Week 15 Reading Reflection

I was absolutely shocked to hear just how profitable and successful SKS has been. I mean we’re talking about 10 dollar a year insurance and payment plans of a few bucks per week. Yet, they are growing at 200% annually because of the sheer volume of customers they reach. I was confused why they only lend to women. Yes, they are statistically more reliable customers but it seems close-minded. If I were to ask two questions to the author they would be- how do you deal with customers who don’t pay back loans (the other .5%) and how would you modify your service to fit other countries (what stays the same and what changes completely outside of India). These are questions based purely off my own curiosity. I don’t think the author was wrong about anything but I think adopting a profit-oriented approach to a traditionally nonprofit company is risky and usually won’t work.

Final Reflection

       There are a few blog posts and experiences that stick out to me from this semester. The most joyous experience was definitely my first interview with an entrepreneur because I learned a lot about one of my favorite companies and had a great conversation. The most formative experience was my secret sauce. I put a lot of time into the list of things contributing to my human capital and it was awesome hearing what family and friends had to say about me. I’m glad that I got experience doing customer interviews because it improved my communication skills tremendously.

         I see myself as an entrepreneur- even more so than before. I have learned a lot about what it takes to start a business and keep it running smoothly. My entrepreneurial mindset has matured and I have gained invaluable skills from this course. My recommendation for future students is to get out of your comfort zone. You won’t get real feedback unless you go out there and ask strangers. You must realize that every question you asks brings you one step closer to your final product and push away negative thoughts that you have about cold approaches. Just take a deep breath and start a conversation with someone, whether it is for an assignment or to fulfill your own social desire!

Elevator Pitch 4

Dealing with the current SNAP system is a major inconvenience for students and that’s why I am rebranding the application and service. The improved SNAP will reveal the location of the vans at all times and dispatchers will deploy more vans when demand is high.

Additionally, students will be dropped off according to the time in which they ordered the ride, rather than based on the discretion of the drivers. This will result in more uniform wait times and make the service more reliable.

Since we already have the infrastructure here on campus, additional funding wouldn't necessarily be required, except for a nominal app upgrade. One thing I scrapped was the idea of revealing all the application users' location in order to preserve safety and processing power. I am also adding a feedback mechanism for both drivers and users to further enhance ride experience and report bugs.

Nearly all of my feedback has been positive, especially since I addressed the funding method and decided to include a beta testing stage before I release the application. Once demand is proven to be high and administration is made aware of the situation, improving the system will begin and the feedback loop will prove to be invaluable.

Pitch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuynF0O_wG4&feature=youtu.be

Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

My first venture concept was mostly well received and praised for its thorough attention to detail. I completed my first ENT3003 blog post pack in January, nearly 3 months ago. However, the seeds of my entrepreneurial journey, so to speak, were planted back in June when I noticed some flaws in the University of Florida’s SNAP (Student Nighttime Auxiliary Patrol) system. This is a application linked to a van service that all UF students can use to get around at night for free. The problems I noted can be separated into two main categories, all of which have been experienced by my fellow students as well as myself.

The Incomplete Application (TapRide)

*Across multiple devices and Apple/Android operating systems

- Slow or nonresponsive loading screen
- Inability to see the van on the map
- Inaccurate ride ETAs
- Unexpected ride cancellation glitch

Unreliable Vans

- Students being driven ‘in circles’ at the convenience of the driver
- Disregard for the individual student wait times (as a result)
- Drivers cruising past stops and ignoring the one minute grace period

As I mentioned before, all students who leave their dorms (particularly at night when buses are scarce) have access to the SNAP service. The user demographic spans across all ethnic, gender, and national identities. As long as they pay tuition here, the service is available from 6:30pm-3am. Their desire for safe, reliable, free transportation is not being fulfilled properly. Students are not necessarily ‘loyal’ to SNAP, but its established campus presence leads me to believe that rebranding the system would be foolish.

Innovation

Although my adjustments to the SNAP system are relatively easy to implement, the innovations I proposed are definitely huge improvements. Currently, UF Student Government, UF Police Department, and Student Traffic court fund SNAP. More specifically, from “the transportation fee generated from student tuition fees and the University of Florida Police Department through contributions from their own annual departmental budget.”

Venture Concept

To solve TapRide issues, the application update would include

- Ability to see all vans on the map at all times
- More accurate ride ETAs based on location
- Revitalized coding in order to eliminate loading and canceled request glitches

To solve van issues, the improved SNAP system would include

- Automatic ride prioritization based on time of request, not driver discretion
- Enforced grace periods with GPS based timing and proper driver training
- Encouraged user and driver review/feedback loop

It would take no effort for consumers to switch over to the improved version of SNAP, the update would require a push of a button on their smartphone. Uber and Gotcha might seem like competing services but that would be a false comparison since both of those services require a fee and/or a tip. These changes might incur a one time nominal fee for the sponsors of SNAP, but wouldn’t require an increase in employee numbers or affect the budget otherwise. There are no drawbacks or negative aspects to my idea because there is no tradeoff involved.

Final Notes

1. My most important resource, which is practically impossible for competitors to replicate, is my pre-existing marketplace presence. The fact that almost every student at UF already knows what SNAP is gives my business idea a huge advantage. The name is engrained into the brains of anyone who has ever needed a ride at night. SNAP’s existing niche is therefore extremely valuable and will give my idea an advantage over start-ups. My idea would be tough to articulate and work out the details if I didn’t at least have a present benchmark (today’s SNAP) to compare it to. Not only that, but the demand already exists for the service and will only grow with improvements.

2. The next logical step in implementing these changes would be to get the written support from a few hundred students or so and schedule a meeting with administration and/or Student Government to discuss them.

3. In five years, it would be cool if my improvements became a reality. Hopefully students and drivers would use the feedback system and come up with new ideas I didn’t even think of. In the next decade, I would like to be a successful entrepreneur or intrepreneur in a business or law firm. My experience in pitching this idea to strangers and friends alike has given me increased confidence to pursue further venture concepts for opportunities that arise later in life.

One thing that I have learned from my venture concept feedback is that this truly is a problem plaguing the student body and is most definitely under ‘covered’. Anyways, that feedback can be summarized as follows:

- My decision to use the existing brand name and infrastructure as leverage to propel my concept was a solid one

- Coding and rebranding isn’t as simple as it seems and it might take a lot of effort. However, this doesn’t really seem like a big issue to me because as I have stated before, I have tons of resources when it comes to the debugging process. The fact of the matter is that starting a new business isn’t supposed to be easy- it’ll definitely take a lot of work!

- Educating students on the service’s updates is a crucial aspect of my plan in order to immediately increase consumer confidence and identify start up issues as soon as possible. The feedback loop for drivers and users will expedite this process and ensure that both parties have a positive ride experience.

As I sift through dozens of comments on my blog, I have received overwhelmingly positive feedback. I understand that scheduling a meeting with administration, specifically President Fuchs seems ambitious. I have faith that with enough student support and obvious demonstration of student demand, my opportunity for an improved SNAP can become a reality. To alleviate growing pains and minimize the shutdown period (due to recoding), I will have to expand my network of tech savvy friends. All this would really involve is a quick Skype call and sharing of code lines; communication is key. Once the bugs have been identified, I would incorporate beta testing before a general re-release of TapRide on the app store.

Google Gold

Search engine optimization or SEO is a really fascinating topic. As you know, Dr. Pryor required us to give our blogs certain titles and label our posts. However, this was mostly done for the convenience of the TAs for grading purposes. I already showed up on the first page of Google when I searched for my blog before starting this assignment. I chose to make the following highlighted adjustments to my blog’s template in order to further optimize the search engine results. I got the idea from http://addkeywords.blogspot.com (also below). My keywords were:

[spring 2016 customer interviews concepts SNAP student services UF]. 

I always shared my blog posts on social media but I never otherwise use Google Plus (and neither do my friends.) Therefore, my social media efforts were generally ignored. My most viral post was The 20 Percent but aside from the blog’s mentioning of Zack Kampf and Envoy Now, I can’t pinpoint a reason for the blog’s whopping 30 views (and 6 comments). I got Google Gold!

Week 14 Reading Reflection

I was surprised to hear about 3M’s philosophy to never kill a product. I knew that they were a company that prided themselves on innovation (and had a track record to prove it). I was initially thrown off by the fact because that mindset seemed stubborn. However, it does make sense to me that the company would encourage problem solving rather than the trashing of ideas that seemed unreachable. Aside from this, the only confusing element of the reading to was regarding corporate entrepreneurship. I didn’t get the distinction between this and traditional corporate management but I suppose that traditional methods didn’t account for intrapraneurship. I had also never heard of social entrepreneurs being referred to as civic entrepreneurs. As far as the rest of the reading is concerned, there were no surprises. I learned about environmental ethics (ecovision), corporate ethics, and managerial rationalizations in my Environental Sciences (high school), and college Criminal Justice and Management classes respectively. If I were to ask to questions to the author they would be- how can corporations best proactively deal with the threat of environmental regulation and what (not necessarily obvious) industries are most at risk of being affected. This is because the environmental crisis, if you will, has become more prevalent in everyday life including political policies. I want to know what he thinks about its future affect on business/entrepreneurship; I don’t think he was wrong about anything.