Venture Concept No.2

For my venture concept, I tried to find a need that was prevalent in my local community. For my community, I realized that there have been many unmet needs within the university of Florida itself. My primary concern while searching was with the high degree of costs associated within the university itself and looking for student needs and wants that are being either unmet or exploited in some way. For me, one of the most renewing “bugs” of which I discovered is the high cost of textbooks that I get each semester. This was the need I chose to explore in my venture concept to try and find a possible profitable solution.

For many students, the cost of purchasing a textbook can be one of the priciest pieces of the semester. You can restrict yourself to renting but then you miss out on highlighting and annotating important sections. At the end of the semester you can get further shortchanged by selling the book back for significantly less than you purchased it for. This need was created because the university bookstore claimed an upcharge on every book that it sold and purchased. This need is located within every college town and in any university with an official bookstore, but in order to utilize this need, my venture concept will be localized to the Gainesville community.

As of now, this need is being satisfied through either simply ignoring the cost of buying and selling, renting the book, using craigslist to find other books, and the use of unofficial forums to locate other students with textbooks. Overall, students are not loyal to what they use and will easily switch over to anything that could offer a better service at a cheaper price. This opportunity is relatively large as it can be expanded to any and all books worldwide however, it is mostly focused on bookstores within college areas and is slightly smaller with that in mind. This opportunity’s “window” is also very large as it exists as long as universities and colleges exist worldwide, so there is no rush to deploy my venture as quickly as possible.

In order to exploit this opportunity, I want to innovate by creating a website that would connect students who have just taken classes to ones who are scheduled to take the same classes. This would connect students with books available for sale directly to those who wish to purchase books for their upcoming semester. The website would generate revenue exclusively through advertisements allowing students to buy and sell books with no middle man allowing students to easily obtain books without having to pay any extra cost. So for this instance, I am selling connections in exchange for advertisement revenue. Even as the company expanded, instead of relying on other means of revenue, I would simply expand the advertisement to be more prevalent and the revenue per click to increase. This revenue would be small averaging around 25 cents every time someone clicks on an advertisement. This small revenue would be counterbalanced by the minimal cost to run at around 10 dollars a year. This maximizes profit as I would only need someone to click on an advertisement 40 times a year to break even. Any other additional click would be additional income. This would also mean that I could easily expand at little to no cost to other areas.

Finally, this opportunity and innovation would culminate into a fully-fledged venture concept. Customers would switch over to my website for price savings from traditional methods. Getting them to switch would be rather difficult however as news of the website would have to travel over time and spread and rapid expansion would be unlikely at the start of the website. The competitors to my venture would be the official university bookstore, amazon, and any other local bookstores as well as services like craigslist that also help connect students to other booksellers. Packaging, price points, distribution, and business location are all inapplicable to this particular venture concept. Customer support and customer experience do play an important role in my business concept however. Customer support would be maintained through a support email address in a contact us page within the website. As the business expands, customer service could be outsourced to a secondary business that would control the objective for several different geographical locations at once furthering the minimization of costs overall. Finally, as the business expands further to many different geographical locations around the united states, I would organize a complete business to support the ongoing production of my service. I would employee one or two web developers to continually update and expand the websites to further accommodate students around the United States. As the website develops further, roles would begin to emerge such as an expansion department, a customer service department, and a design department.

Overall, the venture concept would culminate in eventual expansion internationally. I definitely think that the most valuable asset to my business venture will be the very maintainable costs to run the website and incredibly low breakeven point. This aspect alone makes the venture worth pursuing as the risk is almost none at startup. After I hand my business off, the venture will hopefully grow and spread to many different geographical regions, possibly even expanding its services provided beyond simply connecting students to now acting as a buying and selling service with minimal markup. Finally, when I feel ready, most likely after five years, I would sell the business to whoever I believed would continue to expand and grow the business. After doing this, I would maintain a small share in the company allowing it to expand and still maintaining some of the revenue. As I pass off the venture, I will move on to one of many different ventures that I could further develop into fully fledged businesses. By passing it on, I would have made my first step into becoming an entrepreneur. Also, by using this venture, I would have already developed many of the skills that I would need to further my future entrepreneurial concepts. It would also provide a perfect project to put on my resume should I chose to retire from the entrepreneurial lifestyle at any point in time.  

Feedback Summary:

For my first venture concept, I received mostly positive feedback within the comments I received. While I tried to maintain all of the aspects these feedbacks reflected, I also received several negative comments on which I know I had to change. I needed to clear up on how exactly I would maintain and expand revenue as my company grows. To do this, I included a section explaining on how I would still rely on advertisement even as my company expanded. Another one of my complaints was in the lack of explanation for my exit strategy. I added an explanation for when and what I would sell my business for. Finally, I smoothed out the wording and tried to increase the flow of all of the description of my venture concept.

Final Reflection

For me the most formative experience was the bug list, this was the one that shaped my entire mindset to that of the entrepreneur to begin with. The experience that I will remember most would be the venture concept as it seems like the entire semester was built around creating and perfecting it. My favorite experience was the combination of words assignment in which I tried unsuccessfully to get my word, “Serible” to catch on. The one that I am most proud of doing would be the third elevator pitch which was the buildup of the first two and the continual improvements that I made.

With these assignments in mind, I think I am one step closer to becoming an entrepreneur, though I do not think I am an entrepreneur yet. I have definitely developed the entrepreneurial mindset though. The recommendation I would have for students going down the same path would be to never give up despite the difficulties. To do the best in the course, I would recommend getting a head start on each of the assignments for the week. Finally, I would recommend taking the bug list assignment very seriously in order to ensure the fostering of the entrepreneurial mindset.

An Affirmation

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4MYHbD3jZWDZEdYQzEwaG54NGc/view?usp=sharing

My Exit Strategy

1.     I plan on expanding the business as much as possible in around 5 years. After that, I would try to sell it at as high of a price as possible, while still maintaining some stock in the company.

2.     I chose this exit strategy because as it stands I want to move on from this business and into another one, either by starting it or by joining another business. I want to continue to innovate in many different ways even after my first venture.

3.     My exit strategy has definitely influenced how I planned out my venture in the first place and how I spotted and grabbed my particular opportunity. From the beginning, I was always interested in minimizing cost and maximizing potential for growth and profits. I wanted to benefit and move on from my initial venture plan.

Venture Concept No.1

For my venture concept, I tried to find a need that was prevalent in my local community. For my community, I realized that there have been many unmet needs within the university of Florida itself. My primary concern was with the high degree of costs within the university itself and looking for student needs that are being either unmet or exploited in some way. For me, one of the most renewing “bugs” I have is the high cost of textbooks that I get each semester. This was the need I chose to explore in my venture concept.

This means that an opportunity is open. For many students, the cost of purchasing a textbook can be one of the priciest pieces of the semester. You can restrict yourself to renting but then you miss out on highlighting and annotating important sections. At the end of the semester you can get further shortchanged by selling the book back for significantly less than you purchased it for. This need was created because the university bookstore claimed an upcharge on every book that it sold and purchased. This need is located within every college town and in any university with an official bookstore, but in order to utilize this need, my venture concept will be localized to the Gainesville community.

As of now, this need is being satisfied through either simply ignoring the cost of buying and selling, renting the book, using craigslist to find other books, and the use of unofficial forums to locate other students with textbooks. Overall, students are not loyal to what they use and will easily switch over to anything that could offer a better service at a cheaper price. This opportunity is relatively large as it can be expanded to any and all books worldwide however, it is mostly focused on bookstores within college areas and is slightly smaller with that in mind. This opportunity’s “window” is also very large as it exists as long as universities and colleges exist worldwide, so there is no rush to deploy my venture as quickly as possible.

In order to exploit this opportunity, I want innovate by creating a website that would connect students who have just taken classes to ones about to take the same classes. This would connect students with books available for sale directly to those who wish to purchase books for their upcoming semester. The website would generate revenue exclusively through advertisements allowing students to buy and sell books with no middle man allowing students to easily obtain books without having to pay any extra cost. So for this instance, I am selling connections in exchange for advertisement revenue. This revenue would be small averaging around 25 cents every time someone clicks on an advertisement. This small revenue would be counterbalanced by the minimal cost to run at around 10 dollars a year. This maximizes profit as I would only need someone to click on an advertisement 40 times a year to break even. Any other additional click would be additional income. This would also mean that I could easily expand at little to no cost to other areas.

Finally, this opportunity and innovation would culminate into a fully-fledged venture concept. Customers would switch over to my website for price savings from traditional methods. Getting them to switch would be rather difficult however as news of the website would have to travel over time and spread and rapid expansion would be unlikely at the start of the website. The competitors to my venture would be the official university bookstore, amazon, and any other local bookstores as well as services like craigslist that also help connect students to other booksellers. Packaging, price points, distribution, and business location are all inapplicable to this particular venture concept. Customer support and customer experience do play an important role in my business concept however. Customer support would be maintained through a support email address in a contact us page within the website. As the business expands, customer service could be outsourced to a secondary business that would control the objective for several different geographical locations at once furthering the minimization of costs overall. Finally, as the business expands further to many different geographical locations around the united states, I would organize a complete business to support the ongoing production of my service. I would employee one or two web developers to continually update and expand the websites to further accommodate students around the United States. As the website develops further, roles would begin to emerge such as an expansion department, a customer service department, and a design department.

Overall, the venture concept would culminate in eventual expansion internationally. I definitely think that the most valuable asset to my business venture will be the very maintainable costs to run the website and incredibly low breakeven point. This aspect alone makes the venture worth pursuing as the risk is almost none at startup. After I hand my business off, the venture will hopefully grow and spread to many different geographical regions, possibly even expanding its services provided beyond simply connecting students to now acting as a buying and selling service with minimal markup. As I pass off the venture, I will move on to one of many different ventures that I could further develop into fully fledged businesses. By passing it on, I would have made my first step into becoming an entrepreneur. Also, by using this venture, I would have already developed many of the skills that I would need to further my future entrepreneurial concepts. It would also provide a perfect project to put on my resume should I chose to retire from the entrepreneurial lifestyle at any point in time.  

Celebrating Failure

In this semester of Ent3003, I failed. For the first week of comments, I noticed that not everyone in my assigned group of people to comment on did the assignment. I was overjoyed as I now only had to comment on a single post. I really should have read the assignment details as it stated that you MUST comment on 3 posts even if you have to comment on someone outside of your assigned group. I took the easy way out and it cost me the point. From that point on I learned to take extra time to read the details behind every assignment and to always comment on three posts for each comment assignment. Failure hurts but it is the only true way to improve upon your past self. This class has also changed my perspective on said failure as now I view it as the only way to truly succeed is by first failing. I think I am much more likely to take a risk now than I was before this class. 

Elevator Pitch No. 3

For my final elevator pitch, I changed the angle of the camera as that was the number one most suggested thing in the comments of the previous. Other than that, the feedback was mostly positive so I tried to be concise and clear as possible.