GGC Team #11 - Team Stardust

"I am a customer" tab
Home screen. Please note that the About tab and the company's name are together only on 100% zoom on Microsoft Edge. 75% zoom works better
Community match program tab. Note that those professionals are placeholders
About tab
"For customers" tab
Shop tab. Clicking on the links on the pictures lead you to real businesses around San Diego
Click on the image to redirect you to an actual business!
"Donate" tab. Note that those are placeholders
For your information, you can actually log in with your real FB/Google account
Shop tab, 75% zoom. Note that the top tabs are actually placed correctly now
Menu tab (mobile)
Mobile version. It works, it's relatively fluid but some of the bottom content may be covered

This project started because we needed something to submit for the HEX Exchange Great Global Challenge. In the beginning, the project was intended to provide relief for local farmers as they were struggling to sell their products during the pandemic. Our product aimed to provide sustainable and accessible access for consumers to healthy food alternatives directly from the source, generating productive business for local farmers. Basically would match local and regional producers to potential customers.

After attending the HEX market research meeting, we identified that there was no specific scope associated with the idea that we had initially as there were so many gaps in the idea, and the empathy mindset was not clearly set (This was something like an organic Deliveroo, we wasn’t sure whether we should get the delivery vehicles or the producers, making sure the producers would follow the health & hygiene guidelines was tricky etc.). Hence, we had a crucial pivot where we narrowed down on the essential theme we were focused on, which was providing support to local retailers. This led us to the new idea.

So here we are now, working on a website meant to match small businesses struggling to stay afloat because of the COVID-19 pandemic with legal counsellors, marketing experts, business analysts and other professionals that can help these businesses recover from this situation, and find new customers.

Businesses and professionals will apply to join the platform, both categories will get matched depending on one’s needs and other’s services, they decide separately whether they want to collaborate or not, and if everything goes well, we get a share of the cost of the professional’s services. The businesses would also have a subscription feature in which they would pay 0.20 US$/click to be advertised on our page.

We jumped from a platform to another until finally deciding what to use to make the website. We started with Figma, then we said that Squarespace will do the job, then a team member started experimenting with Canva (we used that for a market research presentation at the end though), but we finally settled with Wix. Above there are some pictures of the website.

Pivoting to a new idea was difficult because there was a lot of work to be redone, from the problem statement to the market research, also getting some stats about the businesses' needs was not in our control but we made it to the end and we have a vision of what people need and what are they willing to pay for solutions.

Built With

Submitted to

Great Global Challenge

Created by

We didn't have proper roles from the start but during the week everyone did some specific tasks. I ensured that the tasks would be delivered on time, I made the business lean canvas, the risky assumptions map, I analysed the results of the market research survey along with Yagnesh, and although initially we would both do the prototype on Figma but we stuck with Wix, but I may use Figma in the future.

Andrei Sarandi
Our entire group kept each other informed at every step of the process. I began the market research by designing a "Small Business Needs Survey" that my team distributed to inform our strategy. I worked on designing the prototype and conducted user testing. I was surprised to learn about the rapid prototype test process, as I've been trained in the scientific method for so long, but really enjoyed the creativity that ensued. I also edited the video together for our final pitch!

Divya Bhatia
As a team we were able to distribute the workload over the areas each team-member felt comfortable with. My contributions were based on creating the business idea and setting up a preliminary understanding of the idea, providing ideas and insights into the design aspects of the prototype, helping with writing the script for the video, working on the statistical analysis from the survey and overseeing the other sections of the project.

Yagnesh Naidu
As a team we typically worked on different parts of the same checkpoint on the zoom meetings. I primarily focussed on elements to do with funding, budgets, revenue generation and the marketing strategy. I also provided voiceover clips for the final pitch video.

Lawrence Phillips

Updates

Andrei Sarandi started this project — Jun 29, 2020 06:54 AM EDT

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