Your Exit Strategy

I do intend to sell my business for a return. I see this happening before five years. I would enjoy running something else that I am passionate about such as opening my own cafe or boutique. I have this exit strategy because I enjoy doing new things. I think if I stayed in the business I would get bored. There isn't too much potential for my business idea, it's pretty simple. I am not that creative and would struggle to expand. I don't see much growth for my business. I kept the problem I was trying to fix small and relative to Gainesville and my life. I will be leaving Gainesville when I graduate from UF. Running my business idea would not keep me here. I feel like I am better at recognizing opportunities now. Because I do not plan on staying in my business for long, I don't think I have tried very hard to think of ways I could grow my business. This also means I wouldn't invest in resources for the long term. I dont think my app will take long to create. The most time consuming would be recruiting users and partnering with local places.

Venture Concept No. 2

I have identified an opportunity that hinders people who enjoy studying or hanging-out at coffee shops and libraries. I have encountered this problem when I want to meet up with a friend at a local coffee shop and discover it is busy with no open tables. Most of the coffee shops in Gainesville are small and do not have much seating. I have experienced this issue in the library when I have tried to study with a friend. We had to walk around each floor trying to find two open seats next to each other. The issue of not knowing how busy a place is without finding out for yourself effects anyone who wants to study, do homework or hangout at a coffee shop, study center, library or restaurant and anyone who wants to get coffee. This opportunity is an issue most when exams are happening. More students seek places to study when they have exams. There are certain weeks in the semester where there are more exams such as midterms and finals week. This opportunity does not exist in the summer when most of the UF student population leaves. This opportunity is not very important. If students cannot find someone to study in public, they can just go back to where they live. I think this opportunity will benefit both students, young adults and the business owners. It will help bring in costumers when it isn’t typically busy. Solving this problem will help students not waste time searching for a seat. I will be focusing on students at the UF and Santa Fe and young adults who live in the Gainesville area. The locations I will be partnering with, will be places in Gainesville that the majority of student enjoy visiting.

To solve this problem, I will be creating an application that people can download onto their phones. I will first make the application for apple devices. The application will be free to download. To use the application here is an example. Mary is at Starbucks on 13^th street. If she has her notifications and location services turned on, the app will promote Mary to input how busy Starbucks is in that moment. Mary could input how many empty tables there are and how long the line is to get coffee. Using her data and others who are at the same place, the app will display real time information to other people who aren’t at that location but desire to travel there. They are then able to know if its worth packing up all their books and laptop and driving there. I will discuss with the business owners promotions to offer to app users to incentivize inputting data. I will make money by selling advertisements to local coffee shops and study places.

My application will be easy for students to download. I will advertise my app by handing out flyers on campus. I will post flyers in the locations my app will display information about. I can table about my app in Turlington. I currently do not have any competitors. The only thing that will hinder my app is people not downloading it. I could incentivize sending it to friends. I would need a hand full of employees to start my business. I would need help creating the application as I have no experience with that. I would need a few people to help me promote my app once it is created. Another challenge I will face is getting local business owners and corporations like Starbucks to partner with me. I will need to find or create incentives for them to partner with me. I also just need to do research and find out if similar concepts have helped places in the past. 

My secret sauce is my connection to the business owners of local coffee shops and my ability to identify this opportunity. My next opportunity is to keep updating the app and adding things to it. I don’t see this becoming a big part of my life. I think it would be a good experience to have but I don’t not see it still being a part of my life in five years.

One person gave me feedback about about cooperation with other business owners. I do think this could be a challenge I will face when starting up my business. Hopefully if a few places are willing to work with me, others will see the opportunity I am offering.  

When fixing my new venture concept, I now included how I will need to find a way to convince business owners to partner with me. 

Final Reflection

The most formative experience I had in this class was learning how to perfect an elevator pitch. I have had to write elevator pitches in other classes, but in this class I was able to get feedback and improve each time. This helped force me to put a lot of thought and work into creating a convincing pitch. An experience I’ll remember and had fun doing was when I had to write my bug list. I enjoyed asking my friends and everyone I know about what bothers them and how it could be fixed. It was a great conversation starter. There were many laughs over some of the ideas we came up with. An experience I am most proud of is coming up with my idea. I don’t see myself as a creative person. I was shocked that I was able to come up with a solution. I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneur in any way. Now at the end of this semester I have realized anyone can have an entrepreneurial mindset. I would recommend to just go in with an open mind. To perform best I would tell someone to check the assignments at the beginning of the week because some require interviews or a video to be recorded. 

Celebrating Failures

This summer I am studying abroad in Spain. Traveling to a different country costs a lot of money. I had looked up and searched for scholarships and found some I planned on applying for. I wrote my essay and asked multiple people to read and edit it. I put in a good amount of my time as well as other's into this essay. I went to the application to submit it and realized it was due about 20 days ago. I could've sworn it was due March 24th, when in fact, it was due March 3rd. I felt so guilty for asking other people to take time and read my essay and give me feedback, when it was all for nothing. I felt embarrassed because I had been very irresponsible. I shouldve checked the date and wrote it down. I shouldnt have been so careless. I was pretty mad at myself but I get over things quickly. There was nothing I could do to fix it, just move on and try to find more scholarships. This class has taught me that taking risks is okay. Taking risks does mean there will most likely be failure, which sucks, but its okay.

Reading Reflection No. 3

What surprised me the most about the Wright brothers was that they wanted the US to have their invention because of their patriotism. I didn’t know the US denied them and that they had to go to France. I greatly admire their bravery and courage. I feel like their test flights were very dangerous. They risked death. There wasn’t anything that I didn’t admire about the brothers. The Wright Brothers constantly failed, but they just continued to improve their flying machines. They didn’t let the crashes mean nothing, each time they were able to take something away from them.

The brothers curiosity was one of their greatest competencies. They didn’t have a lot of money, higher education or higher up connections. They desired to fly which at the time was impossible. I cant imagine how many people probably told them they are crazy. The brother’s dedication and creativity  also helped them achieve their goals. They created a wind tunnel to continue testing their machines. They also never gave up when countless models failed.

I don’t know a lot about aerodynamics, so when they talked about the models and flying I was confused.

Were you ever scared/ what was the scariest moment? What the worst thing anyone has ever said to you? I wouldn’t be surprised if their answer wasn’t about a flight trial and about something like scared their invention wouldn’t be liked by the world. I imagine they got hurt many times while testing their models. I would be terrified to test fly some of their first models. In the books, the first model was basically a giant kite. I would ask the second question because I know people most have ridiculed them. Flying was “not for man” as the book stated the US believed.

I think their story is a great example of hard work. They had a passion to fly and they were willing to do whatever it takes to fly. They wanted to change the world’s opinion on man being able to fly. They didn’t come from money or a college education. They were just willing to make it happen by working.  

What's Next

Based on what was said in my interviews, what is next for my venture is to find other information to display on my app. One person suggested focusing on studying and partnering with some of the businesses in Gainesville like Study Edge. I could include a calendar of the events they are having and who is going that uses the app. Another person suggested focusing on wait times. I could start to include wait time of popular places to eat or I could incorporate some kind of delivery service so people do not have to leave their spot while studying.

            I was able to get a lot of good ideas from my interviews. I would definitely just work on my first idea for a while, perfecting my app. I think I like setting up some kind of delivery service for people studying. There are so may services already in place that I could partner with. Getting popularity with my app would be necessary before I reached out to these other businesses.

            Based on what was said in these interviews, I should focus next on a way to display information about events happening in Gainesville. One of the people I interviewed complained about how it can be difficult to know what is going on around town because information is spread out on different social medias. Another person suggested displaying wait time for restaurants. Instead of calling a bunch of places, by looking at one app someone can see all the wait times.

            I was surprised that there was a lot of overlap. I guess my app is pretty basic. I explained the app the same way to all the people I talked to. I think showing wait times for restaurants  would be a good idea. I would have to think of something more simple to name my app if I wanted to go in a different direction than studying.