Entrepeneurship/ Logistics

This project starts where every venture should start: customer discovery and market research. We did over 1000 customer discovery surveys with my marketing lead and tester. We identified that the market calls for electric vehicles tailored for each person to create a valuable product. The biggest issue with Electric longboards these days is that they need to be adjustable for a person's wants and needs. In addition, people with different commuter routes and daily usage are forced to buy overkill products for their use case. This allowed us to design a logistic chain to create a board with extremely accurate battery size, top speed, and even turning-to-weight ratio by changing only a few variables. These variables include battery configuration of lithium-ion cells, Bushing material and tightness, and max voltage allowed.

For example, for a person's height and weight, we can calculate the most neutral preference for tightness of the bushing and bushing material as suggestions to the customer. It would only take minor changes to an assembly to allow for this variability.

Fabrication

My team and I decided that the best way to figure out what needed to be outsourced for the redesign was to create each part ourselves to get a sense of what should be manufactured. In our testing, the power train shown in the following image is only optimal for people who need extreme torque and acceleration as it does not need to be wrought aluminum. It could easily be replaced with a polycarbonate injection model part.

Other parts we designed and produced are the longboard deck testing out materials such as carbon fiber and bamboo decks, Polycarbonate Decks, and bamboo fiberglass decks. We determined that for production, polycarbonate decks are the most efficient manufacturing-wise. Still, the best performance was the Bamboo and fiberglass decks, which have a nice give to them that reduced vibrations into the person's body.

Teamwork/Leadership

This was my first experience as a founder of what will attempt to be a legitimate company. It started with me drawing sketches on a whiteboard, me lining up my friends to create 3D models of different parts for the board, i.e., power train, electric motor mount, and others. We grew over the academic year; we worked on this project from a team of 4 people to a team of 20, and I learned about inspiring leadership through example and how to run people and delegate work.

The skill it developed the most is communication. I still have a long way to grow in this sense, but without a steady stream of information and contacts, there will be no progress in the space. People sitting around doing nothing is never a worthy use of their time. The other is that a clear vision needs to be established to proceed. If people need help understanding the vision and how they will market it, talk to suppliers, design parts, and make customer discovery.

Knowing enough of everything but needing more to finish the product is something I failed as a person. I wanted to know everything and get to a point where I could work on engineering, marketing, and finances by myself, but this is just impossible. This may have inspired my team, but it hampered my decision to make the right call when it was needed.