A group of engineers interested in preventing falls learned a lot this summer about falling — and getting up.
Five UWaterloo Mechatronics students, most of whom had known each other from high school, decided last fall to work together on a capstone project. Two of them had participated in a health hackathon, where they learned about the serious problem of falls for seniors and had built a prototype fall prevention tool. The problem resonated with the team — they all had seen the effects of falls on seniors in their lives. They talked with healthcare providers and found research that influenced their project.
They also received Fellowships at GreenHouse as part of the Big Ideas Challenge, and a spot at Velocity Garage this summer. One of the founders of this venture, Dhruv Guliani, says, “We assumed we would spend the summer building our product, acquiring clients for a pilot, and getting resources to push our product to market.” That’s not how it turned out.
Co-founder Shahid says, “Our GreenHouse mentors told us to start with customer interviews. This felt like backtracking because we felt we had already done this.” When they heard the same advice from various sources, they decided to take the advice, setting up 50 interviews.
From the very first interviews, they started to get a different feeling. Shahid says, “People weren’t super interested in the specific issue we were pursuing. Consistently other issues were more of a priority.”
The team had serious decisions to make: Would they continue their idea? Would they pivot to address issues raised by practitioners? Would they move in a different direction altogether?
One thing was clear: Thanks to the support of GreenHouse mentors, they would not give up. “We were really discouraged,” says Shahid, “Brendan [GreenHouse program coach] assured us it is common for entrepreneurs to make significant changes in their ventures. He encouraged us to reflect on the information to iterate new ideas.”
At the same time, Dhruv says, “Making those decisions was up to us.” Eventually, the other team members decided to step back, but Shahid and Dhruv decided to keep working together.
“The beauty of the GreenHouse program was that they helped us see our motivations. We wanted to have social impact, and to leverage the diverse skills we have,” says Shahid.
Shahid and Dhruv are now exploring how they might help businesses build more ethical and sustainable technology. Specifically they are looking to apply their knowledge and skills toward product prototyping, machine learning and innovation workshops. Dhruv adds,
“I would encourage other entrepreneurs not to be too hard on yourself about going through tough times — every entrepreneur does.”