Life in the startup lane: UBC Sauder students learn how to build a business in New Venture Design
New Venture Design students (left-to-right) Joel Cheney, Iain Copland, Anna Riley and Rynn Zhang celebrate their successful pitch of their Sustain-a-bit social media app.
What do a smart desk lamp and a social media app promoting sustainable living have in common? Both are inventions designed by UBC students to address a particular challenge and advance society. The two solutions were submitted as final projects in New Venture Design, a capstone course for fourth-year students jointly offered by the UBC Sauder School of Business and the UBC Faculty of Applied Sciences.
Challenging students to think outside the confines of existing models
UBC Sauder BCom graduate Sika Paradis (’24) applied for the New Venture Design (NVD) course because she wanted to put her theoretical knowledge to use.
“I had focused my studies on entrepreneurship, sustainability and social impact, so I thought it would be great to go through the steps of launching a business, from ideation to product development to market activation,” says Paradis.
Open to UBC students across all faculties, NVD is a one-year, project-based course that mimics real-life venture-building. Students are challenged to identify and validate a social problem in the first term before spending the second term developing a business plan and building their solution.
The course curriculum aligns with the mission of the UBC Sauder School of Business: To teach students to think outside conventional norms, challenge the status quo, take risks and create bold solutions.
Moving consumers in a sustainable direction
After investigating different topics, Paradis and her team landed on the problem of how to motivate people to reduce their carbon footprints. Their solution? A social media app called Sustain-a-bit that measures and rewards sustainable behaviors.
“We gamified sustainability by creating an app that tracks sustainability performance in two key areas: your commute and your consumption. By calculating one’s carbon emissions and assigning points for behaviours like taking a bus instead of driving a car, the app encourages people to take small steps each day to live more sustainably.”
This video shoes how users track their sustainability behaviours and earn points.
Sustain-A-Bit
Like popular fitness apps that track physical activity, Sustain-a-bit allows users to share their scores with friends and followers. By joining a supportive online community, Paradis says people motivate one another to think sustainably, reinforcing new habits and providing a sense of empowerment.
“Through our interviews we learned that a lot of young people are experiencing anxiety over the climate crisis,” says Paradis. “They’re frustrated and they feel a sense of hopelessness. Our app gives people a place to connect, where they can see the positive accumulative effects of their collective efforts.”
Building on a lightbulb moment
Alberto de Lago is a UBC Sauder BCom student specializing in Entrepreneurship. He looks back on NVD as the single most valuable learning experience of his program. He and his team tackled the challenge of how to get students to put down their smartphones while studying.
“We wanted to build something to help students study better,” says de Lago. “We know that students pick up their phones too often, which is detrimental because you lose focus. At the same time, we know that periodic study breaks are beneficial and that lighting is important. So, we incorporated all these elements into a lamp that helps increase productivity by increasing attention spans.”
de Lago’s team created a desk lamp that offers variable task lighting, a built-in study timer, as well as a cell phone holder that activates the light switch.
“Users set their phone down on the plate, set the timer and start studying. If they pick up their phone during the study session, the light turns off, reminding them not to,” says de Lago. “We also developed an app that helps students analyze their study habits. The app shows the times of the day they focus best and when they tend to check their phones. This information allows them to schedule study time for when they are naturally most productive.”
In addition to the construction process, de Lago learned other aspects of venture-building, such as how to develop a marketing and distribution plan, source capital funding, draft legal agreements and so on.
“ The biggest lesson I learned in NVD is the importance of a strong team. While the product design is important, the project is as strong as the sum of its parts. By effectively showcasing your abilities and your team's strengths, you're more likely to gain an investor's confidence and support.”
Carrying the entrepreneurship toolkit into the workplace
Fraser Pogue is a venture founder and Lead Lecturer of the Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and Innovation Group at UBC Sauder. He says through the venture-building process, students meet business leaders and expand their professional networks, which can lead to exciting career opportunities after graduation.
“Entrepreneurship is about disruptive thinking and bold action. While some of our graduates launch their own startups, others are hired by bigger firms where they apply the toolkit of the entrepreneur to make a positive impact on their company’s growth story. NVD is just a great experiential learning opportunity for anyone who is passionate about business, collaboration and innovation.”