Founders Club/Design Internship Logs Week 4 Day 2

Today at my design internship, I focused on the Founders Club project.

The Founders Club is an exclusive space on BOLT.FUN that offers a safe and supportive environment for founders to pitch their ideas, connect, learn, and share their experiences. As a member of the Founders Club, makers will gain access to exclusive deals and services that can help lower their startup operating costs. Founders also have the opportunity to meet investors and get feedback on their pitches. To join the Founders Club, makers who have done well in the hackathon will receive an invitation email with an invitation link.

The Founders Club hosts a pitch competition where top makers from the community can present their project ideas and plans to a panel of judges that includes investors. The primary goal of the pitch competition is to provide makers with the chance to showcase their innovative ideas, get feedback at an early stage, and potentially attract mentors or investors.

To participate in the pitch competition, founders will have two months to present their project ideas in the form of a pitch deck, including details about the product or service, target market, revenue model, team, and growth strategy. Judges will evaluate each pitch based on criteria such as feasibility, market potential, scalability, and the quality of the pitch itself.

Today, Johns and I created and refined user journeys, which involved planning the distribution of invitations for the Founders Club, how to help founders get feedback from investors, and how to keep them focused on building their businesses. I also learned how to use ChatGPT as a tool to generate ideas and solutions for specific design problems, which was particularly helpful during the ideation phase of this project. By incorporating ChatGPT's suggestions into my design process, I was able to come up with more innovative and effective solutions.

Problems:

• Creating a cohesive user journey: As I’m working on designing the user journey for the Founders Club, I had to make sure that each step flows seamlessly into the next. This can be challenging because there are many different elements to consider, such as onboarding, pitch competitions, and access to deals and rewards.

• Ensuring exclusivity: One of the goals of the Founders Club is to create a space that is exclusive and valuable for members. However, this can be challenging to achieve while also making the club accessible to invited makers.

• Motivating members: Another challenge is how to keep members engaged and motivated throughout the user journey, as well as how to provide ongoing support and resources.

Progress:

• During this process, I got better at designing sprints and identifying potential challenges. One such challenge was considering the various stages that founders might be at in their startup journey and how to tailor the user journey to their specific needs. Another challenge was to design the journey in a way that is scalable and flexible enough to accommodate the growing number of participants.

Plans

• Looking ahead, my plans for the future include continuing to work on the Founders Club project and finishing it to the best of my ability. I also plan on learning more about UX/UI design principles and design sprints to improve my skills further.