JFDI Discover is a 21-day pre-accelerator course that runs every month. Discover teaches founders how to apply and get results from powerful startup tools such as the Lean Canvas, Pirate Metrics and OKR (Objectives & Key Results).
Shishir Choudhary, co-founder of Sociacad, shared his experience in the March Discover program with us.
Tell us about your startup and team
Our company – Sociacad – has set out to develop social media for the purpose of learning. By integrating artificial intelligence, young professionals can learn new skills through an engaging and personalized platform.
Sociacad founders (from left to right) Shishir Choudhary, Haidong Fu and Sahil Gupta
All three members of our team are National University of Singapore (NUS) alumni and we have forged very strong working relationships. We are highly technical and comfortable with both technology and business, which has proven to be useful in the development of our company.
Why did you start this business?
Through facing our own challenges with learning new skills, we wanted to revolutionize and modernize the learning experience. After discussion and refining ideas based on feedback, we noticed a gap in the market and were motivated to pursue the development of our idea. We believe that Sociacad can make learning a more fun and effective experience through implementing today’s advances in technology.
How did you find out about JFDI Discover?
I met Nishanth at a friend’s party, who is also one of the founders of Klinify – a JFDI alumni. I mentioned my startup idea, and that we were looking for mentors, and Nishanth reccomended JFDI.
I follow JFDI.asia on Facebook and YouTube, and occasionally read articles that are posted through these mediums. I particularly enjoyed the recent article on how startup valuation works. I have also watched the Demo Day videos posted on YouTube.
I emailed JFDI using information from the website and was sent a few follow up questions regarding the stage of my startup. Thereafter I was suggested to join the JFDI Discover program first, before applying to JFDI Accelerate.
What were some of the challenges you faced before joining JFDI Discover?
Before JFDI Discover, we struggled to find guidance and mentorship for our startup. Frankly, we needed some extra help, which Discover was able to provide for us.
Was JFDI Discover helpful for your startup? How and why?
It was amazingly helpful. Every article we read, question we discussed and activity we performed really stretched our capabilities in a way that we would not have done on our own.
Here are sample tasks and resources we go through as part of the program:
– Perfecting your elevator pitch
– Creating your own lean canvas from our JFDI Startup Kit for Discover Participants – The lean canvas sets the context and forms the big picture view of your business model – it’s something all our Accelerate participants use as well.
– Developing your early adopter persona – persona development is an in-depth thinking framework for defining your early adopter.
– Validating your business model – Adora Cheung from HomeJoy gave a great lecture on “Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing“. This pretty much outlines the things we need to do in the Product/Market Fit stage.
What is the one thing you learnt or did at Discover that you think other founders should know too?
The regular experimentation during the building process was invaluable to our experience and growth of our company as a whole. By frequent experimentation – trial and error – we were able to see what did and did not work in order to find the most appropriate business model before scaling.
Image Credit: The Lean Startup http://theleanstartup.com/principles
Who would you recommend to JFDI Discover?
Anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur, and even anyone who doesn’t. Learning to look at business holistically, and approaching problems methodically would be useful to anyone!
Cui-Lyn Huang is on the Editorial team for JFDI Asia. Currently taking a break from pursuing a combined major in Computer Science & Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston, and embracing life on the little red dot. She loves to write, she loves to eat, and loves to write about eating.