Final Reflection

1. This course over the summer has flown by faster than I expected. Reading back to the first few posts that I did, I can really see a change in how I approach new ideas and how I formulate thoughts to fit into this entrepreneurial mindset that this class has been teaching me. This class definitely had its ups and downs. From the thought-provoking assignments of creating your own opportunity, to the dreadful interviews with tons of people, this class has definitely been an experience that has made me a better student and person.

2. The most formative experience was the actual process of identifying an opportunity and someones unmet need, and slowly develop that into my own business idea. One experience that I will for sure remember is practicing my elevator pitch to my family. A joyous experience was all the positive feedbacks I received from my peers at the end of the class where I presented by finalized business concept.

3. I definitely think I have developed more of that entrepreneur mindset. I have learned to think things outside the traditional way and to embrace failure. Overall I have developed a way of thinking that I did not have before taking this class.

4. Some recommendations for future students in this class is to be prepared. There have been times where unexpected events pop up that will hinder you from doing the assignments. Since this class is structured in a unique way where everything can be done beforehand, use that to your advantage. Also, to have fun and don't be afraid to be unconventional with your ideas. One thing I enjoyed the most about this class was that most of the assignments gave the students the freedom to take it to whichever direction they wanted. This class provides you with opportunities to receive feedback on your wildest ideas, so definitely free feel to think outside the box.

                                            

Venture Concept 2

Venture Concept for EZPark v.2

Opportunity 

• The group of people that has the need that my idea is seeking to meet are people that drive on college campuses are often run into the issue of having a hard time finding parking spaces. This can be students, professors, staff, faculties, etc. The nature of the need is based on the person's desire to spend time and allocate the time spent looking for open spots on something that they find more meaningful. 
• The forces in the environment that are creating this need are the increasing amount of population and the limited amount of land for parking spots to be created. 
• Geographically, the market will be defined within the boundaries of populated areas, specifically college campuses. Demographically, the market will cater towards typical college students age from 18-28.
• The customers are currently satisfying the need by doing short cups such as risking a ticket to park somewhere illegally, or paying a lot of money for a spot near by the school and walking. They are not loyal to their current situation and are very willing to look and adapt if new ways occur. 
• The opportunity is fairly big as the issue of parking will only continue to get worse if the status quo remains the same and nothing changes.
• The window of opportunity will be open as long as people are still struggling to find parking in the traditional way.

Innovation 

• My innovation that seeks to meet the customers need about parking is an application that allows the users to see near by vacant parking spots that are most recent. By utilizing locational services as well working with the school to log all the parking spots on campus, the app will have a system where users can mark a spot as either taken/vacant. The app will also utilize a time stamp as to how long ago the spot was marked vacant to provide users the most accurate and updated version of the parking spots. Users to encouraged through a reward system to mark the spots as they use to app as a way to self-maintain the system and keep it updated. I have surveyed the main group of people that I want to cater this app to, and overwhelmingly the people liked the idea but they said they wouldn't want to pay for the app. The way for my idea to make money is to have brands such as Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Nike, Chipotle; brands that are popular among college students to have their ads as well as their brand being part of the rewards to pay the business to advertise as the main source of income. Although it might be difficult for a start up business to gain the attention of big brands like those listed, that is where my social capital in having connections would help.

Venture 

• My innovation will address the opportunity I identified because people are tired of looking for spots by just driving around and wasting their time. It provides the users with a faster and easier way to find parking. Especially in a period of time where technology is so accessible for everyone, an application that seeks to solve one of the most common yet traditional issue in a modern way that also provides the users with rewards is the reason why customers will want this application/ 
• Customers will want to switch to this method because it will save them time and is overall a more conventional way to solve their problem. It won't be hard for them to switch at all because all they need to do is download the app. 
• The competitor could possibly be the city of Gainesville and their street parking decal. The weaknesses for those is that is costs quite a bit of money and street parking is sometimes far from campus. 
• Only customer experience play in my business concept because the application is reliant and the users to follow the mechanisms. 
• I would organize the business in a small but cohesive way. Few technician and programmer to ensure that the application is running efficiently at all times, as well as a few people catered towards getting sponsorships. When hiring, I would prefer those people to have access to cars and be able to drive just for the times where we need the application to be accurate. 

Reflection 

• I think my most important resources are the human/social capital, the large amount of customers that are ready and present for the idea to launch, as well as my personal connections that will make the process of branding and reaching out to other businesses so much easier.
• I want to tackle cities if the idea works well first at college campuses, and then keep moving on to larger populations.
• I want to continue to develop ideas despite if this current one succeeds or fails. This first venture provided me with great background and backbone to how businesses work and what mindset is needed to do well.

Feedback reflection/Changes 

• One major feedback I received from people was that my approach of hiring drivers to go around campus and help the application be as accurate as possible in terms of parking spots wasn't the most cost effective approach. I thought this opinion was extremely valid so I reflected that change it in the business structure part. I took out hiring drivers but instead would prefer to hire people in the positions that I need such as programmers to have the ability to drive. This way if I really need people to drive around campus, I wouldn't have to spend an extra paycheck just for people to drive.
• Another concern that was voiced was that although my idea of having sponsorships and ad was a good idea, it will be hard to get those brands to work with a new business. To fix that, I added the social capital that I had listed for the growing your capital assignment where one of my experts had direct connections with big corporate brands.

Reading Reflection 3

1. The book I chose for this assignment is How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. The book discusses many common concepts within businesses and life that he thinks is wrong. For example, Adams believe that instead of setting goals, like what most of us are taught to do, set up a system that creates the process of obtaining your goal. Another main component of Adam's book discusses the importance of self-maintenance. He argues that the top priority to focus on for yourself is yourself. As you maintain your health, family, and relationships, then you will do a far better job at your business and/or employment.

2. It connect with what ENT3003 has been teaching me by both preaching the concept of prioritizing elements whether it is in your life or your business, we tried to find out which resources is your 'secret sauce' in which Adam's book points towards the fact that is yourself that is most important.

3. If I were to create an assignment for the class that relates to this novel, I would have the students create a system for their goal. Have them first set a goal that want to accomplish, then create a detailed process that explains what they have to do on the daily basis as well as general tasks that they need to do and accomplish that will eventually help them achieve their goal.

4. A surprising element of the book to me was the part where Adams discuss how success creates passion, and you shouldn't really prioritize passion in your employment. This really caught me by surprise because I've heard so many times, from successful people to my own parents, that if you chase your passion, you will be successful. However, Adam's approach to these two concepts was dramatically different from what I was used to.

Your Exit Strategy

1. My ideal exit strategy for my business would be to hold on to it for a while and see how things are. There wouldn't be any reasons that I can see now where I sell the business in the foreseeable future. Unless the workload becomes unbearable or it interferes with my personal life and goals, I would like to keep the business and tell my children about it.

2. The reasons for my strategy is because my business is an application that doesn't require a a large amount of human capital, and it is very unlikely for the business to expand into something huge where I am incapable of being in charge of it. However, I am not against the idea of selling the business if it gains momentum and I feel like that part of my life is done.

3. I think my strategy of hoping to keep the business by my side has influenced my decisions about the opportunity in a way that I am not so concerned about the application making a huge profit, but more so just solving peoples needs. I'd be making decisions to maximize my businesses chances of making a lot of profit if I had the goal of selling it in the future.

Celebrating Failure

1. An example of failure that I experienced recently was my inability to find a job during the start of the summer. I had the goal of working during this summer to try and save up some money for the future. When summer started, I began to apply for typical job positions that a freshmen college student would fit for (retail, restaurant, etc) However, I wasn't able to get any of the jobs that I had applied for, mainly due to the fact that the employers told me that they aren't really looking for seasonal workers. I was fairly discouraged at all my failed attempts.

2. I learned the importance of not giving up after your failures. Soon after my first couple attempts fell short, I found a great opportunity in a summer camp working as a counselor. It taught me how crucial and important it is to keep trying and reaching for the goal even if failure happened.

3. I typically don't like to deal with failure, after all, who does. However, I have realized that failure is inevitable and it is far better to treat it as a lesson and room for improvement rather to shy away from it. This class also showed me that failures are common especially in businesses, and how you respond to it can mean the difference between total failure or succeeding.

What's Next

Existing Market 

I believe the next step for my venture concept is to improve on the mechanism behind the application. The whole concept of being user-driven has some flaws within it. Also to finalize on the programming part and have the technology created. Once that is done, it will be to reach out to brands to make agreements on advertising.
After interviewing people within the market, the general feedbacks I received were that the application should take into account scooters and scooter parking. The reason behind this they said is because on our campus, there are more people that own and ride a scooter than driving an actual car. Scooter parking is something I haven't thought of including within the app.
It makes the most sense to establish contacts with the school to register to parking spots on campus within the system, and to also have programmers program those spots within the algorithms. I believe the technology part is at the forefront of the business plan.

New Market 

A different target from what I am trying to target would be older generation of people that also have the problem of parking but don't necessarily have the same availability or usage of smart phones and apps. This is a completely different market because my venture concept relies heavily on the people using technology. This market presents a huge hurdle to get over.
An initial idea I had to cater to those people is to set up a phone line where they can call and receive the same updated version of parking map instead of having to utilize the app itself.
The result  of the interviews were in line of what I expected, most older people would rather just look around for parking spots instead of calling a number and asking for directions. They also presented a good problem for the venture itself of how will the company make profit off those callers. This is a huge problem that makes the new market far less attractive than the existing one.

Venture Concept

Venture Concept for EZPark

Opportunity 

• The group of people that has the need that my idea is seeking to meet are people that drive on college campuses are often run into the issue of having a hard time finding parking spaces. This can be students, professors, staff, faculties, etc. The nature of the need is based on the person's desire to spend time and allocate the time spent looking for open spots on something that they find more meaningful. 
• The forces in the environment that are creating this need are the increasing amount of population and the limited amount of land for parking spots to be created. 
• Geographically, the market will be defined within the boundaries of populated areas, specifically college campuses. Demographically, the market will cater towards typical college students age from 18-28.
• The customers are currently satisfying the need by doing short cups such as risking a ticket to park somewhere illegally, or paying a lot of money for a spot near by the school and walking. They are not loyal to their current situation and are very willing to look and adapt if new ways occur. 
• The opportunity is fairly big as the issue of parking will only continue to get worse if the status quo remains the same and nothing changes.
• The window of opportunity will be open as long as people are still struggling to find parking.

Innovation 

• My innovation that seeks to meet the customers need about parking is an application that allows the users to see near by vacant parking spots that are most recent. By utilizing locational services as well working with the school to log all the parking spots on campus, the app will have a system where users can mark a spot as either taken/vacant. The app will also utilize a time stamp as to how long ago the spot was marked vacant to provide users the most accurate and updated version of the parking spots. Users to encouraged through a reward system to mark the spots as they use to app as a way to self-maintain the system and keep it updated. I have surveyed the main group of people that I want to cater this app to, and overwhelmingly the people liked the idea but they said they wouldn't want to pay for the app. The way for my idea to make money is to have brands such as Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Nike, Chipotle; brands that are popular among college students to have their ads as well as their brand being part of the rewards to pay the business to advertise as the main source of income. 

Venture 

• My innovation will address the opportunity I identified because people are tired of looking for spots by just driving around and wasting their time. It provides the users with a faster and easier way to find parking. Especially in a period of time where technology is so accessible for everyone, an application that seeks to solve one of the most common yet traditional issue in a modern way that also provides the users with rewards is the reason why customers will want this application/ 
• Customers will want to switch to this method because it will save them time and is overall a more conventional way to solve their problem. It won't be hard for them to switch at all because all they need to do is download the app. 
• The competitor could possibly be the city of Gainesville and their street parking decal. The weaknesses for those is that is costs quite a bit of money and street parking is sometimes far from campus. 
• Only customer experience play in my business concept because the application is reliant and the users to follow the mechanisms. 
• I would organize the business in a small but cohesive way. I want to have a few drivers that will be hired to go around the campus and mark spots as open/taken just so the map stays updated even if users aren't marking them. As well as having people that seek to connect with brands in terms of advertising. 

Reflection 

• I think my most important resources are the human/social capital, the large amount of customers that are ready and present for the idea to launch, as well as my personal connections that will make the process of branding and reaching out to other businesses so much easier.
• I want to tackle cities if the idea works well first at college campuses, and then keep moving on to larger populations.
• I want to continue to develop ideas despite if this current one succeeds or fails. This first venture provided me with great background and backbone to how businesses work and what mindset is needed to do well.