Week 13 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 part about the part of the letter of intent mentioned in this chapter was the biggest difference from my expectations. I've had to use multiple letters of intents throughout my life especially in the workforce, but when I read what the author explained it and it was definitely different from my expectations. I thought it was just the intent of someone in a written form but it was actually just a document containing the declarations of the intentions of the writer.

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

Answer: I think that the part that confused me the most was when it talked about the term of being "fully diluted." This term of being diluted has come up multiple times in the reading and each time it comes up I get extremely confused by it. I took chemistry last semester and diluting means getting the dosage down from what the complete amount was. 

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

Answer: In the reading it talked about getting shares of stock, specifically 100,000 shares at 10 dollars a piece to be valued at $1 million. This really interests me and I would ask the author if he had ever done anything like this before in his life. I would also ask the author if he knows anything about forex trading because a lot of my friends are doing that and they are making a lot of money through it. I would ask him these questions because I think that the author could make a lot of money through this service especially if he's delt with stocks before.

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

Answer: This week I found it very difficult to find something that I thought the author was wrong about yet I did find one little portion where I think he was wrong about. Well, now that I look back at it I don't believe it is absolutely wrong but more or so that I think he should've expanded more on the point. He said "Other factors to consider for a business include start up costs, accuracy of projections, and the control factor." I believe there is a lot more to think about which include writing a business plan, getting the money for the business, getting employees and of course getting your marketing done so that people will know your business and what it does.

Celebrating Failure

1) Tell us about a time this past semester that you failed -- whether in this class, or outside of this class. Don't spare any details! It'd be even better if there was something you tried several times this semester, and failed each time. 

Answer: This semester I decided to take a course called principles of management. I didn't really know what to expect from it so I didn't take the class as seriously as I should've. I thought that since it was only basic management material that it wouldn't be that hard and that I didn't have to study as hard for this as my other classes. I ended up not doing well on the first exam and to me that is considered failing. On the second exam I studied more but I got an extremely bad stomach virus the day of the exam and I couldn't think at all and it made it extremely hard to retain information. I ended up not really doing well on the second exam as well.

2) Tell us what you learned from it.  

Answer: I learned that sometimes there's nothing you can do, all that matters is that you are trying your best. I also realized that I have to put all of my effort to get the best possible grade on the final. I've already began studying and it is at the end of this month. I'm going to make sure to study way more than I need to to make sure that I get a good grade.

3) Reflect, in general, on what you think about failure. Failure is hard, isn't it? It's embarrassing, sure, but it also means that we have to change something about ourselves. Talk about how you handle failure (emotionally, behaviorally). Finally, talk about how this class has changed your perspective on failure -- are you more likely to take a risk now than you were four months ago? 

Answer: Honestly throughout my life I've experienced a lot of failure but I've always learned as much as I can through it. It just made me into a better person if I stay humble with myself and see what I need to get better at. So being honest with yourself and realizing that you have to study 4x as much as you did for the first exam will in turn help me with my final exam. Usually I try and handle failure as positively as possible. I think that being in a happy positive state of mind is better for you. Plus it keeps your hopes up for doing well on the final exam. This class definitely showed me first hand that if you learn from your mistakes you will clearly grow as a person and maybe make an even more successful entrepreneurial business

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My Exit Strategy

Yes, all good things do come to an end, but I think that you can always get good things out of things like this. Again if you haven't heard about my business, it is basically an app that creates a more efficient way to find parking around their town.

1. I believe that I will probably sell my business especially if someone offered me a lot of money for it. This was a pretty basic idea that I came up with and if someone thinks its worth a lot of money I would probably sell it and create a new business with that money. This app would only give me a small amount of revenue through ads in gainesville, so if someone offered a large amount of money I would probably take it right away. This is not a company I would just keep for several decades and retire. I think it's more or so of a stepping stone to my next business idea. If I create a new and more successful business after this i'll probably end up passing that down to my children.

2. I selected this particular exit strategy because in my opinion this is a simple app that I came up. I can always create and develop new apps that could potentially blow up especially if I have a lot of money to blow on the creation of this said app. I just personally believe that this is a stepping stone, as I said above. I think that I can create better apps with the money I receive from this app.

3. I think my exit strategy has influenced the other decisions I've made in my concept in a few ways. I think that it showed me that I am probably not going to take this long term. I think that coming up with this app and realizing the exit strategy definitely showed me what I think that I want to do with this app. I think it would be amazing to sell this app and have a lot of money to use to create a new business and I believe that that is what I am going to do with this business.

Hopefully this will be me soon 

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.

Week 11 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 strategic management process that was shown at the end of the chapter that explains everything about the process was the biggest surprise in the reading. It talked about how strategic inputs go to the external environment and that can either go into strategic intent or the strategic mission. From there It goes on to more in depth detailed responses about strategy formulation and strategy implementation.  This was a big surprise for me because I didn't think that there was this much info on just formulating a strategy. I also loved how at the end it says feedback. It's always a necessity to get the most out of feedback.

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

Answer: There was a part close to the end of this chapter that was a little confusing to me. It showed multiple tables going from year 1 to year 5 and as I read on it kept getting more confusing. I couldn't really tell what the table was trying to get done. There were so many variables that I didn't even know. Everything from "retention ratio" all the way to "option pool" I was just extremely confused at what point the author was trying to make with this table.

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

Answer: In the part about "the lack of strategic planning" I would ask Donald "Have you ever had a lack of strategic planning? and I would also ask him how he over came that lack of planning. I would also ask him what he believes is the best type of SWOT analysis and I would ask him if he ever used SWOT analysis to analyze what he was doing with his company.

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

Answer: Each week I read the assigned readings in this textbook yet I've found it extremely hard to find something that I thought the author was wrong about. I think for next year/semester you should change this 4th question to something more intellectual than just trying to find something that I disagreed with. If I was reading a biology textbook I wouldn't be reading it and disagreeing with anything since it is a published textbook. This is also the first time I've ever said this just so you don't think I'm trying to get out of answering this question. I just find it extremely difficult to find something that is said in a textbook to be wrong.