Entrepreneurship During COVID-19: an Interview with Dana Kim, founder of Showcase Insights
Dana Kim is the founder of Showcase Insights, a startup product testing company specializing in affordable, efficient Millennial/Gen Z customer insights. Kim recently graduated from the Wharton MBA Program. Kim is also a mentor of the Loop’s Group Salon for the past month. Kim sits down with Michelle Fang, a content writer at the Loop Network for a chat on her journey as a female entrepreneur and the Group Salon experience.
Fang: So first question, can you give me a rundown of how you got to where you are today, especially with starting Showcase Insights?
Kim: I’m in Philadelphia and I just graduated in May from the Wharton MBA program. Prior to that, for about five years, I was a Qualitative Market Researcher, meaning I was doing all the in-person research for a ton of cool global clients. I went all over the world with Uber, Facebook, Nike, Coca Cola, you name it. It was super fun and interesting work. And I realized seeing this data and consumer insights firsthand, it’s super important and impactful work. But especially for startups that are just coming out or more emerging brands, market research can be really inaccessible — it’s expensive and it can be time consuming. As a resource strapped startup, it’s not always the best option. I decided that I was going to pursue the MBA program to have a platform and a resource to create a more efficient market research solution. I actually wrote my admissions essays into Wharton around this mission. But I didn’t know exactly what it would look like. All of my first year, I worked through a few different iterations of the company. And then over the summer, I actually explored early stage investing at a venture capital firm.
I’m coming up on a year of the idea for Showcase at its inception. Pre-COVID, Showcase was a network of vending machines that were a platform for brands to exchange products for feedback. So essentially, as a user, you walk up to the machine and you can get anything you want for free as long as you give a quick survey on the item. For brands, that gives you really targeted, in-moment product feedback. Our first machine launched here at Penn on the Wharton campus. And that gave us access to hundreds of MBAs that are not only sampling your product and spending a few minutes engaging with your product and becoming aware of your brand and your product, but also give you really pointed data. When someone has your granola bar in their hand, they can tell you exactly how bitter or sweet or salty it is. They can tell you if they think the texture is too chewy, or the packaging is flimsy, or is it too small? This is really tactical product feedback that comes from having tried the product just prior to or in that moment when I’m giving that survey. And so it was going really well. But we launched in mid-January. About six weeks later, COVID hit. It was pretty impeccable timing. I had a dramatic moment of going to the vending machine, unplugging it, and emptying the inventory, but we had to move on.
It was a trying moment.. But at that point, we still had to figure out a way to move the business forward and continue connecting brands and consumers and collect feedback. We had 14 brands on board and hundreds of users of the machine in our database. And so we pivoted over to a box model. other than having to go to the vending machines, you can be safe staying at home during quarantine and receive bundles of products in these fun, curated boxes. Same deal — entirely free in exchange for feedback. This keeps us moving in terms of connecting brands and consumers to get important product feedback, in really cool, new, interesting ways.
Fang: It’s awesome to see you guys pivot. What was going through your mind when literally in a week everything changed for you?
Kim: You know, I think when we first heard about the Coronavirus and its effect on our lives, especially being in an MBA program during graduation time it was, “Oh no, what’s going to happen with school, what’s going to happen with graduation? ” There were so many fun festivities planned, to wrap up our MBA experience. And so the initial disappointment was rooted in missing out on all that good stuff, which was such a bummer.
But then the moment I realized that COVID’s impact on the business, it was a whole new level of, “Oh man, how do we overcome this?” Our whole business of vending machines relies on the existence of highly trafficked places where there are a ton of people moving through an area using your machine. That inherently was no longer allowed or possible.
Even as the world turns back on, capacity is going to be restricted and heavily trafficked places are not going to be heavily trafficked for the foreseeable future. The long term implications of that were real, and it was a matter pivoting to survive.
The vending machine has always served as a really cool recruitment tool to bring users into our system, and so by being placed in a college, being placed in a gym, in a Delta lounge, in a co-working space, you’re capturing really interesting engaged consumers that might not normally be paying attention to your product, or especially, signing up for market research. But once they’re in our system, we can tap them for other sorts of research. We can send them emails and say, “Hey, now we’re working with Bose and they’re sending a free pair of headphones in exchange for a FaceTime. Are you open to that?” So when COVID hit and the machine format was rendered inoperable, it was a natural time, then, to pause the vending machine focus and figure out those alternative channels.. The first moment was definitely disappointment but then, you know, as an early stage company, you need to be quick on your feet and figure out, how do we solve this problem rather than sulk in the challenge. So it was a pretty quick pivot — we sent out our first boxes in the beginning of April.
We reskinned our app from being a vending machine app to a box app. It was a very iterative process of figuring out the ideal brand and user experiences. We gathered a ton of data around ways to ask questions, what survey completion rates to expect, conversion rates, preferences, etc. Even still, every batch we send out, we’re learning, we’re changing, and we’re growing.
Fang: I’d love to hear more about your experience with the Loop and how it has been leading your own Group Salon and cohort?
Kim: It’s great. It’s so amazing to see that most of the mentees in my Salon are undergraduates, some who’ve just recently graduated. And it’s amazing to see the entrepreneurial spirit of students today. I went to school in New York City, Barnard undergrad, and I loved that I had access to all these different internships. I could take the subway downtown, and I had a whole bunch of crazy different experiences where I was a paralegal because I considered being a lawyer, and I worked in the fashion closet at Harper’s Bazaar. I loved those experiences and resources, and the ability to be really exploratory in my career. With entrepreneurship, it adds so much value and is invaluable to get that founder, builder experience that early on, because you just adopt the mindset of testing your hypotheses, identifying problems and solving them, all those building blocks of what make a resilient and confident entrepreneur. Just seeing such energy and motivation, from all the mentees all over the US, even not in the US (one of them is in Mexico City!) was amazing to see. All the women in our group made the leap to say “I want to explore entrepreneurship, I want to solve this need that I’ve pinpointed, and I want to figure out an interesting way to solve it.” It’s really humbling and so, so impressive to see the level of energy and ambition that’s so palpable at what I would’ve qualified as such a young age. And for me personally, there were so many people in my life, and especially women in my life, that were mentors for me whether they knew it or not. They were really the driving forces that got me to the next level of success, whenever and wherever that was, be it in my career, my personal life, or in school. Because I have been the mentee in so many situations, I was happy to step into the mentor role when The Loop reached out. The Loop has done such a great job — they’ve put a lot of thought into building out a structured schematic and way of thinking about launching your company. But the format also gives participants the space to explore and isn’t just a curriculum that is transactionally taught. It leaves a lot of room for thought, and exploration. It’s been a great experience.
Fang: Has there been anything that you learned or anything that made you rethink in any way?
Kim: Yeah, I think that it’s so interesting because this is where the Loop found its niche because these women are starting so early in their ventures where it truly is in the idea stage. I’ve learned and been impressed by how quickly people are able to pivot their ideas drastically. Many of the problems and needs that have been identified are really big picture. These women are really pushing their thinking in flexibility and ability to think outside the box. They move quickly from one idea to the next, to make sure they’re landing on the best possible solution. There were a ton of user interviews conducted after our first Group Salon. In talking to users, there were few entrepreneurs who were very open minded and said, “Okay, this is actually not the problem I thought it was. Now I’m going to focus here.” That ability to take a step back, reassess, and move in a direction that makes more sense has been really awesome to see.
Fang: Do you have any advice for current female founders or those that are aspiring to be?
Kim: Yeah! I think it’s never too early to start thinking about your venture. I think if you have that desire to build, and you find yourself aspiring to be an entrepreneur, it’s never too early to start. Getting involved in entrepreneurship as early as possible or even in a part-time capacity really gives you a head start in terms of exposure and experience . There are so many lessons learned from starting a company or helping an early company that can apply to life elsewhere. Pursuing a certain work stream being able to pivot really quickly, or identifying a need and then identifying the best way to possibly solve it, or having hypotheses and understanding how to tactically test them. All of those are really incredible lessons you learn from entrepreneurship that you can apply elsewhere in your life, even if you don’t end up starting your own company.
I think another big piece of advice that I actually was passed on to me was, entrepreneurship is such a broad term. A lot of people think of entrepreneurship as, you are the founder, you are Employee or Person #1 at your company, that you have an idea and you go out and execute on it. But you can be an entrepreneur as Employee #10. You can be an entrepreneur within a company of hundreds. It’s not necessarily one to one with the founder title. You can be entrepreneurial and have an entrepreneurial mindset in many aspects of what you do. And so not necessarily thinking of entrepreneurship as “I need to be a founder and start something.”
You can be entrepreneurial and find someone who’s pursuing a passion or adventure that you are really excited about. You want to support it even if you join them as an Employee number whatever, and really drive your own business within that, then you are an entrepreneur yourself there too. I think that’s easily forgotten in today’s environment, and not given enough credit — it’s important to keep in mind.
Fang: Do you think there’s something holding back people from embracing that concept or that mindset?
Kim: Yeah, I think there’s a ton of excitement around being a founder and starting something. And of course, if you feel like you want to be, or if you have an incredible idea that you want to execute on, or if you want to have that founder challenge, then you should go for it. But that’s not always the case. While it’s a tempting founder-centric sort of culture right, it’s worth calling out that finding companies that are doing something you’re passionate about and then really supporting them in an entrepreneurial way is an incredible way to add value.
Fang: Yeah, it’s definitely a great point. If you had the chance to broadcast a message to the entire public, what would it be?
Kim: I would say that it’s “entrepreneurship is worth the risk.” Coming out of an MBA program, deciding against all of the more traditional, stable, established career paths, and pursuing Showcase full-time has been the riskiest move I’ve made in my career, but also the most empowering and exciting.
Especially in this time of COVID and work from home where the lines between work and play are really blurred, you really need to figure out what motivates you, what keeps you going, and how to fill your day in a way that’s really empowering and valuable to you.
I have zero regrets around working all day — and sometimes all night — on growing, building, and evolving Showcase because I have such belief in it and conviction around it. I think if you feel conviction around something that you’re working on, and you believe in yourself to execute on that vision, it’s worth it to pursue entrepreneurship. Sure, entrepreneurship comes with a ton of risk, and you should be prepared for that, and go in eyes wide open. But even beyond potential upside, the journey affords so many intangible benefits and delivers truly unmatched personal and professional growth.
Fang: That was very well said, thank you for chatting!
If you know of an amazing female founder, feel free to refer them to loopnetwork.org!
