salarybox, spending time with them is always reinvigorating. 

iii: What are you working on now, and what are you excited about in the future?

At Salarybox, we are not building just a payroll app. Under the hood, we are building an engine to power financial services for 300 million+ blue-collar workers in India. We have embarked on this journey this month and I am super stoked to see how that will change India’s landscape in the coming years.