It’s time to start a parallel effort.

Since March, I have been working with my team to adjust our existing dementia safety wearable to help organizations manage the risk of COVID-19. The goal was to convert the features focused around dementia monitoring to the general population focused on contact tracing, social distancing, and geofencing.

I had all these ideas of how the new solution was going to work. With the help of my advisors, I even filed a provisional patent documenting my original designs. Next, I planned out how my team was going to accomplish this pivot through setting milestones, tasks, and actions on SmartSheet. I knew that my ideas about using wearable and IoT technology to help slow the spread of COVID-19 were original. Still, I also knew that others would start thinking about and building solutions with the same technologies at some point. There was no clear way of knowing when other solutions would appear on the market or any clear timeline of the COVID-19 market opportunity. Yet, time to market was going to be extremely important. With my plan, I projected that by June, we would have our new solution completed, tested, and ready for sale.

As the months went on, I continued to scan the internet for similar solutions and came up with nothing, then in May, a few solutions started appearing. Since then, they have continued to sprout up all over the internet. Interestingly, they all follow the same system architecture as I first defined in the provisional patent back in March.

When June hit, I was ready with open arms for our new solution. I announced it to the world through a press release, and we started to get some traction. Yet the solution was not 100% ready for the market. It worked in test environments, yet the accuracy and reliability was not at a high enough threshold for it to be ready for primetime. Thus, my team continued to test and troubleshoot.

It is now August, and the solution is still not ready. For the past two weeks, I have been reflecting on where we are and have been feeling defeated. We are now low on money, have unfulfilled orders, are months late, and other companies now sell the exact solution we are developing. 

With all that said, I also know that I shouldn’t be too upset because we have come a long way considering the constraints of being a small startup with limited resources, money, and expertise. Yet, I continue to be frustrated because I had the vision, the plan, and the traction to accomplish this pivot. Before getting too upset today, I called one of my trusted advisors to explain where I am on this project and gain some insight.

After he asked a few questions and listened to my frustration, he said, “I think its time to start a parallel effort.” He continued, “You and your team have put so much time and money into your current solution that you should keep moving forward with those resources. In parallel, you should buy a demo kit from someone who is selling the solution and evaluate it.” This approach seemed like an excellent idea. If I can find something off the shelf that accomplishes the same goal as I first set out to complete back in March, prove that it works, and sell that, then that would work.

Together with my advisor, I created the plan below, which will take about 2-3 weeks to complete.

1. Buy a demo kit
2. With our test plan for our current solution, we can build an alternative test plan based on the new system components.
3. Replicate function as best you can based on exactly what the vendor is telling you the system is supposed to do.
4. Evaluate the system’s shortcomings and rank the risks.
5. Make a decision
   1. Stop work on this solution and work on the original solution
   2. Refocus the team and keep working on the new vendor’s solution

Moving forward, this week, I will take the next step to buy a demo kit and start evaluating the new vendor. Either way, I am appreciative to my advisor for listening to my frustrations and suggesting an alternative to our current status. I feel fortunate to have such outstanding advisors to surround myself with to pick me up in frustrating times.