StudiU Pitch
This startup concept was designed in collaboration with three other students in an entrepreneurship class in Spring 2022.
This startup concept was designed in collaboration with three other students in an entrepreneurship class in Spring 2022.
Overview
This was a penultimate collaboration project for an entrepreneurship course at Swarthmore College that helped my team practice startup ideation, product-market fit, user acquisition, and pitching a minimum viable product.
DELIVERABLES
Presentation deck
MVP Webpage
ROLE
Co-Founder
Product Designer
TOOLS
Figma
Justinmind
Google Slides
TIMELINE + TYPE
March - April 2022
Startup Ideation
Pitch Presentation
Studiu
As someone who enjoys composing, lyricizing, and recording my ideas, I’ve noticed how hard it is to work between different applications and devices. I constantly move between Notes, VoiceNotes, a MIDI keyboard, Garageband, Logic, a tuner, but it would be so much easier to have a single platform to use all of these features on. After speaking to a few other musician songwriters, I found that most of them also use an external microphone, a notebook, a percussion pad, and some other instrument plug-ins that don’t have much compatibility with mobile applications and are difficult to move across platforms. Most of them said they would be willing to pay a lot of money for an initial one-time payment and up to $50 in subscription (ideally, just “less than the professional music platforms cost”).
Ideation
My startup idea is a solution to this indie music producer work flow problem: a customizable music studio app tentatively called studiu (pronounced stoo-dee-you). The goal of the app is to create a seamless workflow for beginners and professionals alike on a cloud-synced mobile and a desktop interface. It will have a drag and drop structure for users to organize their studio space and make it their own. Different tool options will include a recording block (specifically for vocals and equipped with effect option, think of VoiceNotes with effects), a notepad / lyrics block (maybe eventually with an ai rhyme option, think of the Notes app), an instrument plug-in block (specifically for recording instruments), a full timeline with drag and drop compatibility (think of Garageband), a loops library block (to be updated over time through loop workshops, people come in for an hour and build loops together), virtual instrument blocks (think of Garageband, ex. piano, guitar, ukulele, drums, etc.), and MIDI export options to professional softwares like Logic and Ableton. In the future, I can see this software potentially becoming collaborative, so that eventual functionality should be kept in mind throughout the iteration process (using cloud storage versus local storage).
Minimum Viable Product
The minimum viable product will be a demo version of the application that has a lyric notepad, a recording capability with a minimal sound effect library (reverb, echo, etc. effects), and a recording timeline. In order to go about building studiu, I will need to recruit a few CS coders and software engineers. I can specialize in user experience and graphic design. In terms of app layout and current payment propositions, I have a few ideas. After paying the initial $4.99 app fee, the user will have access to three drag and drop blocks to customize the home studio page of their app. If the user chooses to subscribe (weekly $4.99, monthly $9.99, and yearly $99.99), they can access the full version of the app with endless home studiu layouts, periodic loop library updates, home layout design updates and themes, and other system compatibility.
Project Outcomes
Something new I learned... Once you find a problem that other people have too, you’ll find greater reason to explore possible solutions.
My favorite part was... Working with a team encouraged flexibility and communication through each step of the process.
My biggest challenge… I struggled to motivate myself to reiterate and change our MVP because I had the mindset of a perfectionist rather than a designer. Moving forward, I’d like to give myself more space to bring new ideas to the table, even if they’re not perfect.