Last weekend, a group of unassuming Waterloo engineers travelled to Queen’s University and took the Innovation award at the 23rd annual Queen’s Entrepreneurship Competition – Canada’s largest international undergraduate business plan competition. The team, consisting of Jay Shah, Mike McCauley, Vanessa Lee and myself are trying to solve the problem of missed parcel deliveries through our Fourth Year Design Project – BufferBox. We found a compelling business case for this product and submitted a business plan to the QEC.
The fifty page business plan competed against over seventy entries from countries as far as Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and India. The team was excited to find out that our plan qualified us into the top 16 as well as the opportunity to pitch the idea for $25000 in total cash prizes – Dragon’s Den style.
The initial presentation was very well received and we progressed to the final round of 6 where we pitched to a distinguished panel of judges consisting of successful entrepreneurs, top executives and venture capitalists. After much deliberation, the BufferBox team was awarded the Innovation prize at the Final Gala. Thankfully there was an open bar at the Gala, leaving the entire amount of prize money to go towards further development of our project.
We learned a tremendous amount preparing for this presentation and were blown away by the support offered by the judges and other competitors. To keep the collaborative spirit of Waterloo alive, here are a few things we’d like to share about our experience:
• Don’t be afraid to talk to strangers – they are generally willing to help (unless of course they offer you candy and drive a van)
• Know what you don’t know and find a way to make sure you know it.
• Listen to others and understand their perspectives. It’s hard to beat free advice from smart people.
• When rehearsing for a big presentation, record yourself and learn from your mistakes. You may hate watching yourself, but the improvement is truly remarkable.
• Dress to impress –when you look good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you feel confident. Presenting with conviction goes a long way.
• Silverware is used from the outside in. Check yourself before you embarrass yourself.
So what exactly is BufferBox? The idea for this project came when one of our team members missed another delivery and had to go to the post office to pick it up. When he found the post office to be closed, he was infuriated and worse, was late for our Skype brainstorming session. Luckily, that day’s meeting was short and simple – we were going to solve the problem of missed deliveries by designing an internally reconfigurable, neighbourhood self-service kiosk.
The parcel delivery industry has not been able to keep up with the exponential growth in e-commerce and cater to a new demographic – one that likes to spend their hard earned money online and not wait at home to receive their package. Addressing this under served and growing market is what we founded our business model and fourth year design project around.We are poised to have a fully functional prototype for the Mechatronics Design Symposium on March 21 in the DC foyer. Come check it out alongside all the other cool projects!
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you at www.bufferbox.ca or on Twitter @bufferbox.
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