Portfolio
Product and Business Strategy
The video below was recorded early in the development of my startup company, Rorus Inc. It explains our market opportunity, competitive landscape, product design and benefits, and go-to-market strategy. An employee and I collaborated to write the pitch and design the slides in Keynote.
Technical drawings for our utility patent
DEW was my first water filter design collaboration with Uriel Eisen and a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University. We focused on a filter for short-term disaster relief and created a portable water filter that fit inside a standard envelope. We received a utility patent for this invention and filed another utility patent application on its unique manufacturing process.
We never followed through with mass manufacturing because we found our target customers needed a longer filter lifespan than this design could provide. Also, mass manufacturing 3-layer plastic film patterns is much more expensive and complex than 2-layer designs. Customer and user feedback on this design lead us to create the FilterPack, explained below.
Programming
I learned to program in JavaScript, C, C++, and Processing in high school, and then learned Python, Matlab, and PHP in college. I used these skills as a GPS researcher at NASA Langley in 2010, as a software developer (mostly as an architect between developers) in Ghana in 2012, and as a computational researcher on Dengue Fever in 2014. I also became a Teaching Assistant (CA or TA) for 15-110, teaching Python and the principles of computing at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011.
I made this recursively drawn tree one afternoon in 2010 to experiment with random “mutations” in color, length and branching angle. Interestingly, I applied a bell curve to these mutations so that they were not simply randomly generated between a range that I found visually appealing, but the outliers (the 1 in 100 mutations) were sometimes so grotesque as to look less natural.
Marketing Strategy
Because we focused on sales to institutions (businesses and aid organizations, B2B) rather than directly to individual consumers (B2C), our marketing was fairly unique for a startup. Here are some of the creative strategies I practiced to reach our ideal customers:
In our live and filmed marketing, we preferred to show , rather than tell, how much we trust it by drinking from rural and urban water sources, a toilet bowl, and water with stranger's spit it in. The "gross out" factor made low-cost, cross-cultural, long-lasting impressions.
Typically, clear and simple language is essential to reaching the majority of your audience, but many of our purchasing decision makers had a technical background and felt respected when their expertise was recognized and shown to be valuable in their organizations. For example, sharing unprocessed product testing data for the technical representative to review and represent within the rest of their organization sometimes led to a product affinity akin to the IKEA effect.
The international aid market is centralized enough to reach most of our ideal customers by networking at professional gatherings. The most difficult part was establishing our differentiation from other water filter companies; many of our customers were advertised a new "revolutionary" solution at least once a week. The best way to ease their resistance was to listen to their complaints or even commiserate with them about the sad status quo of water treatment always being too expensive, difficult to use, easy to break or misuse, hard to verify, etc. By establishing rapport and showing our familiarity with the realities of field work in disaster relief and developing countries, it showed we were more than just another naive group of Millenials trying to change the world.
Working within our lean startup budget, we found startup competitions to be very effective marketing. Publicized pitches helped us clarify our strategy, create brand excitement among investors and job applicants, and raise early seed money ($231k). Winning awards helped us to gain free press recognition and credibility with new customer leads.
Product Design
Rorus FilterPack
The video below demonstrates key features of a portable water-filtering backpack, designed for disaster relief or daily use in under-developed areas. The filter had to be capable of processing a wide variety of raw water, so it includes physical, biological, and chemical contaminant removal processes, an improvement on the DEW design. The bag is made of a durable, food-grade, UV-resistant plastic. Its 20-liter capacity is appropriate for 1 day of water for a family of 6, and less water can also be carried if a lighter load is preferred. The input area is purposefully restricted in size to prevent the backpack from being used to carry other materials. Later prototypes were blue to reference safe drinking water.
The most unique feature of the FilterPack compared to other complex portable filters is its ease of use: there are no backwashing instructions (like having to clean out a reusable coffee filter), and it flows fast enough to use every day without hassle.
Our process drawings and prototypes were handmade by my co-founder and product R&D specialist Uriel Eisen. All design ideas, critiques, decisions, and specifications were a collaboration between the two of us. We were informed by our market research and conversations with disaster relief agencies and their aid recipients.
Rorus Spring and Rorus Core
The Rorus Spring and Rorus Core were also collaborations with Uriel Eisen. The Core filter is the same internal filtration component used in the Rorus FilterPack and Rorus Spring. The Rorus Spring follows a very common paradigm of countertop, gravity-fed filters in developing countries where household refrigeration is less common. The Rorus Spring product photography shows prototype containers that we modified in the US, but the Core Filter was designed to be modular. It can be installed in other containers such as water barrels or replace the filter component of other designs that are culturally appropriate and locally available.
Visual Design
Rorus Inc. Marketing Materials and Website
I created our startup's brochures and website with graphic designer Sarah Karwoski. I wrote the copy and determined the content of each visual, and she brought it to life with CAD models and sleek infographics. She update our old branding with more nuanced colors so that we looked less like a high school football team, and we worked together to apply consistent visual language and helpful visual hierarchy.
My favorite part of creating the site was crowdsourcing feedback to find points that needed clarification, just as I am doing now with the footer of this website.
Team Leadership
Founding Rorus Inc. was an incredible opportunity and responsibility. Some of my favorite lessons were:
using servant leadership to keep your team members using their best talents as often as possible
keeping some time in your day to do the parts of your role that really energize you
the importance of team culture and shared values like being humble, having a growth mindset, staying curious, and focusing on longterm humanitarian development
varying your approach to inspire and engage employees based on their personalities and motivation
implementing and modeling self-care routines to make sure the team and I stay focused and productive
Our team's chemistry was why we were able to hire one of our competitor's managing directors and the chief microbiologist of the city of Pittsburgh. Everyone accepted lower than market rate salaries because we understood our vision and the real opportunity we had to change the status quo.
Teaching and Storytelling
I was invited to present at TEDx Shadyside Youth, an event run by and oriented for college and high school students. The given theme was "revolutions," and I relayed my personal experience and lessons from running my startup that I wish I had learned at their age. To communicate clearly, I focused on finding common ground with the younger audience using the hero narrative common in popular media such as Star Wars. I designed my own slides and had a fantastic experience despite a couple distracting technical difficulties.
I truly believe in the importance of changing yourself as a way to change the world. It's not just morally correct; it's functional and valuable advice.
ImpromPTU public speaking
I was asked to explain why I donate regularly to my church community, and I wasn't aware it was being filmed. Fortunately, that means it's a great snapshot of what I care about, how I make important decisions, and how I share my ideas comfortably, even in front of 50 people.
"Acting"
I wrote a positive review for a cellphone resale company I had found online. Their user experience was comprehensive, considerate, and a little inspiring. I was surprised when they replied with a request that I read my review for a television commercial as part of a national campaign. Now, I have been mistaken as the character Arya Stark from Game of Thrones (actress Maisie Williams) more often than I have been recognized for this "role," but it's a perfect example of my curiosity and willingness to experiment in new fields. I have learned how to learn and adapt quickly.