Week 8 Reading Reflection

I was surprised that banks were less likely to give a startup loans. As with most other things for a normal person, if you need to get a loan, you normally get it from a bank.

The author mentioned that most entrepreneurs don't get venture capital investors. It seems that the common story told is that successful start ups always get money from venture capitalist.

What is the best way to get in touch with venture capital or angel investors? Is there some sort of organization to approach or website to contact? Also how often do investor really understand the technical aspect of a product? Would it be beneficial to go in depth in explaining it to them, or just give a brief introduction to it.

Not necessarily something I disagreed with, but I thought the author should of talked more about getting funding from friends and family. It can be dangerous, but it is often the only source entrepreneurs can take advantage of.

The Twenty Percent

1. I talked to a founder of Study Edge, who was able to give brief responses to my questions.

Who do you think your target customers are? 

UF students. All of them that are taking 1 of our 25 classes.

Where do you find your customers? 

All over campus. mainly word of mouth.

What are your customer's demographics? 

College freshman to juniors.

What kinds of media do your customers consume?

All kinds.

What are your customers' problems? 

Don’t’ like staring at textbooks or getting bad grades.

What are your customers currently doing to fix their problems? 

Studying, cheating (Hopefully not though), going to study edge, paying for private tutors.

How big, on a scale of 1-10, is this problem in your customers' lives? 

7 maybe.

What are some of the bigger problems your customers are dealing with? 

See above.

Do your customers have a budget allocated to fix these problem?

Not exactly. I doubt college students budget for tutoring.

2. Recordings

3. I think the entrepreneur does understand the problems of his customers. All people I interviewed were or had taken classes that study edge was offered. The two who did not use it felt that they didn't need it, were cost sensitive, or that the existing options (TAs and professors) would be fine. For students who feel any of those ways, it would be hard to get them to use any sort of extra tutoring. The person who was using it certainly seemed happy with the product, and said he uses it whenever he can.

Half-way Reflection

1. Tenaciousness is a skill: The behaviors I've used for this course would be time management and planning. Being able to budget your time and workload means that you can make it easier to get through all the work that school can throw at you. Eventually, if you can get a head, you can even budget ahead for out-of-the-blue events, like hanging out with friends, and not have to worry about getting work done. 

2. Tenaciousness is about attitude: I don't have the easiest time talking to people, especially strangers. So doing the interviewing places me out of my comfort zone. I don't like it, but I know they only way to get over that worry and anxiety, is to just get it over with. I did not develop that belief because of this class, but it is presenting more challenges for me to overcome. 

3. Three tips: 
     1) The more you put off anything, the worse it gets. If it's an assignment, the less sleep you get the night before. If it's a fear, the worse it will get in your head. 

     2) Be willing to ask for help. It may feel like your giving up, but you're not. It shows that you care about something, and that you want that to do well. 

     3) Set realistic goals. Don't start off trying to build a car. Break it down to reasonable segments. It's much less overwhelming, and gives you more satisfaction completing each little part, then worrying about not having the whole thing finished. 

Free Money

I want to start off by saying I do not like this assignment. It requires being rude and lying, neither of which I feel okay about.

Before

I chose to find people around my dorm, I figured people would be coming and going and that would be a good spot for this. As the assignment stated, I approached people who were walking with purpose and one individual on the phone.To start the conversation I just asked if they would have a minute for a quick question. The story I chose to go with was that I was doing a social experiment. I just wanted to see if they would like a dollar or not. I figured I would give away most of the dollars. 

Recordings

After 

I was surprised that, like the recordings show, most people didn't take the dollar. They seemed to think it was weird/rude and possibly did not see me as trustworthy, considering one girl asked what I did to it. The second to last person did take the dollar, but he was hesitant about it. I thought I would get that reaction from most people, because I thought people would like to get the dollar. It is clear though, that either my strategy was poor, or that the dollar wasn't worth enough to compensate for the strangeness of the interaction. 

Week 7 Reading Reflection

I was surprised that by the early 1960s consumers were already changing their buying habits to be less on the general functionality, and more about advertising and emotional attachment.

At points the author says segmentation is bad, and at points it's good. I didn't understand when either of those cases become true.

How would a company acquire information about their customers if they do something like retail, where they don't know much aside from that one purchase.

How frequently should a company do research like this? I feel when a change in the market or revealing occurs, it's almost to late.

Some of this I definitely felt a little overwhelmed by, so I can't say whether or not I disagree with anything.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

1. Pitch 

2. Feedback Reflection I thought the feedback I got on the last elevator pitch was mostly accurate. They said I was being a bit to technical.

3. Change I did my best to turn down the amount of technical information, and explain any terms I did use.

Customer Interviews No. 3

1. Interviewing Strategy: I gave each person the short description of the business idea, and answered any clarification questions. I wanted to make sure they understood the idea fully so they could give accurate thoughts on it. I didn't ask any other questions, because their thoughts tended to answer any other questions I would of asked.

2. Interviews:

3. Reflections: Most people seem to like the idea, which is a good thing considering the main market is college students here. The main concerns were speed of the network and the ads that would be displayed. So both of those would probably need to work well for the venture to be successful.

Week 6 Reading Reflection

One of the things that I hadn't though about was the power suppliers could have over different industries. I guess I always assumed the suppliers and buyers would want to closely work together to make an efficient system, but suppliers compete with their own industry so they would be treated similarity.

So buyers have power over industries obviously. However I don't see how consumers can operate just like industry buyers, because they don't have the same organization that companies would.

This section talked a lot about how to tell if an industry is good or bad to get into for a company. I do want to know how much control a businesses has over the industry it exist ion?  I would also ask the author how you effectively gauge an industries viability if that industry doesn't exist yet? 

I feel that even though it is extremely unlikely, a business could come into a "bad" industry with the correct strategy and do really well. 

Interviewing Customers No. 2

1. Fine tune your opportunity. I am focusing on a way to provide a more consistent wireless network on campus. The original idea was to provide a solution's to the struggle of charging laptops and phone, but people didn't seem to have as much an issue with that as they did with the WiFi. 

2. Fine tune the "who". I didn't change too much who I was talking too. My original focus was anyone who uses the UF network, and I still am talking to those people.

3. Tweaking your interview questions. I focused more on the opportunity in particular this time. There experience with the UF network, and if they would want to switch to a better opportunity if it existed.

4. Interviews.

5. Tell us what you learned about the opportunity. People are definitely dissatisfied with the current UF network. They would also be willing to use or at least try another network if available.

6. Tell us what you learned about interviewing customers. I didn't do quiet as well of a job of asking open questions, and because of that I got very short responses.

Idea Napkin No. 1

1. You. I am studying computer engineering right now. I have experience working on several programming teams and have started my own programming oriented club. Implementing this concept would probably take a considerable amount of time considering the number of devices it would need to support. After getting it working I would need to focus on popularizing it on different college campuses and other areas with poor wifi. 

2. What are you offering to customers? I would be offering a free wireless network for anyone to use without restrictions.

3. Who are you offering it to? The primary demographic would be UF students who are frustrated with the wireless network available. However, the technology could be implemented anywhere were people don't have access to an unrestricted wireless network.

4. Why do they care? Customers would want to use this service because they are frustrated with existing networks not allowing certain programs or websites. Or because they don't have access to a wireless network.

5. What are your competencies? Some of the software would be hard to develop so that would add a time barrier for other companies to come in. The other way would be to popularize the network as much as possible, and use brand recognition to keep out competitors.

I feel that these elements could work together. Though having more experience with network programming and more barriers to entry for possible competition.

Elevator Pitch No. 1

The WiFi on campus can be unreliable, and imposes annoying restrictions. A way to get around that, and create a network that has comparable speed and coverage would be to use a mesh network. This would allow phones and laptops to have access to the internet and spread the network at the sometime. Simul (Latin for together, so fancy) Tech is the name of the venture that plans on implementing this solution.