Final Reflection

• After going back and reading all of my blog posts from this summer, I have realized how far I have come. One of the experiences that I know I will remember years to come is the interview process. Admittedly, I dreaded each interview. However, going back and listening to them I can hear the progress I make on how to conduct an interview that gives me the most information. My most joyous experience was creating an avatar of my prototypical customer. I thought this was a fun way to see what a average consumer may look like, and I loved creating their backstory. The experience I am most proud of was the final elevator pitch. Being recorded, and especially having people I don't know watch, is one of my biggest fears. I did not complete the first two pitches, but was proud when I did do that final pitch and it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. 

• I don't know if I necessarily see myself as an entrepreneur yet, however I am much more close to feeling this was than before I started this class. I do believe though that I have developed the mindset of an entrepreneur. I can now easily catch myself thinking "Oh, thats a problem, why hasn't something been created to solve this?".

• My advice would be to not treat this course as just submitting assignments for a grade. Treat this class seriously and you will not only enjoy the assignment more, but it can truly help you develop a new mindset that you will use on a daily basis. 
  

Making it Real

Below is the link to my resume:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwe7Kdqsl7VqQ3Y5Uk8tYmFRYU0/view?usp=sharing

My Exit Strategy

My exit strategy will be as follows:

1) I plan to continue with my business until I feel it has reached the "question mark" phase of its life cycle. At this point, I would attempt to sell the business.

2) I have chosen this strategy because I would like to stick with the business as long as possible. I think there is so much valuable information to be learned from your first venture. All of the information I gather from this venture will allow me to have the experience to embark on new ventures down the road.

3) I believe that my exit strategy has made me realize that this is my first business venture, and that there is no way to make everything perfect. Treating this venture as also a learning experience allows me to stop and think about different roads I could have taken and what their results would be.

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity: 

     My product idea was created because I saw a need to prevent the staleness of chips. Who possesses this need can really be anyone who finds themselves buying chip bags. I see the major customer group being large families and college students. The changes in environment that prompt this need is when chips are exposed to air they will become stale. This consumer target group is defined demographically. Currently, consumers will invest in chip clips or will just roll the bag of chips. From interviews, consumer's have no loyalty to their current method. This is a big opportunity because of how many people consume chips daily. I believe the window of opportunity will always be there until someone comes along and executes a product like mine.

Innovation:

     My Innovation is an adhesive seal that will be added to large party bags of chips which allows them to instantly be sealed. This seal will prevent air from getting into the bag and will therefore help prevent staleness and prolong the 'life' of the chips. This seal works by using upper end adhesive glue to form a seal that consumers can simply just press down and instantly seal their bag after eating. I am selling the resources I used to create this seal to chip companies to add to their manufacturer for .40 cents. 

Venture Concept:

     This innovation will prevent staleness by offering consumers an instant way to effectively seal their bag of chips. I believe it will be easy to get consumers to switch their method of closing chip bags and purchase my innovation. Since I am targeting chip companies that are already established to add it to their already existing product, the company already has established and consumer base and has brand loyalty. Consumers will trust and buy my seal because they trust the brand of chips that it is on. The competitors of my innovation are producers of chip clips. The weakness with chip clips is that it is a seperate purchase that many don't want to make. They are not an instant option as a seal would be. As stated before, packaging, my price points, distribution, customer support, and the customer experience is everything when it comes to this product. My product is unique because I am targeting brands that already have the loyalty and packaging worked out. The actual business organization would have a production unit starting with about 20 employees to run and sort the equipment. I would need the roles of outreach (reaching out to different chip companies), production, distribution, etc. 

What I believe to be my most important resource is my preexisting contacts when people that work in the upper levels of big chip companies. 

What I think will be next for my venture is possibly targeting the individual size bags of chips instead of just the party bag size. 

Assuming that I do launch, in the future I would like to become an entrepreneur of bigger things than just chips. I would really like to do something with technology, and my background with this venture will help with the process. 

Celebrating Failure

Failure in life is unavoidable. I have learned the lesson of failure many times, including during this semester. This semester, I experienced failure in time management. For the first time, I not only had classes with UF to manage, but I also had a full time job to manage as well. I would come home from a long shift and feel that I deserved to lay back and watch Netflix for the rest of the night. I thought that I could stuff all of my classes into the weekend. Well the weekend would roll around, and I quickly realized that this was not possible. My failure to see the load my classes and work schedule would be, and my failure to manage them resulted in high stressed and even missed assignments. Despite the failure, I needed to realize that the classes weren't over. I couldn't just sulk about my failure. I needed to sit down and dedicate time to learn from this failure. I developed a schedule that still allowed time to relax after work, but also required at least an hour of studying. I also invested in a planner to make sure this new schedule could be implemented. Since then, I have done much better with keeping up with my classes and now have less stress in my life too.

Elevator Pitch No. 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiO18fC7VZc&feature=youtu.be

Above is the link to my elevator pitch

REFLECTION:

This is actually the first elevator pitch I have done for this class. I strongly dislike recording myself so I have been trying to avoid making one. Since it is my first pitch for the course, it may not be at the level as others so I would love to hear feedback! Finally doing the pitch was much more easier than dreading it and I think it will help me with that fear in the future.

Amazon Whisperer

• Describe the revenue drivers you currently include in your business concept for this class. Revenue drivers are the different ways you make money. 

- I think I can generate most of the money for this business concept by a website like "kickstarter". I believe that most people empathize with a young college student wanting to become a entrepreneur. 

• Describe what kind of product offering you believe should be next. What's the next thing your customers want?

- Currently, I want to focus on large party bags of chips. I believe once the seal is well established and known to be on those large bag, consumers will want them on the smaller bags

• Describe how this "next" thing will enhance your existing product/service offering. Does it improve the user experience, does it increase customer switching costs, does it foster customer loyalty, etc.?

- This "next" thing of adding my seal to different sizes of bags will allow consumers to have more options. The additional options can cater to any size family which will foster customer loyalty. 

• Go to Amazon and try to find a product that is similar to the one you want to offer next. Describe the product. Include a picture of the product

- This product is one that will accomplish the same thing as my chip seals. 

• What are the customer reviews for the product? What, exactly, do customers not like about the product? What do they like about it?

- The bag re-sealer from Amazon has a 3.5 star rating from 377 reviews. Consumers like the product when it does work as it has been helping the longevity of the product they are sealing. Many reviews complained about the price and how the product simply did not work, 

• Describe what design/usability changes you'd make to the product. 

- This sealer from Amazon is an external one. One that can easily be lost and is a fairly big price to pay up front. My seal will be featured on the bag and the minimal price for it will already be included in the price of the chips so consumers do have cognitive dissonance for spending a lot of money.

• Describe why you think this product would make a good addition to your current product/service offering.

- One could argue that this product would be a good addition to my current business concept. It gives the consumer more options and could potentially save them money if they frequently are buying chips.