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.