Patagonia, Robots and taking the Leap
If you’ve always wanted to do something, remember there is always more than one way to get there! You may take an unconventional path, and what you wanted to do may metamorphose into something a little different and that’s okay! Growing up, Andrea, Co-Founder of Awake Labs, always wanted to be a teacher and to work with kids. As she grew-up, she taught ballet, swimming, water polo and competitive swimming. In high school, she really enjoyed tutoring others in math and science. When it was time for her to choose what to study in university, her mom suggested that a sustainable career path would be to go into engineering and that she could always do a teaching degree later. Lucky for her, she fell in love with engineering after her first-year programming course, and now as an entrepreneur, there are lots of opportunities for her to teach and to work with kids given the product she is working on.
Andrea’s entrepreneurial journey really began in a 4th year course during her Mechanical Engineering degree at UBC. During this New Venture Design course, her class was put into groups mixed with both technical and business students with the goal of creating a product that has a market, and they would go through validating, prototyping and planning to get it out to people. The more people they talked to about their product, the more people said they would buy it and emphasized how important this product is. The product is a wearable technology that helps parents understand the anxiety their child with autism experiences. It measures real time physiological behavior and predicts meltdown behavior before it happens. People who have autism may not be able to communicate verbally, but they do communicate through their actions and this device can support parents to support their child in the best way possible. Andrea realized this is a real problem and took the leap.
She noted that their product has evolved from that early point through talking to parents, mentors and pitching competitions. After creating this idea, the first pitch competition she did was the Pacific Venture Capital Competition with her partner. She noted that she was terrified, but it really helped with prototyping and validating. They had just come up with the idea of Awake Labs and there was a lot of things they didn’t know. They ended up coming in second to a more established company. The first pitch she did herself was at the Canadian Global Competition, where she was one of the 5 finalists; you can check it out on You Tube.
Since the incorporation of Awake Labs in September 2015, they have accomplished a lot! They just completed their first Indiegogo campaign for pre-sales. Andrea noted the campaign is a full time job to plan and 2 full time jobs to complete! She noted it takes a lot of effort, and they are learning a lot about their community, and what influences their community’s decision making, which all takes time. Andrea noted some major steps in getting the campaign going included building a community first, having at least 400 emails on their mailing list, and having 30% of this emailing list committed to purchasing the product in the first-round. During the campaign, they also went to the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California for virtual realities and wearable tech, which she noted was very exciting! They are also conducting trials with 78 families. I asked how did they find so many people, and she noted that the families really found Awake Labs after two small articles were written about them.
Throughout this journey, she noted they have had a lot of mentors. Within Awake Labs they have some mentors, and they have reached-out to other entrepreneurs who have done what they are doing. The Next 36 Program and the Coast Capital Innovation Hub at UBC she noted have also been really great. She noted that her mom has also been really inspirational, who really tried to support her and her siblings as much as she could as a single mom with not a lot.
As a leader, Andrea noted that she really believes in everyone owning their own work, trying to guide her team and just reminding them who they are doing this for. She noted this journey so far has been quite a rollercoaster, but noted that her motivator always seems to come at the right time. If she is having a bad day or bad week, Awake Labs receives an email out of the blue from someone telling them how much this product is needed. This also keeps the entire team motivated, knowing they can really change peoples’ lives as they look towards their goal of helping people in the mental health space.
In their journey pre-and post-incorporation in September 2015, one of the biggest challenges Andrea noted has been to find a co-founder that was just as passionate; she has found one and is grateful to have her on board. They have also found it hard to find funding, so she traveled to Start-Up Chile, who gave them $15000 to prototype. Even though their partners and supporters are in Ontario and BC, they are also looking for funding below the border.
Get to know Andrea a bit better:
If she had to write a book: She would reach-out to her network and crowd source the title.
Nerdy Fact: She was part of a robotics competition that competed internationally. It was for electronics robot soccer and her team was called ThunderBots. They went to places like Turkey and the Netherlands—so cool!
Favorite place traveled: During her time in Chile, she went on a 5-day trek from a town called Puerto Natalen through the Patagonian wilderness.
Favorite food: Andrea noted that she finds food really a part of the experience, whether she is in Chile eating in a Peruvian restaurant, or getting ice cream from a street vendor in Istanbul.
To end, Andrea has some great advice! For anyone hoping to become an entrepreneur one day, she noted that you really have to be willing to take risks and make decisions with very imperfect information. You have to be willing to stop what you are currently doing and accept a life of instability and just do it. Make sure it is a good idea, talk to people and validate it, and then really, just take the leap. Entrepreneurship is really doing things that you don’t know whether they will work, but just mitigate the risk as much as you can. And if you don’t ask, they will never give it to you; the worst thing someone can say is no (and that really isn't that bad).
Remember, you just have to take the leap! If you want any more information on Awake Labs and their product Reveal, check them out here. If you have any feedback for me, just let me know here!
