Bored from listening to one of the speakers at the Google Women Developer conference, Beatriz scrolled through her phone to check her latest tweets. …
Bored from listening to one of the speakers at the Google Women Developer conference, Beatriz scrolled through her phone to check her latest tweets.
Sending out a tweet about being at the conference, she was surprised that she got a reply tweet back from one of the speakers at the conference, Poornima Vijayashanker.
Curious, Beatriz decided to attend her workshop where she was inspired by Poornima’s experience building Mint, and her journey and expertise as a tech professional.
Wanting to hear more, Beatriz sought her out afterwards to talk about how she could better position herself in the startup environment as a market researcher.
After conversing with Poornima for several hours, Beatriz’s doubts about her technical skills were dispelled as she slowly became aware and more confident that she herself can launch her own startup venture.
She saw the opportunity when she heard about Femgineer’s Ship It course Poornima was offering.
With no idea of what she was going to build, Beatriz felt assured that with Poornima’s help and the course to guide her that she would have a startup to call her own. Despite the price of the course, she knew that it would be a worthy investment.
Growing up to two parents who built a business of their own, Beatriz witnessed the hard work and grind that her parents went through to have it succeed.
It was these lessons, and her entrepreneurial spirit as well as perfect timing that drove her to enroll in the course.
After a first few weeks into the course and going through the ideation stages, Beatriz finally had an idea for an app that she would want to build.
The idea came when her and a group of her girlfriends over drinks began talking about relationships and marriages.
Being gay, Beatriz was quick to “tune out” her straight friends chatter about their wedding destinations. Until she had a revelation, Beatriz quickly realized that although there were many wedding planning websites out there that tailored to straight couples there was none tailored for gay couples.
She knew she was onto something when she couldn’t find much resources, and the resources that she did find either didn’t have enough information or had a bad user interface.
Beatriz knew that there was much more involved in wedding planning than just the destination. From her mother, who was a wedding planner herself, she learned that all aspects of planning a wedding are interconnected.
I’ve learned from my mother that venues are important. My mother represented venues and venues have certain relationships with caterers. In wedding planning, you are only as good as your venue.
Through dialogue and feedback from other students in the weekly labs, the idea for the app evolved from a marketplace to do comparison shopping for venues to more of an information database.
I’ve learned from Poornima that I could make it more of a resource for information (for those planning, but not quite ready) and provide ceremonies outside of a wedding, like an anniversary.
Besides planning wedding destinations, what also made wedding planning for gay couples challenging, was that all marriage licenses were not all the same. What was legal in California most likely would not be the same in Massachusetts for example.
Beatriz wanted an app that would make all this information available, so having it act as an information database was the most logical conclusion.
I’ve envisioned my app as being a kind of Kayak for wedding venues for gay couples.
From the labs and lectures she also learned about the case for limited user-engagement, since weddings aren’t a recurring event in the lives of most. Beatriz had to figure out how to encourage users to stay in touch or continue coming back to the app after all the planning has happened.
Since the course, Beatriz has already propped up her landing pages, a minimum viable product, and an email drip campaign. With the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning the “Defense of Marriage Act” Beatriz is more than excited than ever to get the ball rolling!
Now that same sex marriage is legal the need for a online wedding planner will start becoming more popular.
Recapping her experience from being a student in Femgineers Lean Product Development course, Beatriz is appreciative of the things she has learned, the support and feedback she has received, and the new friends that she has made.
For one thing, I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have started a “startup” or venture on my own if it wasn’t for the course. I’m kind of the person that needs someone like a personal trainer, who will guide and mentor you through the process, someone like Poornima. It was much better to have a person and support network like the other students there rather than reading about it and going it alone. I’ve also learned some great tools to use as well. I really treasured the discussion and Q & A, I got from the other students because they all came from different background and were building products in different industries. It was a plus that I gained awesome friends and colleagues from the course.
If you’re like Beatriz and want a Product Development personal trainer, then apply to attend the next iteration of Femgineer’s Ship It course!
