Week 12 Reading Reflection

1) What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations? 

Answer: I think the biggest surprise for the reading was definitely realizing that although many ways of strategically planning a venture exist, all have one common element which is that each is an extension of the entrepreneur's vision. It just stood out from my expectation because each takes the owner's concept of business and puts it into action. I guess I never really thought of it that way and this was surprising to me.

2) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

Answer: The part explaining the balance of entrepreneurial and managerial approaches was a little confusing to me. I think it was just too confusing because I kept thinking that a company can choose exactly what approach it wants to take, it doesn't have to tak either an entrepreneurial approach or a managerial approach! It's up to the company to decide what they want to do and how they are going to reach their goals. Also there were a lot of sub topics under these approaches and that just added to the whole confusion.

3) If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

Answer: I would ask him if a lack of knowledge ever kept him away from creating a venture that he wanted to make? I would ask him that because I would want to know if he ended up learning more and starting that company that he always wanted to make! I would also ask him if he has ever had any personal failure in his life. I would ask him this because personal favor has really molded me to who I am today so I would be curious about his life and what he went though to get to where he is now!

4) Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

Answer: I think that the typical life cycle of a venture is wrong in this chapter. I think that every venture is and can be extremely different. The author in no way has any idea of all the ventures happening in the world and each one was probably brought up in a new way from others. That means that he can't classify these cycles like this because every one is different.

What's Next

Venture Concept:                  iPark App

Display currently available on-street parking spaces in real time.

Existing Market:

B2C:  All people who drive and have a smart phone

Step 1 What’s next:

A device that runs the iPark App that can be mounted on a car window or dashboard.  The device would seamlessly run the iPark App, and eliminate having to use a smart phone. 

Step 2              Interviews of customers in current market

General reaction was extremely positive.  There appears to be widespread frustration with parking, especially around UF. They also wanted a special detector device for parking spots, better pricing options and a location setting to see how far away the spot is.

Basically, knowing in advance where empty parking spaces are would save a lot of time and unnecessary fees in parking lots.

Step 3 Plans for growing existing market

·         Develop operational application       

·         Most important – ease of use

·         Market application

·         Advertising

·         Promotional activities

·         Social media

           

New Market:

Step 1              B2B:  Businesses who rely on customers driving to their location

·         Restaurants

·         Bars

·         Shopping

·         Professional Services

           

Step 2              Businesses could use the iPark App to advertise in real time how many parking spaces are currently available within a short distance to the business. 

Step 3              Interviews with business owners

Step 4              Results of interviews

                        All interviews were conducted with owners of small businesses downtown and midtown.  They all expressed that it is very difficult for their customers to park conveniently to get to their stores, and that they felt that the current parking situation hurts their business. 

They said the iPark App would be an incentive for people to visit their businesses, instead of going to other locations, like the mall for the sake of convenience.

                        Business owners also thought it might have the reverse effect – if the iPark App showed no available parking spots, that would discourage people from going to their businesses.

                        Also people might have a negative impression of the business if there are too many available parking spots – nobody wants to go there, not popular.

The B2B market appears to have some appeal for those businesses located in areas where only limited street parking is available.  However, there are some negative impressions of using the iPark App to increase their customers that would need to be overcome.

Due to some of the negative impressions, I don’t think the iPark App should be marketed B2B.  It should be limited to the B2C marketplace.  

Venture Concept No. 1

OPPORTUNITY: When thinking about the opportunity for my idea, I want to think about the biggest scale as possible. This is why I've decided to make my venture concept about an app because the market is huge and exponentially growing. My app that I've been designing has been an effective parking app that shows you the best possible parking spots around your area ahead of time so you don't have to spend time driving around aimlessly for a parking spot. Anyone who has a car can use this app to benefit themselves and make their driving experience be the best as possible. The unmet need is that there is not an app like this out on the app store yet so that allows my market to be huge for this idea. There are also a lot of people who accidentally park in tow away zones and end up having to pay $200 for a mistake that shouldn't have happened. With my app this will never happen again because all the tow away zones and other parking restrictions are clearly labeled in real time for your benefit. I think that the forces in the environment creating this opportunity are that there are an increasing number of cars that are being bought and used each day, so parking is becoming harder and harder. Currently customers are not using any type of app like this so I believe that they would become extremely loyal to my idea. This opportunity can be huge because it'll be the first of its kind and can blow up. The window of opportunity is slowly closing, I need to make moves fast if I want to make this a reality.

INNOVATION: First off, this app is an "innovation" since it is something new that people haven't seen before. I believe that this is radically innovative because of the amount of things that i'll have in this app. I'm going to have absolutely every available parking spot shown in real time on this app. This alone would attract customers to download my app, but i'm going to take it to another level by adding every type of feature I can to this app. Everything from tow away zones to parking garage prices to restricted parking in your area. I'm going to be giving this app for free because I intentionally created this idea so that I could use it myself! So I decided that i'm going to give it for free and just have 1 add at the beginning to generate some sort of ad revenue for me and the people helping me create this app. This will also make more people download my app since it is "free."

VENTURE CONCEPT: It'll be extremely easy to get people to switch to this new product. It'll be so easy because like I said before, this app isn't out there yet and I personally know so many people that get so frustrated driving for an extra 20-30 minutes for a parking spot. Eventually I'd like for there to be a GPS function on my app that tells the driver exactly where to go to their parking spots. I also will continuously update my app and listen to feedback from people and this will allow me to separate from my eventual competitors. The great thing about an app is that I run the entire business through this app and I don't necessarily need to pay for employees since I'm doing all the work and updates.

3 Minor Elements: I believe that my "secret sauce" or "unfair advantage" for this app is that i'm creating it before any one else has created an app like this. Also like I said I want to continually update my app and read all the reviews people post and always cater to their wants and needs. This will make them stay loyal to my company. I think the next thing I have to create for the venture is definitely the GPS navigation inside my app. This would allow for people to have a much safer driving experience than if they were looking at my app while driving. Again, I am trying to cater to people with a lot of free products and services so that my app gets downloaded by as many people as possible! In five years I hope to still be an entrepreneur and hopefully one of my business ideas gets me a lot of money so I can put that into my other business ideas that I have. I guess that if this app actually blows up here in Gainesville that I can start putting it in major cities and towns across the U.S so that more and more people will be able to use my app! In the end i'm creating this app for the convenience of the driver.