Final Reflection

Final Reflection

       Watching the videos has been one of the most memorable segments of this course, our professor has great energy and charisma. The second part I learned the most was doing the elevator pitches, they make the idea come alive and even in my living room it feels great afterwards. Especially when you produce nice content and can get the message across.  Another great part of the class has was the interviews and hashing out more and more detail about our opportunity belief, I’m going to keep this blog for many years. 

     

Venture Concept No.2

Opportunity 

I think there’s an opportunity to promote extra knowledge to shy folks or deterrence by uninterested people. What I’m referring to is dealing with rejection before being rejected and at the same time keeping others away without having to say no or be in an uncomfortable situation. Meanwhile you can still use this tool to gather intel for you and set yourself up for success.
  This opportunity is a dating app, a dating app that displays the profiles of those also on it within 50 yards from you, within eye contact distance. A dating app that will increase the odds of David that would rather not talk to Ashley because he assumes she has a boyfriend and will reject him.
  Current dating apps are outdated and don’t work within eye contact distances, some females are using tinder only as swiping entertainment to see how many matches they can get without following through, and even meeting up is difficult because you have never seen this person before and it can be awkward.  Also, current dating apps have you write paragraphs about yourself like it’s some type of interview; it’s not effective.
  In my high school days, you either talked to somebody face to face or were introduced to somebody by a friend or relative then liked each other, all in person-- real spark. This app promotes that. Here is how it would work and the problems it would solve: so, Fred is afraid of rejection and is too shy to speak to Kate, what he doesn’t know is that Kate thinks he’s cute and is single too; Fred doesn’t commit, a lose lose situation for both. In my opportunity belief app, both parties will be able to see each other’s pictures after glazing at one another in person first. However, Fred will have access to fragments of information disclosed by Kate already, increasing his odds of success. For example, single, not interested in anything, or only into carrots.
  This opportunity can also solve the problem of certain people who rather not have others approach them for xyz reason, Kate sees Josh has “Married and in love” under his picture, so she stays away from him and keeps looking around. Knowledge is power, and this app gives folks more knowledge about this alluring person seating across from them without throwing away their shot.
  What are the forces or changes in the environment creating this opportunity? People are shy. These days they are socially distant and even awkward in person. Yet, folks still feel attraction for others and want to date, but don’t have the willingness to talk to a total stranger and get to know them because of fear of rejection.
How is this market defined geographically and demographically? Anybody that is over 18 and in the United States is in the market, this app can be downloaded everywhere the user has access to the internet, also used anywhere where your phone has signal and users decide to activate it.
  How are customers currently satisfying this need? They are either brave or using other dating applications, or both. How loyal are they to whatever they use now? Their loyalty depends on how their experience with the app went, or if it even worked once for them. Also, if they go out and potential partners keep turning them down, people might lose faith on themselves and stop trying.
  How big is this opportunity? This opportunity is unique, and I think due to how everybody is glued to their phone screens these days it will help increase the usage of it. How long will the “window of opportunity” be open? I believe it will stay open until another individual with the same entrepreneurial abilities and experiences as mine realizes this need and comes up with the same idea.

Innovation 

This dating app brings added values to going out and meeting a new potential partner, creates a friendlier more effective approach to what current mobile dating applications provide. This dating app business will charge Standard users $1 a month and Alpha users $3 dollars for their advanced premium experience, including more tools and services. The charges will start after a free month of use.

Changes and adaptations

The changes and adaptations I will employ moving forward will be, (1) a good lawyer, (2) Have my staff sign a non-compete and (3) have a power of attorney ready and established in case something happens to me.

My Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy 

My exit strategy. I do not intend to sell the dating app in the next five years. For now, I intend to grow it, watch it crawl, walk and sprint. Folks in charge of managing it will still report to me and the strategies will still be over watched by me for the foreseeable 10-year future.
After getting started I will continue to find more problems and make more businesses, maybe later the right call is to sell it, maybe I choose to keep it, it depends on how well it gets established. I believe I chose this exit strategy because I came up with the app, it’s purpose and it’s intended use, I don’t think I would like to let it go and watch others drift from my original idea. For each business that I own my exit strategy can vary. I might open a shooting range / gun store and pass it down to my kids if they want it.

Celebrating Failure

“Failure”

         I have experienced failures in multiple ways. Some ways I have failed have totally been my fault, which happen to hurt the most. Keeping me humble or living in the past with regret at times. Failure hurts me, however with it I gain experience and factual data on what to and not do regarding the certain failure.

Depending on what the failure is, it varies how much of it I can take before giving up or also depending on the failure it depends how much it hurts each time it happens. Failure is a teacher, a painful one. With failure I have also felt the other side. The euphoric side where I feel alive, unstoppable, when the risk I took paid off or I challenged my self and followed through with it, regardless of the outcome. 

This semester I failed at my new job, twice, doing different things. The first failure was my inability of realizing a customer wrote his name wrong on a form and then trusting the system to correct it without double checking, in other words, the grammatical mistake stayed wrong. My supervisor found out and told me “it happens, everybody in this room has been written up before for that,” I felt bad but not very stressed, it was a common issue in my line of work. 

My second failure, I took home with me for a few days and it hurt. I failed to ask what “events” meant next to my name in the schedule, it led to me not knowing I had to work that day, so I didn’t show up. The following week multiple managers asked me “why didn’t I show up to work?” I had to apologize to four different managers for my dumb, new guy mistake. 

The third failure wasn’t my fault. At the beginning of spring break, I drove down to Tampa to visit my parents, thirty minuets into my visit, they had a total economic, behavioral and marriage collapse, right in front of me. My mother’s failure to keep her composure led to her quitting her job, loosing her car and jeopardizing her marriage. This failure followed me for a few weeks, made me responsible for her actions and inactions, having a ripple effect in all my other day to day activities.

I think failure can potentially make you stronger, experienced and wise. However, too much, and too harsh of failures can chip away parts of you that you later can’t get back. The effect depends on how the individual responds to it.  

           

What’s Next?

Existing Market

What is next is making the app, making it public and ready to be downloaded and used. Following that is an advertising campaign if possible, we have different strategies for that with different costs.  Then as time goes on, users continue to download it more and more, we’ll spend more on higher cost advertisement. At the same time, we will have to maintain control on debugging and updating the application properly, making sure folks are happy with it and are having a user-friendly experience, that will help increase growth some more.
We hit the streets again. Finding Gainesville’s finest candidates for my dating app in Midtown, Downtown and on campus. The first interview, she told us we need to also plan for a strategy to attract equal levels of genders, she mentioned that if the ratio it too uneven it can cause a ripple effect and make it fail. Our second interview led us to the argument of having a very restricted and segmented market, he told us that this dating app, if used properly will only be used while going out and being around people, how he would like some type of feature to be able to look back at who was around him, like a “surroundings history”, he described. That was an interesting point of view he had. Interview number three, told us to make sure the app does what it’s supposed too without much complexity, in other words “to keep it simple, stupid” that if we start to get complicated with too many settings and preferences, it would deter people more than it will help our growth strategy in the long run.
Performance, the dating app must work smoothly, be fast and to the point. I need to keep in mind that it’s intent is for it to complement somebody sparking up a conversation with somebody else. If we home in the functionality, advertisement, updates and positive popularity, it will sell like hot cakes.

New Market 

The different market is the Business Advertisement / Services Wanted end of the same platform. Here we’re targeting a totally different use for the same application. Value creation in this venture is accomplished by providing users with a craigslist style post it yourself method also available within eye contact distances, for quick business. I interviewed the same people, they also fit this different market venture. Their recommendations on this part of the interview were helpful. In this aspect I would highly consider the history of who was around the user, as well as more complexity in the settings and postings, for a more in-depth description of either what the user is offering or what the user is requesting.
In conclusion, the new market venture is just as good if not better than the original opportunity belief. This new market appears very attractive, it would be a different application under the same platform. For the same or different users.   

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity 

I think there’s an opportunity to promote extra knowledge to shy folks or deterrence by uninterested people. What I’m referring to is dealing with rejection before being rejected and at the same time keeping others away without having to say no or be in an uncomfortable situation. Meanwhile you can still use this tool to gather intel for you and set yourself up for success.
 This opportunity is a dating app, a dating app that displays the profiles of those also on it within 50 yards from you, within eye contact distance. A dating app that will increase the odds of David that would rather not talk to Ashley because he assumes she has a boyfriend and will reject him.
Current dating apps are outdated and don’t work within eye contact distances, some females are using tinder only as swiping entertainment to see how many matches they can get without following through, and even meeting up is difficult because you have never seen this person before and it can be awkward.  Also, current dating apps have you write paragraphs about yourself like it’s some type of interview; it’s not effective.
  In my high school days, you either talked to somebody face to face or were introduced to somebody by a friend or relative then liked each other, all in person-- real spark. This app promotes that. Here is how it would work and the problems it would solve: so, Fred is afraid of rejection and is too shy to speak to Kate, what he doesn’t know is that Kate thinks he’s cute and is single too; Fred doesn’t commit, a lose lose situation for both. In my opportunity belief app, both parties will be able to see each other’s pictures after glazing at one another in person first. However, Fred will have access to fragments of information disclosed by Kate already, increasing his odds of success. For example, single, not interested in anything, or only into carrots.
  This opportunity can also solve the problem of certain people who rather not have others approach them for xyz reason, Kate sees Josh has “Married and in love” under his picture, so she stays away from him and keeps looking around. Knowledge is power, and this app gives folks more knowledge about this alluring person seating across from them without throwing away their shot.
What are the forces or changes in the environment creating this opportunity? People are shy. These days they are socially distant and even awkward in person. Yet, folks still feel attraction for others and want to date, but don’t have the willingness to talk to a total stranger and get to know them because of fear of rejection.
How is this market defined geographically and demographically? Anybody that is over 18 and in the United States is in the market, this app can be downloaded everywhere the user has access to the internet, also used anywhere where your phone has signal and users decide to activate it. 
How are customers currently satisfying this need? They are either brave or using other dating applications, or both. How loyal are they to whatever they use now? Their loyalty depends on how their experience with the app went, or if it even worked once for them. Also, if they go out and potential partners keep turning them down, people might lose faith on themselves and stop trying. 
How big is this opportunity? This opportunity is unique, and I think due to how everybody is glued to their phone screens these days it will help increase the usage of it.
How long will the “window of opportunity” be open? I believe it will stay open until another individual with the same entrepreneurial abilities and experiences as mine realizes this need and comes up with the same idea.

Innovation 

This dating app brings added values to going out and meeting a new potential partner, creates a friendlier more effective approach to what current mobile dating applications provide. This dating app business will charge Standard users $1 a month and Alpha users $3 dollars for their advanced premium experience, including more tools and services. The charges will start after a free month of use.      

Venture Concept

What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product? Well, reason number one would be that it would provide extra help and support dating, at any given public place people see each other. How hard will it be to get them to switch? They don’t need to switch; the user can keep their other ways of dating and use this one as complementary to their system. 
Who are the competitors?  What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities? The competitors are other established mobile dating applications, however, none of them have my way of doing things, or use provide a service like mine does, my app is unique. 
What role does packaging, your price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location play (if any) in defining your business concept? No packaging, the costumer experience is all in the app, we will develop the most attractive, user friendly platform we can. Distribution will be through the google, apple store and there will be multiple price points, for standard and premium users to select from.     
How would you organize a “business” to support the ongoing production of your new product, service, or process? How many employees? What roles are in the venture? Including myself we would start with a team of four or five people, doing this in our spare time while continuing or regular jobs until this app makes more than our day jobs do and or it requires more time than what we can devote to it.

Elevator Pitch No. 3

So I used the feedback from my last elevator pitch and added the name of the app to it, as well as a little more depth to its use. From the first elevator pitch to this one I definitely feel more comfortable in front of the camera