Week 15 Reading Reflection

I thought it was very surprising that Akula was able to take the principle of microfinance and use it to form a profitable model. Despite reading the article it's still somewhat confusing to me how they manage to act against their short term interests and still manage to make profits, although at razor thin margins. If I could ask the author two questions, I would ask which part of his 3-tier model for BOP is the most important. Moreover, I'd ask what his most effective tool in gaining volume for his business is. Due to the author's success, there's not really anything I disagree with him on in this article.

Final Reflection

I thought creating my Venture Concept post was the most formative experience because it forced me to really sit down and think out my venture concept and some of the other important details that would go into making it a reality. I had fun doing the Free Money exercise and I am most proud of myself for completing the Very Short Interview with an Entrepreneur.

While I still consider myself an aspiring Business Analyst, I think I have definitely moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset with all the things I've learned from this class.

To students taking this course, the advice I would give them would be to get things done early. Assignments are due at 9 so you can't wait until the last minute and some assignments, such as interviewing an entrepreneur can take time so it's important to start assignments before their due date. I would also tell students to have open minds and to have fun with the assignments. The more open-minded students are, the more easily they'll develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

Elevator Pitch No. 4

The feedback I received was pretty positive. In this pitch I tried to pause instead of using verbal crutches, like "um" and tried to relate to students who would probably really like to use my app as finals approach, stress levels rise, and the libraries become more crowded.

Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

My group of customers with unmet or under-met needs is UF students who are pursuing a business or accounting major, or a business minor. Over time, depending how successful my business idea is, I’d like to expand my opportunity to include other UF students pursuing different majors in the other colleges. The market is somewhat undefined geographically, and typically defined demographically by students aged 18-22. While most users would be located in Gainesville during the fall and spring semesters, there are students that go abroad or take classes online over the summer from other locations.

My market’s needs are both unmet and under-met, depending on how much coursework a student has completed. Students enrolled in prerequisite courses, such as Principles of Marketing, Principles of Management, and Intro to Financial Accounting have their needs under-met, while students taking major courses, such as Equity and Capital Markets or Consumer Behavior have unmet needs. Study Edge and Smokin’ Notes are good for learning the material, but Study Edge focuses more on the mathematical portions of the classes they offer. The conceptual portion of the curriculum that is still tested on isn’t touched on very much during the review sessions, leaving opportunity to better meet this need. Moreover, Smokin’ Notes are useful for understanding the material since they present it in laymen’s terms. However, they’re very lengthy and therefore not as useful for memorizing key terms and concepts because of the time it takes to find a particular term or topic amongst their 90+ pages. Although students are loyal to these programs, not all of their classes are offered by them, leaving a huge opportunity to fulfill a completely unmet need.

Innovation

I am providing a service in the form of an application where students can play various study games, single-player or with their classmates, with content specific to their professors’ curriculums. These games include trivia (similar to the format of QuizUp), Jeopardy, mix & match games (rearranging things to put them in the right place; good for accounting, equations/ratios, graphs/charts, and pneumonics), and crossword puzzles. Students can play against their friends by sending each other special links to their games, or they can be matched up randomly with another student using the app.

The app will be free to download, but access to the app’s content will be available for a $9.99 annual fee. This fee will include 25 free tokens. Moreover the app will feature in-app purchases, namely tokens. Single-player games and random match-ups will cost 5 tokens each, but not games against friends. When students play these games, they’ll earn tokens for the questions they get right, which can then be used to purchase single-player or random match-up rounds. Because students would most likely want to avoid using up tokens, they might invite their friends to play first, who would have to pay the $9.99 fee. Moreover, when tokens are used up students will be willing to pay for more because they’ll be inexpensive, and students may really need the extra review.

Venture Concept

My innovation will address the opportunity identified by providing students with quick, fun study games to promote memorization of key terms and concepts, equations, charts and graphs, etc. This service alone isn’t provided to students through Study Edge or Smokin’ Notes. Moreover, my service will provide material for all UF business courses, rather than just the ones with large enrollments. Customers will purchase this because it’s affordable, compared to the $200+ other resources cost per semester. This is especially important for students that are paying their way through school or have to worry about various other expenses, like rent, and can’t afford Study Edge or Tutoring Zone memberships. Moreover, it’s a great and entertaining way to review and help process information after learning a hefty amount of material, and it promotes memorization.

My competitors are technically the popular study resources, like Study Edge, Tutoring Zone, and Smokin’ Notes. Their biggest vulnerability is that they only offer review material for the very large classes. However, my intention isn’t necessarily for students to cancel their Study Edge/TZ memberships and to stop buying Smokin’ Notes; my service is supposed to be a supplement to these resources. The reason being, that these services teach students the material, and my service helps them apply what they were taught so it sinks in better.

My venture would require a team with the IT skills to create an app and be able to update and make changes regularly. Moreover, I’d need around 15 employees (subject to change) to and take notes on professors’ lecture slides and the class textbook(s), and be able to update them regularly; keeping in mind each employee could be responsible for more than one class.

Three Minor Elements

1.    I have a large market with a potentially high level of demand, very competitive pricing, and the networking capabilities to spread the word.

2.    The next step for my venture would be to expand to the courses of the other majors and colleges, and perhaps even move on to graduate-level courses.

3.    In all honesty, in the future I could see this as maybe being a side-gig since I’m in school to study finance, and information systems and operations management. Being an entrepreneur doesn’t really coincide with my vision, which is having a desk job and job security (riveting, I know).

Summary of Feedback

I received a lot of positive feedback on my first Venture Concept post. People really seemed to like how it's available in app form which makes it very accessible and doesn't require the motivation to grab all your study gear and forage for a spot at the library, especially now. The feedback I received also indicated that they really liked how my service is tailor-made for my customers' courses they're currently enrolled in. I did not receive any negative feedback.

Because I received 100% positive feedback, I don't think there are areas of my venture concept that need changing. If anything, I could include that I would be open to partnering with one of the big tutoring resources, such as Smokin' Notes, when I go on to sell my business. 

Week 14 Reading Reflection

I thought the most interesting part of the reading came from the section on P&G's innovation unit, FutureWorks. It was surprising to read about because I didn't know that they had their own innovation unit so it stood out from the reading to learn about how their strategy is as successful as it is. I was somewhat confused by intracapital. If I could ask the author two things, I'd ask for examples of intracapital. Moreover, I would ask the author for his opinions on the importance of ecopreneurship and ecovision. I disagree with part of the reading that was about 3M's key rules. The first rule was to never kill a project, yet the second was to tolerate failure. I disagree because sometimes it's no longer worth it to use resources on a failing project.

Going for Google Gold

1.) In completing my assignments I wasn't entirely conscious of SEO and therefore did not incorporate methods to optimize it. If anything I was repetitive in my vocabulary. What I could have done was tag my posts with things other than the week number they corresponded to.

2.) I did not really have any unique key words since my titles were those stated in the assignment description. The only key word may be my name and ENT3003.

3.) I did not use social media to promote my blog. Since I only see my blog as a class assignment I didn't want to flood my friends' news feeds with something they'd consider uninteresting.

4.) Venture Concept No. 1 was my most "viral" post, with 5 comments. I think this is so because it was probably the most detailed post about my venture concept.

5.) By Googling "Hayley Milam ENT3003" I was the first result that popped up.

Very Short Interview With an Entrepreneur, Pt. 2

Initially I interviewed Mitch Nelson, a graduate from Florida State University that started his own business, DivvyUp socks, from participating in an entrepreneurship program. My impression of the initial interview remains somewhat similar, however I can better understand how his business came to be from taking this course. 

Due to location differences, I could not meet face-to-face with Mr. Nelson.
I asked him the following questions.

1. Why do you think your product has been so successful?
"I think my product has been successful because it feeds a person's need to do good for the community while providing them with a useful product. Our product being socks helped grow our business because we noticed, at least on our campus, the growing trend in cool, unique socks among males and females, and this trend aligned with the needs of the homeless we're seeking to address."

2. What business move played the largest role in growing your business?
"Starting this idea on a college campus made networking easier as well as getting our business idea across to students, faculty, and eventually other Tallahassee residents. I would also say moving our business online played a huge role in DivvyUp's development by expanding the amount of consumers we could reach."

3. If you could have done anything different, what would you have done and why?
"I'm very happy with the story and success of DivvyUp, so to change the way we developed our business could mean a different current standing. If anything, I wish we would have brought our business online earlier since we did take some time to make that happen, despite tons of positive feedback and suggestions pertaining to the idea of a website."

After taking this class and having a better understanding of the requirements of turning a venture concept into a successful business, I was more comfortable talking about entrepreneurship. The interview was definitely less awkward this time, but I did emphasize the purpose of this assignment was for a class that I was taking for elective credit.