"
Our Team
We are a group of aspiring knowledge brokers passionate about bridging the gap between Science and Business.
The Inspiration
The BizBricks idea was inspired by the 2012 University of Waterloo iGEM team. The Human Practices team came forth with concepts and solutions that demonstrated the need of tying revolutionary ideas emerging within synthetic biology to traditional business tools that would support the field’s growth and sustainability. For the past three years, the University of Waterloo iGEM team has been comprised of students who come from multidisciplinary programs, including Biotechnology & Economics, Science and Business (with specializations in various scientific fields), and Arts and Business. These programs have given students the ability to build very versatile mindsets that allowed us to achieve the design of a portal that conveys customizability for the synthetic biology community.BizBricks Portal Competitive Analysis
Before launching any business, it is important that the entrepreneur understands its competition. Indeed an entrepreneur seeks to fill a market gap by offering a product whose value addition is greater than what is already being proposed in the market for his target market. Hence, to clearly know just what their value proposition will be, an entrepreneur must understand those of his competitors.
In this portion of the business plan, we will analyse the competition faced by the proposed BizBricks portal. To do this effectively, we will map out the attributes that characterize portal as well as others and compare them in a Competitor Matrix. In order to appreciate the value proposition presented by the BizBricks portal, it is essential to juxtapose it against existing comparable but not completely similar sites. The advantages of this matrix are evident from its presentation: the traits are easily comparable and several competitors can be compared at once.
The BizBricks portal was compared to other learning portals freely available online. Due to the pioneering nature of the BizBricks portal in the synthetic biology industry, the portals in this matrix were not necessarily intended for synthetic biology but their end goal was similar to that of BizBricks: to educate the end user through freely available and at times open-sourced content.
Traits in the competitor matrix to be analysed:
- Open Sourced
- Availability at no cost
- Intuitive
- Interactive
- Friendly User Interface
- Customized for Synthetic Biology
- Aspect of Affiliation to IGEM
- Contribution of Best Practices
- Aspect of Networking
As seen from the competitor matrix above, the BizBricks portal, despite having a seemingly niche market, caters for its users in all aspects that would have been provided to them in several different places. Making a quick analysis of the competitor matrix, the portal is the only one that is open sourced and hence allows for input from several knowledge sources of different backgrounds. There is thus large potential for providing novel insight in an industry still in its formative stages and doesn’t have the luxury of lots of published and easily available literature.
This competitor matrix indicates the capabilities of the competition. One drawback is that in such a niche industry and a pioneering portal it is very difficult to find a direct competitor. Without a direct competitor it is difficult to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the competition in direct relation to BizBricks. For example, MARSDD.com is a very good resource for entrepreneurs with extensive details on every aspect of how to start your own business. However due to the fact that it is not open sourced and is a broad-spectrum tool for all sorts of businesses it is difficult to assess challenges that BizBricks will face in it’s growth as a portal.
It is hence very easy to conclude that BizBricks has no direct competition. However, it would be foolhardy to assume that the rest of the synthetic biology entrepreneurs are not consulting online tools in their entrepreneurship adventure. Hence, in place of these tools, BizBricks offers an informative, valid and practical tool in one place.
Other competitors to add
Coursera
Wikipedia
Community Bricks
http://pivot.cos.com/- Pivot- Community of Science
ROI
In every business plan, it is imperative that as financial backing is being sought, the investors understand that there is a structure in place for them to receive a return on their investment. For every dollar the investors put in, it is critical they understand to what end their money is going and the manner in which they can expect to get it back.
For some investors, the aspect of time comes into place. The question of ‘when’ their returns will be actualised will need to be addressed. This means that a metric to measure the performance of their investment needs to be created. This metric will be required to determine the relative success of their investment.
In most cases, the metric is measured as follows:
ROI= (Gain from Investment-Cost from Investment)/Cost of Investment
The above equation is a simple and highly versatile measure of an investor’s returns as a positive value indicates a gain for the investor whereas a negative value indicates a loss from the investment.
Furthermore, the magnitude of the positive (or negative) value can be used to compare different company performances since the ROI value can be expressed as a percentage. However, it is important that the calculation methodologies are similar.
In the case of our website portal, BizBricks, it is important to list out all the gains and costs that will be derived from investment into the portal. The portal will provide several intangible benefits as well as potential avenues for revenue generation which shall be factored into the gains.
*These aspects of the portal are not concrete and have not been incorporated into the prototype of the portal. They simply represent potential avenues for growth and opportunities to leverage the success of the portal itself. As it stands, BizBricks remains a non-profit venture.
