David Chamberlain ’14 is a man on a mission.

In addition to being a VP for a consumer goods manufacturing company he is the founder and CEO of Interact, an app that will help families that have children with disabilities find the right services for their particular situation.

Finding the Right Solution for his Customers

David has been working on launching Interact with the help of the CSUF Startup Incubator and startup mentor Dr. Deborah Ferber. One of the key tasks over that time was figuring out who his customers were and what was the right value proposition to reach them.

The customer component of this task would seem fairly straightforward, that families with children who have disabilities have a hard time finding the right mixture of services for their particular situation. But, as we instill in all of the entrepreneurs we work with, critical assumptions must be substantiated before moving forward.

To do this, David worked with one of our CSUF Consulting teams. These teams are comprised of a group of four to six students who, under the supervision of their professor and a mentor from the private sector with applicable experience and a firm grasp of the lean startup methodology, work on coming up with actionable solutions for their clients. In David’s case, that solution took the form of in-depth customer research and a go-to-market strategy.

The team researched all aspects of David’s market, including families with children with disabilities and the service providers in that industry. Their findings proved David’s primary hypothesis correct: families with children with disabilities are looking for more in-depth recommendations for their particular situation.

During their research, the team uncovered many other key pieces of information that have gone on to inform the overall go-to-market strategy.

Translating Research into a Startup Go-to-market Strategy

David and his CSUF Consulting team worked together to develop his go-to-market strategy using the information that the team had uncovered. Key insights into what kinds of service providers would be most interested in participating on the app, what kinds of services families are looking for, and how best to monetize the app were all synthesized into this plan.

With a ranked list of action items from the team, David has already gotten to work on developing Interact with a developer who understands what the mission of the app is. And that developer is utilizing the insights found in the CSUF Consulting report to inform critical UI decisions.

Another key insight from the report is that these families have formed ad hoc communities where they share information about the services they need in order to give their children the most opportunities for the future. The problem is that the knowledge base for each of these groups is circumscribed by their members’ experiences, which are too frequently very limited. Understanding this dynamic, one of David’s key tasks going forward will be identifying these groups and forming partnerships with them.

Interact to Launch Soon

Having received funding from an angel investor has enabled David to focus his time and energy on launching Interact. The funding is a powerful indicator that there are other people who see the same opportunity with Interact as David does and the funding makes it so that David can start to build momentum for his startup.

Dr. Deb, his mentor at the CSUF Startup Incubator, said that “David is going to be a successful business owner and philanthropist” and I can’t argue with that. He is making the right decisions and is focused on building a solution for a very serious problem. Information has always been valuable and Interact will help deliver very valuable information to its users.

David’s plan is to launch Interact within the next couple of months and when that happens we will certainly report that amazing news and continue to follow him along as his business grows and has a positive impact on so many lives!

CSUF Startup Incubator

Entrepreneurs who are accepted into the CSUF Startup Incubator work with our entrepreneurial experts over a six month intensive launch period that includes: access to office space, quarterly investor pitches our entrepreneurs can participate in, free events, a dedicated one-on-one coaching relationship with one of our more than 700 startup experts, and so much more! If you are ready to learn the right way to go from concept to launch, please go to this page or contact a CSUF Startup Incubator representative at csufentrepreneurship@fullerton.edu.