ARK Challenge (@ARKChallenge): Week 5

We are five weeks down in our ARK Challenge program. Though I am told it was a holiday week and a long holiday weekend, it didn't feel that way with all we have going on in the race to the finish line of this 14-week program. Though I was only working in Fayetteville on Tuesday of the last week and in Little Rock the rest, work on both jobs was consistent.Though it is still nine-weeks away, we talked a lot about getting ready for the final pitch on Demo Day (September 5).Here is what we accomplished for PressBaby this week:

• Discussed our Invention Evaluator report results with Innovate Arkansas. We are going to make some tweaks to our submission and send in for analysis again to make sure that we are getting accurate results to act on and continue to improve our products.
• Met with Amy Robinson who provided us with some great ideas for tweaking the product and may be able to introduce us to some valuable contacts.
• Met with Mike Malone of the NWA Council and got very sound feedback on the product from a user standpoint.
• Met with Luke Irvin to get advice and guidance on our app development. He drove up from Conway on a Saturday and I was glad to have the opportunity to get to pick his brain on Newspaper Next and ZineDay.
• Wrote our dream media release, the one we would like to see written and distributed after Demo Day. That was a fun exercise! It is meant to outline our vision so we can work backwards in achieving that over the coming weeks.
• Drafted the first version of our investor pitch deck. It is far from perfect, but it is a place to start.

My key takeaways from this week were:

• Find out what customers want. Not if they want what you have. Build what they need. Not what you think they need.
• Speak in the language of your customers.
• Listen to everyone's ideas. Everyone has something to contribute. The team matters.
• Pay it forward: the help you receive in this program should be used to help others. That is truly what networking in the startup community is about.
• Be aware of your personal branding.