Week 15 Reading Reflection

The biggest surprise for me in the reading was that the company talked about in the article, SKS Microfinance, only made loans to women. According to the article, women are more likely to reinvest their earnings into their household, which makes them safer people to lend money to. I was still surprised to learn that because of this tendency, the company strictly only loaned money to women. I was confused by this as well, because in America the men are historically the main breadwinners of the household, whereas in India the opposite may be true. I would probably ask the author why they completely will not loan money to men, and whether they think this practice has been a good business decision. As the author was writing about his own business, I don't disagree with anything he said.

Final Reflection

Final reflection!! Can I get an AMEN.

                                            

Looking at my blog, I feel like I've come really far over the course of the semester. From first coming up with my venture idea, to interviewing possible customers to receiving critique on my various posts, this semester and its assignments have been filled with twists and turns. My most formative experience was probably my first round of customer interviews. I was so nervous to talk to strangers, and even more nervous to film the encounter. I feel like I'll remember every exercise where I had to film strangers, just because of the mental anxiety I encountered every time I have to do so. While I don't think I had a "most joyous" experience, I felt euphoric every time I completed an assignment (moreso when the assignment involved recordings/interviews). The assignment(s) where I was the most proud of myself were the elevator pitches. It usually took me a bunch of tries before I did a halfway decent video, so finally saying what I wanted to say in a professional manner always made me happy.

Now that we're at the home stretch of the semester, I feel more like an entrepreneur than I did in the beginning of the course. Would I brag to my friends that I'm an entrepreneur? Honestly - probably not, considering MA was a made up venture. However, I feel more prepared to enter the world of entrepreneurs, and have more of an idea of the steps I would have to take, should I ever want to open my own business. To future students taking this course, I would recommend staying on top of all the assignments. It's hard to know how involved an assignment is by looking at the title of it, so it's important to read the assignment to know what it entails and set aside enough time to complete it. To foster that mindset, I would recommend checking the Canvas calendar daily to see when upcoming assignments are due, and remind them that assignments are due at 9 pm, not midnight!

                                         

Elevator Pitch No. 4

Last one!! *throws papers in the air*

After receiving feedback on my last venture concept and my last elevator pitch, I decided to change the pricing of my service. While the original price was either $12 or $15 depending on when the student signed up, the new price is $20 or $25. In my actual pitch, I tried to talk slower so that people could fully understand what I was saying, and I tried to provide more details in this pitch than in my last one.

Venture Concept No. 2

1. Venture concept description:

Opportunity:

The opportunity of my venture concept, “Mid-Assist” (aka MA), lies within the under-met needs of my customers. The potential customers for MA are the students currently attending the University of Florida (if this idea were to take place on other campuses, customers would be the attending students of the university in question). Their under-met need? Transportation. In today’s day and age, people want things to be fast, efficient and effective. Our cellphones need LTE data, we need to be able to watch TV with no commercials, and we wonder if our computers are broken when they take longer than 10 seconds to load a document. My point is that people don’t want to wait anymore. They want what they want at the moment they decide they want it. Now of course, transportation is a bit different. It can’t happen immediately, but we do want to know that it’s on its way, or it’ll be here at a certain time. I believe the school’s current offered form of transportation not only doesn’t meet these needs, but also doesn’t fully reach the entire student body.

                I think the “window of opportunity” for my venture is substantial. As long as the University of Florida remains in this area (which is very likely) and the midtown area remains popular (also likely) than MA will have a strong customer base. Customers are currently satisfying their need through taking Ubers, taxis, or simply walking home. I would say their loyalty level is moderate at best. Many students choose to walk, which can potentially be a dangerous situation, and Ubers can only be booked on-demand, so there’s no real guarantee of when they will come. My market is defined geographically as being within 3 miles of the university, and demographically as a UF student (so most likely between the ages of 18-22).

Innovation:

The actual idea. Mid-Assist, or MA, will be a set of school-sponsored vehicles that will transport students from the Midtown area to their off-campus dorm, apartment, or house. I’ve designed this service so that it is primarily for off-campus students, as they currently have no alternative school-sponsored option, while on-campus UF students may use SNAP. MA will operate from 10 pm to 3 am on Wednesday through Saturday nights. Students would be able to book the ride through a mobile app, and it will be prepaid within a student’s tuition. Note: this is technically a luxury service. At the time of registering for classes, students will have the option of pre-paying for the service through their Gatorlink accounts. If students sign up at the beginning of the semester, they will have the reduced fee of $20, while students signing up later in the semester will be charged $25. The mobile app will request their UFID number, ensuring that the student taking MA has already paid for the service. The MA cars can be requested for a certain timeframe if booked at least 3 hours in advance. Otherwise, the cars will help customers in the order the requests are received.

Venture Concept:

                My innovation will help to solve the problem I’ve identified by providing students with an alternative option for getting home safely at night. As a student who has been out late at night before, I have felt uncomfortable getting into a taxi or uber alone . We all hear the horror stories in the media and on TV (I’m a big fan of Law and Order: SVU, which doesn’t help the whole being scared in the taxi situation). Our parents call all the time telling us to be careful, don’t drink anything you didn’t see made, and to be alert when walking anywhere at night. We get the UF alerts saying shots have been fired somewhere, or someone attacked someone walking home. And then, after all those things, the main ways of getting home are by waiting for an uber, getting into a taxi, or waiting for SNAP, which doesn’t even help the 90% of UF students who live off campus. I think by offering a school-sponsored method of transportation to off-campus UF students, the university sends a clear message to its students, faculty, parents, and benefactors that they care about student safety, and will do everything in their power to keep our student body safe.

Three Minor Elements

• I think the most important resource will be the students of UF and UF itself. I think that the venture will be made more credible if UF shows its full support for the venture. The students are important because they would be providing the funds for the venture! As MA would have student drivers, their knowledge of the Gainesville area would also help MA to run more efficiently.
• What's next for MA is still to be determined. I think that the most important thing is to get it off the ground, and start getting students to see that this may be a more convenient and safe option for them when in need of transportation. Afterwards, once the idea has proof of concept, it can be taken to other universities , either in Florida or across the U.S.
• What's next for me is still to be determined as well. Assuming MA became a real thing, I'd probably want to check up on it every once in a while to see the impact it's having on student's lives. As an entrepreneur, I hope to own my own business one day. This venture would help give me good business experience that I could use in the future to start my own company.

2 and 3. All of the feedback I received from my first venture concept had to do with my pricing model. My original concept had students paying $12 or $15 for the semester, whereas my new model has student paying $20 or $25. My sources of feedback believed that 12-15 would not be enough to sustain the business. I responded to this feedback by upping the price. Other than that, I've gotten positive feedback about the general idea of MA.

                                          

Week 14 Reading Reflection

I preferred Chapter 4 over Chapter 3. I found it a lot more interesting to read, and I found the material much easier to grasp. What stood out to me was that many of the ethical decisions that occur in real life also occur, to some degree, in the entrepreneurial journey. I also found the different approaches to managerial ethics interesting. I would ask the author which method (either holistic or ethical) they found to be the most helpful in the workplace. I've covered some of this material in my Management course this semester, so I agreed with the information that the text provided.

Google Gold

1. My general strategy for search optimization was to try to use the same shortening of my service, MA, in several of my posts. This way, if people searched for ENT blogs with the keyword "MA", there was a chance it would show up.

2. My main keyword was MA, which was short for Mid-Assist, the name of my service. This keyword was pretty clear for me, as I mentioned it in all of my posts that talked about the service (so throughout the course of the semester - quite a few posts!). I also used the key words of ENT 3003 and blogspot. I kept these keywords the same during the semester as I never changed the name of my idea.

3. This time around, I did not use social media to enhance my SEO. However, if MA was a real thing, making posts and hashtags across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter would be sure to strum up traffic to my blog, and hopefully spread the word about MA to potential customers.

4. My most viral post was my third round of customer interviews. I think that this got the most views because (at least for me) this was one of the more challenging assignments, as I was running out of things to ask customers. I would imagine people looked at my blog to generate some ideas on what they could ask in their own customer interviews.

5. When typing in "ENT 3003 MA" into Google, I do end up on the first page of results.

                                                       

Very Short Interview, Part 2

**On a note completely separate from this assignment: Ahhhh only a week left!!! We're almost done guys yay**

Now, moving on to ENT..

(1) Looking back on my first interview, I asked Adam some pretty general questions about his business, like how he got started and if he would have changed anything up until that point. I get a pretty good impression from the interview about what some personality traits/qualities/lifestyle changes entrepreneurs have to have/make to be successful (the main one being busy - it was not easy to get a hold of him). It probably would have been more beneficial for me to ask him what he thought about owning a business in general, rather than his business in particular. Going with this train of thought, I decided to ask him different questions in this interview.

(2) The Interview
1. Question: Do you think owning/operating your business has changed your personality?
Answer: Absolutely. I think that starting Extreme made me a lot more responsible and accountable for my actions. Spending a lot of time with customers has also given me better communication skills and real world experience.
2. Question: What steps would you recommend to someone thinking about operating a business?
Answer: I would tell them to research the field they're trying to enter before making any moves. I'd also tell them to try and talk to people already in the industry, which is what I did for Extreme. After that, it's a matter of hard work and persistence to get the job done.
3. Question: In your opinion, can anyone be an entrepreneur?
Answer: Yes! It's a lot of hard work and needs a lot of effort, but anyone who is willing to put in the work should give it a shot.

(3) Now that the class is nearing the end, I really feel I've gotten a better sense of what it takes to become an entrepreneur. When I first spoke to Adam, I had a very abstract idea of the concepts we discussed. After coming up with my own idea, I see that there is a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to developing and enforcing an entrepreneurial venture. I was more comfortable discussing the topics because I was now more familiar with the concepts I was asking him about. I'm not really sure if Adam noticed a difference in my "entrepreneurial prowess," but I feel like I asked better questions in this interview because of it.