Your Venture's Unfair Advantage

Ten Resources

- Investment Banking connections

              -             will help me as my business progresses

              -             not many people have access to this industry

              -             not easily copied because people can’t copy a network with ease

- Connections w/ current entrepreneurs

              -             will teach me skills of the trade

              -             only few people from UF will possibly be able to imitate

              -             successful entrepreneurs are hard to find

- Business school connections

              -             successful people in all sorts of different industries

              -             No one is capable of going through my college experience and being able to imitate what I have done

- Finance knowledge

              -             helpful in running a business and negotiating with potential investors

              -             only people who have a degree in finance will be able to compare

              -             there is a high cost to obtaining a degree that would imitate what I have

- Leadership knowledge

              -             Being able to lead a group of professionals

              -             few people focusing on leading rather than managing

              -             leadership education is hard to find and mentors don’t come easy

- Professional Experience

              -             Taught me how to operate in a corporate setting

              -             Hard to obtain internships with fortune 50 companies

              -             There aren’t many who can say that they have been able to do this before graduation

- People Skills

              -             Something that you can’t teach to people

              -             People can’t always communicate effectively and are awkward in high stress situations

              -             If people had them they would use them

- Wealthy Network

              -             knowing these people can help in raising capital

              -             can’t necessarily choose who you know and how they can help

              -             people can’t just decide to choose who they know and who would give them money

- Good credit

              -             will allow me to obtain loans from financial institutions

              -             few at my age have this going for them

              -             people can’t change this at the drop of a hat

- Great friends

              -             people will help me succeed in difficult situations

              -             not everyone has people that will do hard things for them

              -             there is a lot that goes into making good friends and a lot of time. Can’t imitate at the drop of a hat

- My wealthy network may be the most important in the beginning of a business because I will need a lot of funding that will allow me to grow. Without it I could run out of money and that would result in failure.

 

Elevator Pitch 3

Elevator Pitch 3




The feedback that I received from my last pitch was mostly positive. The energy and message that I brought was positive and reflected well on me as an entrepreneur. The best feedback I got was too look more to the business that I plan on developing and less on what I have done thus far. What I did to change my pitch based on this feedback was to look at the content of my pitch and make sure that it related strictly to my business plan and not on other unimportant things. The pitch was a lot easier this time and was easy to shoot. Third time is the charm!

Reading Reflection No. 2

1.       The general theme in my book is that the human mind works in a special way and there are different things that you can do in order to use it to your advantage. It argued that there are two systems of thinking in the human mind and that there are benefits to both.

2.       This book taught me that there are benefits to being able to take a step back and act intentionally instead of acting instinctively. This ties in to what we are learning because we are learning about social capital and being able to do something like this makes you more valuable.

3.       The exercise would consist of looking at our first opinion of certain situations and then comparing those opinions to some that are more thought out. This would show that the more time taken to think about something would render much better products.

4.       The thing that surprised me most about this book wasn’t in the book. I was in a session for the Florida Leadership Academy and a Disney executive came in to speak to us. He recommended a bunch of books for us but he especially noted this book as a great tool for getting ahead professionally.

Idea Napkin No. 2

1.       I am a third-year finance major at the University of Florida. My skills are that I am very math oriented and good at critical thinking and problem solving. Making people like me comes relatively easy to me and it has come in handy in multiple circumstances. The aspirations that I would have if I were to start this business would be to start a company that is a household name. If this was the case then I would have made a product that everyone is accustomed with and that has provided value in multiple people’s lives.

2.       I am offering a peace of mind to traveling customers that want to make sure they get to where they need to be. This could be in the form of an airline or a insurance package.

3.       The people that I would be offering this too would be relatively well-off families that tend to travel often and know the inconveniences that come with traveling. The thing that they all have in common is being familiar with the airline industry.

4.       Customers will pay me money to make sure that they do not wind up spending the night in an airport. Or making sure that they don’t have to spend a lot of money on hotels and other flights when they have already paid to have something done for them.

5.       What sets me apart is my drive to succeed and my ability to work harder than my competitors.

I believe that the elements stated above blend nicely. There is a lot of reasoning that is given as to why this business is valuable and why other customers will agree. The only weak link would be the part that pertains to me. I’m not sure what my core competencies are and how they would help me start this company.

Feedback

The first point that I addressed was my lack of talking about myself. In my first time around I talked about my idea exhaustively and let my selling of myself fall through the cracks. This time around I did my best to talk myself up as much as possible

The second point that I focused on was my description of why people would find my company valuable. To combat this I made sure that there was a well thought out description and examples of why my idea would be useful to others.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

Elevator Pitch!


Reflection and Changes

I really needed to brag more this time around as I gave my elevator pitch. I gave a lot of soft examples of things that I am good at in my last video. This time I decided to give concrete examples backing the things that I am good at. I could always add more energy but I don't like looking tacky. However, sometimes you need to do those kinds of things in order to achieve the things that you want to in life. It's always hard to change something like this because I haven't changed much since my last recording. There is always room for improvement though.

What's Your Secret Sauce

My Secret Sauce

My five things

1.       I am very hard to read and keep calm in very stressful situations. This could be a great asset in doing business.

2.       I have a great sense of humor. There are a lot of advantages to being able to enjoy your time and having others enjoy their time around you.

3.       I am very good at learning things quickly. During my time in college I have learned a lot of new things that I didn’t think that I would be able to. Being able to do this will help when facing challenges.

4.        My work ethic is unwavering. This must be a given for any entrepreneur.

5.       My creativity in problem solving opens a lot of doors for me and anyone that decides to work with me.

Interviews

Over the course of my interviews there were a lot of reoccurring themes that seemed to come up repeatedly. It was a little awkward sitting across from people and basically asking them to complement me on camera. One interviewee mentioned that when I get behind something I naturally start to obsess over the work that I am doing. When I am not into doing something, it shows in my work because I pick and choose what I put my effort into. Additionally, a few mentioned that I have a knack for connecting with people and getting on their level.

Reflection

There were a lot of similarities between the content of my interviews and my own analysis. A lot of the discussion had to do with why those things could benefit me moving forward as an entrepreneur. However, there was a lot more discussion about my ability to interact with other people. I don’t really think of myself as a people person and the fact that I was being given feedback relating to that makes me think that it is a certain strength of mine. Looking back I would not change any of my initial choices.

Create a Customer Avatar

Customer Profile

I will be profiling a stereotypical person that I see using my product down to a singular person. Not a type of person, but a single person. I see this person being a mom that is not traveling alone. There is a lot of planning going into making the itinerary for their family trip and they want everything to go perfectly smoothly. They have had horrible experiences traveling before and most of it was out of their hands. They have been jaded by horrible customer service and are expecting the worst of the worst when they deal with anyone from the airline they are traveling with. They would have taboos against certain airlines, but they have yet to find one that they are fond of. Outside of these bad experiences I see this person being extremely cautious and having a lot of responsibilities. The reason they would be my customer is because I would offer them a peace of mind that they would find hard to get anywhere else.

This woman would like to watch Ellen and have a husband that works in Finance. There would not be a single thing out of place in her house. Christmas dinner would be held at their home and they would have a Golden Retriever. Two children, one named Johnny and the other Sara (without an h). They feel pleasant to be around but for some reason you feel that you are constantly being judged. Her kids go to private school and they have a Florida Prepaid Account for the kids. There is also a good chance that this person voted for Trump, but her husband didn’t want to be bothered to go out and vote. There is a lot of work that goes into keeping a household so well kept together and they take waaaaaaay toooo much pride in it. Probably a few family scandals that nobody knows about.

I don’t have too much in common with this customer profile because I am a reckless college student. However, we do have a similar distaste for the airline industry. I don’t think that this is a coincidence because everyone who travels relatively often has similar points of view on this subject.

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

Interview One: In this interview we talked about the alternative of traveler’s insurance. When talking through what this service provides it became apparent that it would possibly be a direct competitor with my service. If this is the case than I would have to compete on price point and possibly on breadth of service.

Interview Two: In this interview we dove deeper into how this service would be brought to our potential customers. After discussion we thought about negotiating with airlines to add an option at the end of their checkout to add this type of “insurance” to their travel itinerary. This would be good for the airlines because they could tell travelers that people who buy the insurance have priority and move some of the liability of traveling off of them if people do not opt into the insurance.

Interview Three: The last interview focused on whether people would think this option is worth their time or money. Truly, the only way for them to know for sure is if they need to use it. As claims keep getting made people will see how much this service could save them in the future. People will now have an option to spare themselves the hassle of being stranded in an airport and worrying about the expenses that come with this inconvenience.

These interviews showed that there could be a lot of obstacles in the way of making this a viable business opportunity. There are competitors in the market already and a lot of variables in the airline industry that raise very high barriers to entry. Looking forward, we will have to differentiate ourselves on multiple fronts to make sure that we can survive in a hostile market.  

Halfway Reflection

1.       The behaviors that I have used to keep up with the requirements for this course are persistence and organization. There are a lot of interviews that I have to schedule on a weekly basis and it gets very annoying to keep asking people to hop on the phone with me. I have had to keep pushing and making sure that my schedule is kept very organized, so I can fit in the calls when it is convenient for them.

2.       There a few times when I wanted to breeze through interviews just for the sake of saving my own time. What made me push through and not take the easy way out was that I need as much market research as possible in order to make sure that my idea could form into a valuable business. I don’t think my attitude would be defined as tenacious in this class. It would be considered as persistent. Not enough emotion to be tenacious.

3.       Three Tips:

a.       Pick a business concept that is something that you could potentially do

b.       Do more than the bare minimum

c.       Crank out more assignments than is required for that week