I met my professor today. He showed me a list of the requirements that one of the customers wanted. I looked at the requirements and it was almost another product. I had thought that they had a validated product, but it seems that they don't. They validated the product for different segment of the customers that they can't get as they can't enter the market without getting FDA approval. FDA approval requires 200,000 dollars that they can't afford.
Their efforts to get an investor also hasn't paid off yet because nobody wants to invest on a thing without getting a great share. The only investor who he found asked for 70% of shares; it is ridiculous because he becomes the owner of company by having more than 50% of shares. It means that my work of preparing the product for FDA is almost useless at this time. I could develop faster if I didn't want to keep the quality in such a high level. Unfortunately, it also means that I won't get an internship here to work on this project.
Furthermore, my assumptions about their network of people were wrong. They couldn't find at least two more guys to add to the team.
I talked to my professor about my concerns of not having a real team for this project.
Prof: "I expected you to get along with my student (that Indian boy), but you couldn't."
Me: "It was not my fault. I spent whole my previous summer just to work with him and built a team, but it turned out that he didn't even show me a demo of the system after two months."
Prof: "I know that. You are right."
I was interested to work with his student at the beginning, but I don't want it now at all. In fact, if we were a team together it had fewer concerns, but he acts individually. I asked about his plans the previous summer, and he said that he was going to go back to India. I can't rely on someone who doesn't want to stay here. I asked him to involve me with the development process, but he was very reluctant. So, I decided to start individually. In fact, the requirements that my professor asked me were very different from what he tells me now. It made me really confused. Even though he never expressed it directly to me that he didn't want to work with me, and he was socially correct all the time, I can understand it intuitively.
I even asked my professor if he would like to specify each one's shares to make his student sure that I was not here to get his work and start my own business, but my professor didn't agree. "I am willing to give you your shares, but when there is nothing to share, why should we do that? I was waiting for a right time to raise some money and start doing marketing and then we could talk about shares," he said.
Me: "It is almost impossible. You don't have a team; you don't have a money; how are you going to do this?"
Prof: "We are going to build something out of nothing. I know it is hard, but we should do that. I agree with everything that you said today, but I have no other way."
Today was very disappointing and discouraging. I always had this idea that it is a validated proof-of-concept, but it is not. In fact, by changing the target customer, we are still in the very beginning process of understanding customers' needs. It means that their prototype and more than 70% of what they have worth nothing, and I should do it myself. In addition, my progress on this project is much slower than my expectations, and it is mostly because I have other things to do. I have to grade papers, attend classes, and work on my course project.
Their efforts to get an investor also hasn't paid off yet because nobody wants to invest on a thing without getting a great share. The only investor who he found asked for 70% of shares; it is ridiculous because he becomes the owner of company by having more than 50% of shares. It means that my work of preparing the product for FDA is almost useless at this time. I could develop faster if I didn't want to keep the quality in such a high level. Unfortunately, it also means that I won't get an internship here to work on this project.
Furthermore, my assumptions about their network of people were wrong. They couldn't find at least two more guys to add to the team.
I talked to my professor about my concerns of not having a real team for this project.
Prof: "I expected you to get along with my student (that Indian boy), but you couldn't."
Me: "It was not my fault. I spent whole my previous summer just to work with him and built a team, but it turned out that he didn't even show me a demo of the system after two months."
Prof: "I know that. You are right."
I was interested to work with his student at the beginning, but I don't want it now at all. In fact, if we were a team together it had fewer concerns, but he acts individually. I asked about his plans the previous summer, and he said that he was going to go back to India. I can't rely on someone who doesn't want to stay here. I asked him to involve me with the development process, but he was very reluctant. So, I decided to start individually. In fact, the requirements that my professor asked me were very different from what he tells me now. It made me really confused. Even though he never expressed it directly to me that he didn't want to work with me, and he was socially correct all the time, I can understand it intuitively.
I even asked my professor if he would like to specify each one's shares to make his student sure that I was not here to get his work and start my own business, but my professor didn't agree. "I am willing to give you your shares, but when there is nothing to share, why should we do that? I was waiting for a right time to raise some money and start doing marketing and then we could talk about shares," he said.
Me: "It is almost impossible. You don't have a team; you don't have a money; how are you going to do this?"
Prof: "We are going to build something out of nothing. I know it is hard, but we should do that. I agree with everything that you said today, but I have no other way."
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