Venture Concept No. 1

Venture Concept No. 1 

I. Opportunity 

An opportunity may be defined as a group of customers with unmet or under-met needs. When you describe the opportunity you have identified, you need to be sure to describe both (1) who has the need (i.e., who are the potential customers?) and (2) the nature of the need. Other questions you should address in this section:

·       What are the forces or changes in the environment creating this opportunity? 

      The forces creating my opportunity, defined as the issues inherent to living with roommates, is created by (but not limited to) the opposing perspectives, social tendencies, living habits, and traditions that every person has. Regardless if you live in same city, people live and behave differently in their household because that’s the normal thing to do. Upon moving to a communal house, or even a shared bedroom with roommates, this all changes due to the different living styles and factors listed above. Furthermore, it is very challenging, and in some cases impossible to be forced to live a certain fashion – and this provides the most fuel to this problem where roommates don not work together.

·       How is this market defined geographically and demographically?

      For the entire semester, I identified University of Florida students as my sole customer, but in result of the “What’s Next?” assignment, I have changed my customer range to be from 15-18 years old. With these demographics, my company can serve the age group (through workshops/events) that is expected to live with roommates in the near future; assuming after their high school graduation. Geographically, I can theoretically provide my service anywhere, though I would focus my efforts in a particularly college town first before expanding to others.

·       How are customers currently satisfying this need?  And how loyal are they to whatever they use now? 

      Currently, my customers are not satisfying this need at all unless they are being actively trained and conditioned by their parents, teachers, relatives, or friends. Further, most of my customers are not necessarily concerning themselves over how to live peacefully with roommates (I know I wasn’t at that age). In result, there is practically no loyalty to anything because there aren’t other companies that have implemented a system that could create customer loyalty in the first place.

·       How big is this opportunity?

      This opportunity is massive. There are millions of people that meet my parameters in the United States that will most definitely experience future issues living with roommates.

·       How long will the “window of opportunity” be open?

      

      This question is quite hard to determine because there’s no saying as to when a person will think of the same idea I have proposed. Moreover, it can happen at any point in time since all the necessary technology and resources are available and only getting better.

II. Innovation 

In this section, I would like to you discuss your innovation in moderate detail. Explain what it is, what it does, and how it works. You should also describe how you will make money – in other words, what, exactly, are you selling and for how much? For instance, if I was starting a business to teach people how to play the piano, I would be selling an hour of my time for $50.

My innovation is recognizing a huge unmet customer need and exploiting it by providing workshops and events that will teach/expose students how to live effectively with roommates. In the past three years of my higher education, only one class briefly talked about this issue, a class that was created to get us prepared for transferring from a community college to a university. Basically, my company could pitch to high schools or other related high school programs to host a series of workshop or events at their school – or somewhere offsite if need be. For pricing, I am not entirely certain what we would charge but I’m sure it would be upwards of $5,000 for a two or three-part series.

III. Venture Concept  

A venture concept may be defined as the application of a specific innovation to address a specific opportunity. In this section, describe how your innovation will solve or address the opportunity you identified. You also want to explain why customers will buy your innovation. In describing the concept, you also want to be sure to cover issues such as:

·       What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product?  How hard will it be to get them to switch? 

My customers are not switching over to my product, since no other product possesses market share for my opportunity. This is great simply because this product is entirely new, but also bad because if my company truly takes off, new competition will be introduced proving different products or services.  

·       Who are the competitors?  What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities?

It is unclear who my direct competitors since the market for my opportunity does not exist and is not being recognized. With such low recognition, it would take multiple years to develop enough brand power to entice other competitors. Overall, I suppose my competitors would be high schools (as they can always create a class) and other investors that can also recognize this opportunity, who will probably have stronger finances and marketing to overwhelm my company. For high schools, their weaknesses include the time and resources necessary to create a class, a class that is worth teaching for a full ten months, as opposed to one or two days. For credible investors that know what they are doing, their capabilities outweigh their weaknesses; they can get it wrong and still win because of how much money they can put in. 

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?

Asides from perhaps packaging, distribution, and the business location, all these factors play a tremendous role in my business concept. Selling at price points too high will literally kill my business, strong customer support can sway high schools into becoming a regular customer for future years, and if the customer experience does not exceed expectations, high schools have zero incentive to pay for more workshops. 

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?  

In the beginning stages, my company will consist of about 30-40 employees, in a relatively small office. As for any business, there will be a marketing team, social media team, finance team, and so forth. These teams will most likely contain 3-10 employees each. For professional aspects of the company, such as legal, I would outsource that to another firm until the company could afford to create its own department.

IV.  Three Minor Elements

First, describe what you think your most important resource will be. You might call this your venture’s “secret sauce” or “unfair advantage.” Besides your actual innovative product, service, or process, what will you have that will make it hard for competitors to copy your success?

Once I completely commit to exploiting this opportunity, my livelihood is determined by the success of my company until I’m in a position where I can afford to diversify. Therefore, my continuous dedication to the company will ultimately be the deciding factor.

Second, what’s next for the venture? Describe either the next opportunity you want to tackle with your current innovation, or describe the next new product, service, or process that may be aimed at your existing customers.

The next new product will be creating an app that teaches everything we mention in workshops through a mobile device. Although this can potentially decrease the chances of high schools paying for workshops, I would only create this app once the company is established and financially prepared for it.

Third, what’s next for you? Assuming you launched, where do you want to be in five years with this venture? Where do you want to be, as an entrepreneur, in the next decade, and how does this first venture help you achieve your vision?

After five years of launching the company, my goal would be providing my services to at least twenty high schools. This is a small number because it will take a while to develop my product and my company’s infrastructure, let alone the natural roadblocks you experience with start-ups. Ten, twenty, thirty years after that I would consistently attempt to exploit other opportunities that relate to my company, while also diversifying into other more stable businesses/industries.