Michelle Obama once said “You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is one of your biggest advantages” (Former First Lady serving from 2009-2017, author, attorney, and first African-American woman to serve in this position).
In any given point in time, some of us have had a light bulb moment in which an inspiration struck our heart, mind, or soul: a brilliant idea, product, or service may be able to change the world. Once an idea is formed, often times, an important question will quickly pop into mind: “What’s next?”. Execution and follow through will be two of the most challenging tasks when trying to make an idea into a reality.
Co-founders of The Rocket Innovation Tracey Roberts and Sylvia Chu know instantly in their minds that the Baby Car Safe Project may indeed face many challenges, but what adversities did they face? Starting a new company itself is hard enough, and there are a lot of considerations to note. Let’s us discover some major obstacles that they faced together.
Product development: to create a new product or to improve on an existing product? As we have discussed before, Tracey derived his idea from cases where Pediatric Vehicular Heatstroke (PVH) were on the rise. However, both Tracey nor Sylvia had ever created a product like this before. Therefore, they decided that it is sensible to do both. Create a new product that also improves on existing products which are already on the market.
Hiring the right people: A start-up company sometimes do struggle to find the right team members as bigger companies often already absorbed most of the labor resources in the market. This is especially evident in the technology industry where people often flock to bigger and better-established companies.
Hardware: As most of the world tries to cope with COVID-19 pandemic since 2021, finding manufacturers to fulfill the company’s requirements are hard. Some of the components that were needed to produce Baby Car Safe product did not meet the company’s specifications. Therefore, the original timeline had to be postponed. In certain circumstances, some parts that could not be found had to be made inhouse from scratch.
Local and international regulations: The Rocket Innovation had to comply to certain Taiwanese and also American regulations as the product itself will be first sold in the United States. Therefore, to comply and to pass these regulations take a lot of time. Needless to say, this is also one of the biggest challenges this company faced. Regulations on accounting, laws, patents, and other facets had to be complied to both countries.
Multitasking: Multitasking is an important aspect for all team members. Some of the tasks had to be self-taught so trial and error became common ground in this company. Moreover, one person had the burden to carry out tasks normally fitted for two to three individual’s workloads. These may include hiring, marketing, editing posts, payroll, and others.
Networking: Through networking one can easily find connections to assist in many ways and it is an important aspect of a start-up company such as ours. As an example, Syl via is a member of the Academy of Woman Entrepreneurs, which was launched by U.S. Department of State. This program allowed our co-founder Sylvia to meet with Taiwanese business owners as well as other female business owners around the world.
Finally, even though creating a new start-up company is tough, it is quite rewarding. Overcoming challenges can be satisfying, while creating the right environment and promoting synergy among a small group of people can be a little easier than compared to bigger companies. This is because trust becomes a vital part of the company and everyone works hard to create something that has not done before. A sense of pride goes a long way and The Rocket Innovation certainly has done this so far. We all know what is at stake here and we embrace all of these challenges with open arms.
