image from https://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/librarywest/Index.aspx
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Final Reflection
This has definitely been a weird semester, with the entire COVID situation. Despite taking this class online initially I had set up a system of going to Lib West during the afternoons after I had class and working on all of my homework for this class there. Once I had to make the move back home to be with my family I lost my system of keeping up with school work, and I started to fall behind on everything. In the library, I would study with friends and doing homework was no longer a chore, we found a way to make it fun most of the time. Being home I no longer had a way to make homework fun, I thought. My friends and I, about two weeks into quarantine, decided to try various video calling apps to find one that we could use as we did homework together. My big thing for this class that I will recommend to future students, finds a group of friends who are also in this class or other online classes so you guys can suffer together and make the work a fun hang out time where you can be productive. My entrepreneurship mindset has definitely gotten more skilled through this class, and my brother and I have been looking for problems in the current market environment that we could find an answer to.
image from https://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/librarywest/Index.aspx
image from https://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/librarywest/Index.aspx
Venture Concept No. 2
Opportunity:
Students at the collegiate level need a program that can upload every syllabus they receive throughout their college career onto on calendar. This program will be useful for the duration of their undergrad studies. While over time more classes are getting put online, and those students do not share this need to the same level of traditional students, as long as there are college campuses there will be students who have a need for this program, but no good alternatives. My market is defined demographically, looking at college students directly, but anywhere across the globe. Currently, the only alternatives to my program include: using the three different college provided resources to keep on track for your course and assignment, but keep another calendar for things outside of immediate classwork, or writing all of the information given by the college resources onto a physical planner and then having to refer to this planner every time an outside event comes up or flying by the seat of your pants when you go to class hear what assignment comes next and do it the night before it is due, this way you can have the freedom to do all of the club activities without worry but being constantly behind on course work and class materials. Having a product that could help them cut confusion, time, effort, and chaos would be enough encouragement for students to try this program. This window is open as long as colleges are still accepting traditional students and classes are still giving out syllabuses.
Innovation:
I am offering students a web app that takes the information from their class syllabuses and uploads them all onto one calendar. It will give alerts for all assignment due and exam times. Students will also be able to upload other events onto this calendar and add custom alerts. I would want to make the web app free to use at the base form with advertisements, but with a purchase of $10 you could permanently remove ads.
Venture:
Students will want to use my program because it will save them a lot of time and worry throughout the semester. The other options for scheduling or not scheduling your semester cause a lot of stress either upfront or throughout you semester, but with this program, all you need to do to be set up for success is upload all of your syllabuses at the start of your semester and then you will have a calendar that you can refer back to and will send you reminders about assignment, class topics, and other items that you choose to upload. Currently, the only competitors are regular calendar apps that do not offer the same resource that mine does. ON these other programs the student will have to upload all of the assignments individually instead of a mass upload via the syllabus reading process I have created. Money is not my main goal with this concept, I want a product that will actually help students and will be available to a large number of students, so if I sell a small amount of ad space on the program then give it to the students for free, while offering a permanent purchase of ad free form. This would help me to feel proud of my venture and give me a small return on my product. My business would stay small no matter how large the program got. I would want only a small team to help assist me with all of the incoming ideas, legal information, and technology updates. Between a few college students who are all looking for a project to showcase their skills, I think we would be able to keep this program running at peak efficiency.
The reason I doubt other companies will be able to replicate me is that I am a college student and I will be able to understand the issue with the program at the same time my customers do, and any improvements or new ideas also benefit me on my daily life and not just via revenue. I would then want to expand to help clubs create a platform to organize their events so that way their members and potential members could see all of the events on the club's page or even upload the information to their personal calendar. The next step for my venture would be for it to be able to read emails and upload tasks, meetings, and other more work field type events to a calendar. However, this end of the venture would require a lot of privacy and would be difficult to implement and there are many safety concerns with customer privacy that would need to be brought up.
Looking back at all of the feedback I've received I realized that having a team of skilled students to help me in this venture would be able to help me improve my business. Between that, and bringing up privacy concerns when it comes to email readings I feel I have covered the feedback I have received quite well.
image from http://clipart-library.com/free-calendar-clipart.html
Students at the collegiate level need a program that can upload every syllabus they receive throughout their college career onto on calendar. This program will be useful for the duration of their undergrad studies. While over time more classes are getting put online, and those students do not share this need to the same level of traditional students, as long as there are college campuses there will be students who have a need for this program, but no good alternatives. My market is defined demographically, looking at college students directly, but anywhere across the globe. Currently, the only alternatives to my program include: using the three different college provided resources to keep on track for your course and assignment, but keep another calendar for things outside of immediate classwork, or writing all of the information given by the college resources onto a physical planner and then having to refer to this planner every time an outside event comes up or flying by the seat of your pants when you go to class hear what assignment comes next and do it the night before it is due, this way you can have the freedom to do all of the club activities without worry but being constantly behind on course work and class materials. Having a product that could help them cut confusion, time, effort, and chaos would be enough encouragement for students to try this program. This window is open as long as colleges are still accepting traditional students and classes are still giving out syllabuses.
Innovation:
I am offering students a web app that takes the information from their class syllabuses and uploads them all onto one calendar. It will give alerts for all assignment due and exam times. Students will also be able to upload other events onto this calendar and add custom alerts. I would want to make the web app free to use at the base form with advertisements, but with a purchase of $10 you could permanently remove ads.
Venture:
Students will want to use my program because it will save them a lot of time and worry throughout the semester. The other options for scheduling or not scheduling your semester cause a lot of stress either upfront or throughout you semester, but with this program, all you need to do to be set up for success is upload all of your syllabuses at the start of your semester and then you will have a calendar that you can refer back to and will send you reminders about assignment, class topics, and other items that you choose to upload. Currently, the only competitors are regular calendar apps that do not offer the same resource that mine does. ON these other programs the student will have to upload all of the assignments individually instead of a mass upload via the syllabus reading process I have created. Money is not my main goal with this concept, I want a product that will actually help students and will be available to a large number of students, so if I sell a small amount of ad space on the program then give it to the students for free, while offering a permanent purchase of ad free form. This would help me to feel proud of my venture and give me a small return on my product. My business would stay small no matter how large the program got. I would want only a small team to help assist me with all of the incoming ideas, legal information, and technology updates. Between a few college students who are all looking for a project to showcase their skills, I think we would be able to keep this program running at peak efficiency.
The reason I doubt other companies will be able to replicate me is that I am a college student and I will be able to understand the issue with the program at the same time my customers do, and any improvements or new ideas also benefit me on my daily life and not just via revenue. I would then want to expand to help clubs create a platform to organize their events so that way their members and potential members could see all of the events on the club's page or even upload the information to their personal calendar. The next step for my venture would be for it to be able to read emails and upload tasks, meetings, and other more work field type events to a calendar. However, this end of the venture would require a lot of privacy and would be difficult to implement and there are many safety concerns with customer privacy that would need to be brought up.
Looking back at all of the feedback I've received I realized that having a team of skilled students to help me in this venture would be able to help me improve my business. Between that, and bringing up privacy concerns when it comes to email readings I feel I have covered the feedback I have received quite well.
image from http://clipart-library.com/free-calendar-clipart.html
Your Exit Strategy
While the prospect of owning this business is one that excites me, I do not want to hold onto it for very long. I understand that once I am not a college student then I will lose my biggest asset I have going into it. I will no longer be able to see my product on both ends, as a tool and business. Once I am no longer a student, I will want my product to still be impactful to the next generation of students. For me, the best way out would be to either sell the program to another student or group of students who hold similar values and would want to continue to improve upon my program or I would simply make my program free across the board, I would upload all of my codes online for others to try and replicate my program so they could alter the program in the way that they would need, and others could use my version at no cost to themselves. This exit strategy is really how I want to be remembered through this program, I want to be able to provide a resource that I did not have that I wish I did and I want it to be the best possible.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Celebrating Failure
26A:
Heres the story of how I failed at my job and it ended up changing the company regulations for the entire state of Florida. Over this past semester, I started a new project with my work. I was installing phone mounts onto the new trucks so that drivers could have hands free navigation and calls. On the new model trucks, the mount frames need to be attached to a plastic wall on the dashboard. I am the only technician for the company in the state of Florida who works inside the trucks like this, and with the new trucks, we were just installing mounts from the old trucks. The old trucks were metal-framed dashboards and the phone mounts had no problem being drilled onto the frames. With the new trucks, however, the phone mounts were too heavy to simply be screwed into the plastic wall in the new trucks. After going throughout the state of Florida installing the phone mounts into the plastic with only screws, they started to fall out when the drivers were on their routes. The drivers were inconvenienced, and I had to engineer a new way for the mounts to be installed. My boss and I decided that I should place a metal bracket on the backside of the plastic wall. After this, I know now that I need to think long term about how my projects will stand, I know when I began that the plastic wall would not be as firm as the metal frame and ended up making another run throughout the state to fix a mistake that could have been prevented had I run some trials before installing all of the new truck in the incorrect manner.
Heres the story of how I failed at my job and it ended up changing the company regulations for the entire state of Florida. Over this past semester, I started a new project with my work. I was installing phone mounts onto the new trucks so that drivers could have hands free navigation and calls. On the new model trucks, the mount frames need to be attached to a plastic wall on the dashboard. I am the only technician for the company in the state of Florida who works inside the trucks like this, and with the new trucks, we were just installing mounts from the old trucks. The old trucks were metal-framed dashboards and the phone mounts had no problem being drilled onto the frames. With the new trucks, however, the phone mounts were too heavy to simply be screwed into the plastic wall in the new trucks. After going throughout the state of Florida installing the phone mounts into the plastic with only screws, they started to fall out when the drivers were on their routes. The drivers were inconvenienced, and I had to engineer a new way for the mounts to be installed. My boss and I decided that I should place a metal bracket on the backside of the plastic wall. After this, I know now that I need to think long term about how my projects will stand, I know when I began that the plastic wall would not be as firm as the metal frame and ended up making another run throughout the state to fix a mistake that could have been prevented had I run some trials before installing all of the new truck in the incorrect manner.
Friday, April 10, 2020
Venture Concept No. 1
Opportunity:
Students at the collegiate level need a program that can upload every syllabus they receive throughout their college career onto on calendar. This program will be useful for the duration of their undergrad studies. While over time more classes are getting put online, and those students do not share this need to the same level of traditional students, as long as there are college campuses there will be students who have a need for this program, but no good alternatives. My market is defined demographically, looking at college students directly, but anywhere across the globe. Currently, the only alternatives to my program include: using the three different college provided resources to keep on track for your course and assignment, but keep another calendar for things outside of immediate classwork, or writing all of the information given by the college resources onto a physical planner and then having to refer to this planner every time an outside event comes up, or flying by the seat of your pants when you go to class hear what assignment comes next and do it the night before it is due, this way you can have the freedom to do all of the club activities without worry but being constantly behind on course work and class materials. Having a product that could help them cut confusion, time, effort, and chaos would be enough encouragement for students to try this program. This window is open as long as colleges are still accepting traditional students and classes are still giving out syllabuses.
Innovation:
I am offering students a web app that takes the information from their class syllabuses and uploads them all onto one calendar. It will give alerts for all assignment due and exam times. Students will also be able to upload other events onto this calendar and add custom alerts. I would want to make the web app free to use at the base form with advertisements, but with a purchase of $10 you could permanently remove ads.
Venture:
Students will want to use my program because it will save them a lot of time and worry throughout the semester. The other options for scheduling or not scheduling your semester cause a lot of stress either upfront or throughout you semester, but with this program, all you need to do to be set up for success is upload all of your syllabuses at the start of your semester and then you will have a calendar that you can refer back to and will send you reminders about assignment, class topics, and other items that you choose to upload. Currently, the only competitors are regular calendar apps that do not offer the same resource that mine does. ON these other programs the student will have to upload all of the assignments individually instead of a mass upload via the syllabus reading process I have created. Money is not my main goal with this concept, I want a product that will actually help students and will be available to a large number of students, so if I sell a small amount of ad space on the program then give it to the students for free, while offering a permanent purchase of ad free form. This would help me to feel proud of my venture and give me a small return on my product. My business would stay small no matter how large the program got. It is a relatively simple concept, I foresee myself and maybe one other person being able to keep up with updates and dealing with advertisers once the program is live.
The reason I doubt other companies will be able to replicate me is that I am a college student and I will be able to understand the issue with the program at the same time my customers do, and any improvements or new ideas also benefit me on my daily life and not just via revenue. I would then want to expand to help clubs create a platform to organize their events so that way their members and potential members could see all of the events on the club's page or even upload the information to their personal calendar. The next step for my venture would be for it to be able to read emails and upload tasks, meetings, and other more work field type events to a calendar.
Students at the collegiate level need a program that can upload every syllabus they receive throughout their college career onto on calendar. This program will be useful for the duration of their undergrad studies. While over time more classes are getting put online, and those students do not share this need to the same level of traditional students, as long as there are college campuses there will be students who have a need for this program, but no good alternatives. My market is defined demographically, looking at college students directly, but anywhere across the globe. Currently, the only alternatives to my program include: using the three different college provided resources to keep on track for your course and assignment, but keep another calendar for things outside of immediate classwork, or writing all of the information given by the college resources onto a physical planner and then having to refer to this planner every time an outside event comes up, or flying by the seat of your pants when you go to class hear what assignment comes next and do it the night before it is due, this way you can have the freedom to do all of the club activities without worry but being constantly behind on course work and class materials. Having a product that could help them cut confusion, time, effort, and chaos would be enough encouragement for students to try this program. This window is open as long as colleges are still accepting traditional students and classes are still giving out syllabuses.
Innovation:
I am offering students a web app that takes the information from their class syllabuses and uploads them all onto one calendar. It will give alerts for all assignment due and exam times. Students will also be able to upload other events onto this calendar and add custom alerts. I would want to make the web app free to use at the base form with advertisements, but with a purchase of $10 you could permanently remove ads.
Venture:
Students will want to use my program because it will save them a lot of time and worry throughout the semester. The other options for scheduling or not scheduling your semester cause a lot of stress either upfront or throughout you semester, but with this program, all you need to do to be set up for success is upload all of your syllabuses at the start of your semester and then you will have a calendar that you can refer back to and will send you reminders about assignment, class topics, and other items that you choose to upload. Currently, the only competitors are regular calendar apps that do not offer the same resource that mine does. ON these other programs the student will have to upload all of the assignments individually instead of a mass upload via the syllabus reading process I have created. Money is not my main goal with this concept, I want a product that will actually help students and will be available to a large number of students, so if I sell a small amount of ad space on the program then give it to the students for free, while offering a permanent purchase of ad free form. This would help me to feel proud of my venture and give me a small return on my product. My business would stay small no matter how large the program got. It is a relatively simple concept, I foresee myself and maybe one other person being able to keep up with updates and dealing with advertisers once the program is live.
The reason I doubt other companies will be able to replicate me is that I am a college student and I will be able to understand the issue with the program at the same time my customers do, and any improvements or new ideas also benefit me on my daily life and not just via revenue. I would then want to expand to help clubs create a platform to organize their events so that way their members and potential members could see all of the events on the club's page or even upload the information to their personal calendar. The next step for my venture would be for it to be able to read emails and upload tasks, meetings, and other more work field type events to a calendar.
What's Next?
Existing market:
After interviewing three more students about how I should expand upon my company, the feedback that I got was valuable. After describing how my program would work, and the business plan for it, all three were pretty impressed with the idea. The feedback that I got when asking about my next venture went along the lines of creating a platform that had various club meetings and activities. The three students enjoy clubs and think more people would be involved if there was a website they could go to and find a list of clubs and meeting times and places.
New market:
For my new market, instead of looking at college students, I chose to look at the working-class. They said they don't need a program that uploads syllabuses and only followed their work schedules, but once I started to ask about work deadlines I found that all of the three people I interviewed admitted to not keeping a list of work deadlines, and had on occasion been late on a project or task. If I could alter my program to be able to upload emailed deadlines onto the calendar than this product would work to help this group as well.
After interviewing three more students about how I should expand upon my company, the feedback that I got was valuable. After describing how my program would work, and the business plan for it, all three were pretty impressed with the idea. The feedback that I got when asking about my next venture went along the lines of creating a platform that had various club meetings and activities. The three students enjoy clubs and think more people would be involved if there was a website they could go to and find a list of clubs and meeting times and places.
New market:
For my new market, instead of looking at college students, I chose to look at the working-class. They said they don't need a program that uploads syllabuses and only followed their work schedules, but once I started to ask about work deadlines I found that all of the three people I interviewed admitted to not keeping a list of work deadlines, and had on occasion been late on a project or task. If I could alter my program to be able to upload emailed deadlines onto the calendar than this product would work to help this group as well.
Your Venture's Unfair Advantage
My resource list:
UF affiliate
Innovations student
Programming experience
Connection to student advising
Connection to advertisers
Connection to customers
Ability to take out student loans
Advertising experience
Ability to understand the human aspect of my product in real-time
Gator pride
I believe that my top resource, aside from gator pride obviously, is the fact that I will be using the product alongside all of my customers in my daily life, any issues that they notice will also be present to me, and any ideas to improve the program would directly benefit me two-fold. Having my customers know that I can personally understand their complaints, and want to improve my product upon their suggestions, would help make the process of finding bugs and glitches or ways to improve the program a more human experience. In building this trust with my customers, I would be building a community that would be more likely to support any future products as well.
UF affiliate
Innovations student
Programming experience
Connection to student advising
Connection to advertisers
Connection to customers
Ability to take out student loans
Advertising experience
Ability to understand the human aspect of my product in real-time
Gator pride
I believe that my top resource, aside from gator pride obviously, is the fact that I will be using the product alongside all of my customers in my daily life, any issues that they notice will also be present to me, and any ideas to improve the program would directly benefit me two-fold. Having my customers know that I can personally understand their complaints, and want to improve my product upon their suggestions, would help make the process of finding bugs and glitches or ways to improve the program a more human experience. In building this trust with my customers, I would be building a community that would be more likely to support any future products as well.
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