Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Staying True To Fulfilling Your Mission But Open-Minded to How

The following post is from Yuanyuan Yin M’15 and Dylan Murphy, founders of SuperHealos, a spring 2015 hatchery business.

Yuanyuan Yin M'15, Co-founder of SuperHealos

Yuanyuan Yin M’15, Co-founder of SuperHealos

When we started SuperHealos, we planned to revolutionize the children’s hospital supply industry by providing the most comfortable, functional, and moral boosting superhero costume-like hospital gown and other products. We quickly realized that hospitals have serious budget constraints and lengthy procurement processes. We also realized that in order to get to A, we may need to do B first. Though we were very determined to make a difference in addressing the gap in hospital care, we found ourselves fighting against a system with very limited resources.

After barely treading water for a couple of months, we took a step back and reflected on what we were doing. Our true motivation is to empower and comfort children and families, which can be achieved by elevating the current hospital care or by reducing stress and anxiety when children facing difficult challenges. There are many ways to boost morale of children and it does not have to through hospital gowns alone. Then, we had a major breakthrough in our strategy.

We started the research once again. We found that there are many passionate people, moms, therapists, doctors and more, sharing the same mission as SuperHealos to comfort and empower children. But their skill sets are not in business. So the ideas or products they have are often very segmented and regional serving very small portion of the population. Meanwhile, there are many challenges children and parents are looking for ways to lift up their spirits. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, the most powerful thing is to bring great people together and leverage everyone’s unique strength. SuperHealos expertise is our business acumen. We can help those great products and ideas make a bigger impact by uniting the effort.
SuperHealos pivoted from the original product focused company to a platform company. We are creating an ecosystem with clearly defined processes and unique, educational, and moral boosting products to address different challenges. Our mission is broadened as we not only empower children and families but also help small businesses reaching customers.

Sometimes business create a product or process to fulfill their mission. They become so focused on that product or process that they lose track of the mission, why they started the company in the first place. When the product or process becomes impossible, use what you learned and go back to the mission. You’ll probably find that you now know a way to both fulfill your mission and have a sustainable business.

Learn more about SuperHealos on our website, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.