Venture Concept 1

My business venture is at its core a company that works with colleges and the restaurants on their campus to develop an app to provide pre-ordering services to customers.

Opportunity: Currently on UF’s campus there are over a dozen different type of restaurants available for students during the day, and some over-night. The restaurants are popular chains that become very bus y during the day when college life is at its busiest. The restaurants however, do not have a way for students to pre-order the food/coffee they want and pick up when it’s ready. This leaves college students whose schedules are jammed packed during the day without an opportunity to get the food that they want. This decreases the amount of business the restaurant could possibly have, and taking away a future customer because of it.

·         The forces in the environment that are creating this opportunity are the school class periods, and the growing need for college students to be involved in multiple programs in order to give them the edge that they need to get a good job the competitive job market. This leaves them with little time, but doesn’t take away the desire to order food from Chik-fil-a, or coffee from Starbucks.

·         Geographically the market is defined on campus, demographically the market is colleges without to-go app abilities within their campus.

·         Currently students who don’t have time are not buying on –campus. Some customers might be ordering things off-campus from different locations. Since there is no other use because there is no other application like this on campus, the potential customers aren’t loyal to anyone else.

·         This has a large potential to increase customer reach.

·         I think the “window of opportunity” will be open until someone else comes in and does it. With people relying more and more on technology every year it is inevitable for this to be the next step.

Innovation: The To-Go app is an innovated version of the traditional walk in to-goes. Currently if someone wants to order something from the restaurants on campus they have to go in wait in line, wait for their food. It doesn’t sound too complicated, but with the app it saves people n a hurry time, and it opens up the opportunity to get food for the people who don’t have the time to waste. It allows for someone to have their food ready to go and paid for by the time they reach the restaurant. It cuts out the time consumption from waiting. With real time notifications, you can order something and know exactly when you need to be there to get in and get out quickly with your order. The business itself, or the profit portion, is a service provided to the campus to buy, similar to paying for construction. We research for efficiency, build it, and maintenance it based on customer feedback. From there it’s the universities, but if something goes wrong, we’re the ones who come in and fix it.

Venture Concept: The business innovation will address the opportunity by solving the problem of not having enough time. The whole innovation is based off the ability to reduce the amount of time, for the customer, during the process of ordering, buying, and receiving food/coffee. I believe that customer will want this because it is an opportunity for the restaurants on campus to make more money. Since the business is aimed towards colleges themselves, I think that with student interest the college itself will become interested.

·         I think customers will use this because it fits in the picture of college lifestyle along with a step into a more efficient future. Since the college is switching to anything, but rather adopting something new I don’t think it will be very hard to convince them.

·         My competitors are similar apps outside campus’ that might want to extend inside. I think their vulnerabilities are their focus. I don’t think they’re focused on this market.

·         Customer support, I believe, will be the biggest aspect of producing and maintaining this app. It is the biggest seller because it takes away the responsibility from the university, and customer support for apps similar to this is the backbone to any app.

·         The business would involve multiple programmers, and researchers that would develop and design the app in order to best fit the customer. Then would be the face of the company, or the person/people who would sell the idea to colleges and advertise it to others. Then the person in charge who made sure everything was running smoothly.

Minor Elements:

1.      My most important resource would be the fact that so far no one else has tried to get in on this possible opportunity. Basically being at the head of the race.

2.      After developing the app, I would hope to be part of the beginning processes of restaurants coming to campuses. This way we could organize the store itself to optimize the flow of traffic to accommodate both app orders and in-store orders.

3.      In the next five years I plan on being in a developing country helping bring/ teach sustainable practices and needed resources. As for this business in the next five years, I hope the college realizes this opportunity and takes advantage of it. 

Reading Week 11

1.The biggest surprise was how diverse an innovation strategy can be for companies.
2. There wasn't anything particularly confusing in the article.
3. If Corning tried to get into business with something other than glass, like service based business, would it have been so successful? Would Corning have stretched itself too thin?
4. There wasn't anything I disagreed with the author about.

The Amazon Whisperer

1. My business is a company that works with campus restaurants to create a to-go app. The revenue comes from the service itself.
2. Since my business is creating the app for different restaurants, my next step to expand the business would be reach out to other universities. I'm not sure how I would expand the app itself.
3. The next thing expands my customer reach. It opens up my service to more places, therefore bringing the product to more people.
4.
5.
6. I'm not sure what design/usability changes I'd make to the app, only because I haven't created it in the first place. I don't know what it would need, what bugs it would have, what would make it more user friendly.
7. Other than expanding the reach of the service I don't have any other additions, and the expansion would be beneficial just for the fact that it's expanding the company.

My Venture's Unfair Advantage

My 10 unfair advantages are as follows:
1. I've made an unoriginal idea original for at least UF. I didn't invent anything, I didn't even create the concept, but it appears I'm the only one that saw the need to bring already developed technology and ideas to UF.
2. I not only saw the idea, but currently I'm doing assignments to improve the idea, so that one day it can be possible.
3. I've not only seen the idea, am doing assignments on the idea, but on top of that if you're reading this I'm currently marketing the idea. (please see previous posts for said idea)
4. I'm a college student, therefore I know I should wait in line for things I want, but life is stressful enough with exams, term papers, and unnecessary homework so I see the need to have at least one tiny victory of quick to-go Starbucks.
5. With the desire to have those minuscule victories, I'm more motivated to hope that this will one day take form into something legitimate.
6. I'm so broke that people will take pity on me and give me money. (I'm not naive I'm a dreamer).
7. I have friends.
8. I do not fear failure I embrace it, and move on cause lets be honest I don't really plan on doing this.
9. I have great endurance (except for running, dear God I hate running). I can endure through anything life throws at me. I mean eventually whatever obstacle comes will pass, and if it doesn't pass I'll just move around it because I don't actually have time to wait I'm an adult now, time is a figment of my imagination.
10. I have a sense of humor that allows me to make it through the lists of things I am forced to do. It doesn't mean I don't take things seriously, I'm just not going to lose my chance at living happily in the moment while I'm busy trying to make a future.

I think number one is my most valuable only because no one else, as far as I know, has approached this idea for college campus'. Therefore it leaves an untapped market.

Reading 10

1. I found the break-even analysis very interesting in this chapter.
2. There wasn't anything I found confusing
3. I would ask him what decision making tool is best for a service app? And, how would you budget a nonprofit?
4. There wasn't anything I disagreed about with the author

Elevator Pitch 3

This time I made sure to do the pitch standing. I tried to add everything I needed, but honestly after the like hundredth time I filmed it I was kind of just tired. I thought all the feedback from my previous pitch was helpful and I tried to be mindful of it when I was doing this one.

Week 9 reading

1. The thing that stood out the most was how much power the consumer has in today's market.
2. The only confusing part was how entrepreneurs have different philosophies. I would think each one of the three types would be important to every entrepreneur.
3. Is it possible to stumble upon a market without realizing it? How often do markets change, like an item that was once so useful become obsolete for that market?
4. There wasn't anything I thought the author was wrong about.

Secret Sauce

1. I think my five things that make me different are my ability to understand both sides of a situation while remaining unbiased, my extreme competitive nature, my innate desire to help out and make a difference, my sense of humor, and my determination.

I think that some of my friends had similar answers to me. Some of the things they said were very true, but I didn't think to put them in my top five. I think the differences were because I was trying to overthink it, while they just kind of said whatever came to mind.

Idea napkin 2

1. I don't expect this business idea to go past this class, if I was being absolutely honest.
2. The product is an app that works with college campus restaurants to mobilize their business allowing customers to order their product online and pick it up. The concept is seen in many businesses, but hasn't really hit the potential on campus.
3. I'm offering it to college students.
4. College students are constantly in a hurry, this would allow them to get that quick cup of coffee that they normally wouldn't because the lines are always too long.
5. What sets this app apart is the fact that it hasn't been done yet. An unmet market.

I believe these points definitely cover the basics of my app, but the points are like the basics compared to what a business plan would include. The only thing that I can think of that clashes is the ability to create this app in the first place. To be honest, the restaurants work with the college and the college has access to everything it needs to make this happen. I 'm not sure why it hasn't happened yet, nut I'm pretty sure a petition or simply bringing it to the college's attention would probably set the ball rolling.