Reading Week 15

1) There wasn't anything surprising in the article
2) There wasn't anything confusing about the reading
3) Has there been any situation where updating the technology was not the smart thing to do? What in your entrepreneurial experience made you realize how important customer loyalty was?
4) I don't disagree with anything

Final Reflection

1)
2) I think my most formative experience would have to be the free money assignment. Just the whole idea of giving money away just cause, was a weird concept and it was even weirder in action. I'm probably most proud of the venture concept because I didn't really believe in my business, but putting it all together made it more than I expected.
3) I have definitely moved closer to the entrepreneurial mindset.
4) I would tell future students of this class to make sure they time manage this class, or it will get overwhelming. They definitely should make this fun, it's not a super serous course, they should feel free to make it their own.

Elevator Pitch 3

Venture Concept 2

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.

I've changed my customers to include my potential customers, and have just kind of went over everything to make sure it flowed.

Week 14 Reading

1. There were no surprises.
2. There wasn't anything confusing
3. Do you think ethical values can hinder a businesses success? Do you think this is the mindset of some entrepreneurs?
4. There wasn't anything I disagreed about.

Google Gold

1. I did not do anything to pursue SEO.
2. Since I didn't pursue SEO I didn't choose particular key words.
3. I didn't really use social media to promote my blog. I used youtube to upload videos, but other than that I didn't have any outlets.
4. Venture Concept 1 was my most viral post, I can't be for sure why because I didn't make that post any more special than my others. I'm guessing it's probably just coincidence.
5. Since I didn't have keywords that would ave gotten me first page. It would take hours to find my blog because of how many results there were, so I'm going to estimate that I'm past page 100.

VERY Short Interview

I think that the initial interview was a really good look at an overview of what it's like being an entrepreneur. It didn't get too deep, but it didn't leave me guessing what I was going to learn in this class.

Do you have an exit strategy for your business? I want to sell the bar, but in this economy it's a lot harder than just having a desire to sell. A lot of it is about the timing, and it's just not the right time.

Would you ever try to own your own business after you're done with the one you have right now? Maybe. Owning your own business can be a struggle, but there are perks. I think if I found the right business idea in the right place that I would definitely give it a second thought.

What made you start the business in the first place? The idea of being my own boss was somewhat exciting, and I had a friend who help convince me that this would be an adventure.

I feel like my questions now were more of what I thought was interesting about what he had to say versus last time where I asked questions that I thought were the "right" questions. The entrepreneur said that they felt like I had a better concept of everything that goes on in a business than before, so I guess you can say they thought I progressed.

Week 13 Reading

1. How much goes into selling a company.
2. Nothing was confusing
3. Should a business get outside help to value their company? Does valuing your company necessarily guarantee that much money when you sell?
4. There wasn't anything I disagreed with.

Celebrating Failure

1. Over this past semester I've failed at waking up on time for my 830 class multiple times.
2. I learned that missing a math class does not help you learn math, and that I need to figure out a way to go to sleep sooner.
3. I think failure can be scary, but I also think that failure is needed for success. Without failure you never grow as a person because you never challenge yourself to persevere. I've always held this idea that failing isn't a bad thing even before this class (had to write an essay on it once), so this class has only really reinforced an idea that I believed in.

 

Exit Strategy

1. My exit strategy would be to sell the business in a few years after its foundation was strong enough to support future endeavors.
2. I would sell because owning my own business isn't what I want to spend my life doing. I have other ambitions, other plans for my future.
3. My exit strategy has definitely put my focus on doing just the basics. Not extending too far, or putting in effort that would take too much time. My exit strategy makes sure that whoever has the business next has room to explore and innovate the basic concept.

Week 12 Reading

1. That entrepreneurs don't do strategic planning when they're creating a business.
2. There wasn't anything confusing
3. Has any of your opinions changed since writing this chapter? Do entrepreneurs have to be managerial?
4. There isn't anything that I disagree with.

What's Next?

1. I think the next step for the app is to improve the functions of the app itself to make it easier for people to use, but until I create the app and beta test it I won't know what those improvements are.

2.

3. What makes most sense is to grow my business past the campus boundaries. I have to expand to restaurants who are little known or who would improve by going on a To-Go type app. I think that as the app grows it's obvious that I'll need to improve the flow of the app itself to make it more user friendly.

1. My radically different group are people not on campus, or over the age of 25.

2. I think my app could expand geographically to other restaurants outside of a campus.

3.

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4. I learned that this new market could be possible, and I could reach out to other schools and even businesses. What surprised me was that it could be a legitimate market because I never considered how people during their work would need something fast to eat because of how little time they get for lunch every day. My assumption about different school levels being interested in an app like this.This is an attractive venture for the app.