This thesis project has been conducted in accordance with The Founder’s Lab initiative which is sponsored by the W. P. Carey School of Business. This program groups three students together and tasks them with creating a business idea, conducting the necessary research to bring the concept to life, and exploring different aspects of business, with the end goal of gaining traction. The product we were given to work through this process with was Hot Head, an engineering capstone project concept. The Hot Head product is a sustainable and innovative solution to the water waste issue we find is very prominent in the United States. In order to bring the Hot Head idea to life, we were tasked with doing research on topics ranging from the Hot Head life cycle to finding plausible personas who may have an interest in the Hot Head product. This paper outlines the journey to gaining traction via a marketing campaign and exposure of our brand on several platforms, with a specific interest in website traffic. Our research scope comes from mainly primary sources like gathering opinions of potential buyers by sending out surveys and hosting focus groups. The paper concludes with some possible future steps that could be taken if this project were to be continued.

When you are sitting at the terminal waiting for your flight or taking the bus to get to work, have you ever thought about who used your seat last? More importantly, have you ever thought about the last time that seat was cleaned? Sadly, it is uncertain to see if it was properly sanitized in the last hour, yesterday, in the last week, or even last month. Especially during these tough times, everyone wants to be assured that they are always in a safe and healthy environment. Through the Founders Lab, our team is collaborating with an engineering capstone team to bring automated seat cleaning technology into the market. This product is a custom-designed seat cover that is tear-resistant and provides a sanitary surface for anyone to sit on. When someone leaves the seat, a pressure sensor is triggered, and the cover is replaced with a secondary cover that was stored in a UV radiated container. The waterproof fabric and internal filters prevent spills and food crumbs from remaining when the user changes. The reason for bringing this product into the market is due to the unsanitary conditions in many high traffic areas. This technology can be implemented in public transportation, restaurants, sports stadiums, and much more. It will instantly improve the efficiency of sanitation for many businesses and keep a promise to its users that they will never bring something they sat on back home. #Safeseating

Dreadnought is a free-to-play multiplayer flight simulation in which two teams of 8 players each compete against one another to complete an objective. Each player controls a large-scale spaceship, various aspects of which can be customized to improve a player’s performance in a game. One such aspect is Officer Briefings, which are passive abilities that grant ships additional capabilities. Two of these Briefings, known as Retaliator and Get My Good Side, have strong synergy when used together, which has led to the Dreadnought community’s claiming that the Briefings are too powerful and should be rebalanced to be more in line with the power levels of other Briefings. This study collected gameplay data with and without the use of these specific Officer Briefings to determine the precise impact on gameplay. Linear correlation matrices and inference on two means were used to determine performance impact. It was found that, although these Officer Briefings do improve an individual player’s performance in a game, they do not have a consistent impact on the player’s team performance, and that these Officer Briefings are therefore not in need of rebalancing.