Final Reflection

I think my most formative experience in this class was doing the idea napkin. That was the first time I put down all my ideas in a connected sense and allowed me to see what I was actually creating. I think this is an important step for any entrepreneur to take in the early development of his/her idea. I really enjoyed doing the assignments requiring reading books on entrepreneurs, because they have a lot of knowledge to share. I definitely dreaded interviewing random people about my business concept, but I was surprised that they also had a lot of helpful knowledge to share. I'm very proud that I went through with it, and faced my fears. I definitely am developing an entrepreneurial mindset, and catch myself looking for opportunities in everyday life, where I wouldn't have before. I recommend to future students to keep an open mind. Some of the assignments may seem challenging or out of their comfort zone, but by pushing forward and welcoming every opportunity for growth, you will simulate the mindset of an actual entrepreneur. By the end of the course, you will have experienced that entrepreneurial mindset, which will be so worth all the work you invested.

Venture Concept 2- Know to Grow

Opportunity

I identified an opportunity with motivated, low-wage workers. These are most likely people that didn’t go to college, or didn’t finish their degree for a variety of reasons. They are unsatisfied with their current job, and want to gain a promotion, or a whole new career path. They are most likely young (in their twenties or thirties) and come from low-income families. I decided to particularly target low-wage workers in a college town, so Gainesville is where I will start.  Economic and social forces have created this opportunity. The wage gap in the U.S. has been increasing over the past thirty years, and while society forms the motivation to have a successful career, it doesn’t leave much opportunity to achieve it. I think this group is currently satisfying this need by simply working hard and applying to new jobs, but there isn’t a service they would be extremely loyal to. They could be part of a job search website, or be a customer of a staffing service. It’s a large opportunity, but the challenge will be to get people to believe that the service will be worth their time and money. I believe this window of opportunity will be open for a very long time, since the wage gap does not show signs of decreasing.

Innovation

The service I am offering is workshops for these low-wage workers who want to improve their job. I will use high-achieving undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Florida as the coaches, and they will lead the workshops and offer individual meetings with customers. The customers will receive skills such as resume building, interview preparation, negotiation, and career planning. They can either pay $20 per workshop, or attend unlimited workshops for $50 per month.

Venture Concept

By attending these workshops and gaining mentorship, customers will gain the skills they need to increase their salary level. This will aid in decreasing the wage gap, the opportunity I have identified. I believe customers will purchase my service, because they want to improve their life situation. Once some customers receive higher salaries following the use of my service, the word will spread and many people in the Gainesville community will want an opportunity to increase their pay. I think the main challenge in getting people to start using this service is convincing them that it will work. If they believe in it, then they will switch. To do this, I will offer an introduction workshop people can attend for free. By attending, they will gain information on the sessions and learn how beneficial they will be. I think my main competitors are job-search services such as ZipRecruiter, Indeed.com, and Linkedin. However, these services do not provide skill advancement, they simply show you job options. Our service will not only help you find the job, but will prepare you to obtain it. Since college students will be our source of employees, they will provide the customer support services. They will be in charge of answering calls, providing promotions, and collecting customer information. This is another reason that starting in a college town such as Gainesville is so important. It’s imperative that customers experience a safe, friendly, and supportive environment during their sessions. They need to trust us, and feel that we are competent enough to give them career advice. In this way, organizational culture will be crucial to our success. The employees will need to feel competent, trusted,  and valued in order to transfer those feelings to the customers. I think starting out with five to ten employees will be enough to run the workshops, act as mentors, and do customer support.

Minor Elements

1.     One of my most important resources will be my human capital. The college students will be invaluable to running the business, because they have the knowledge and experience to serve as mentors, and don’t have to be paid a large amount of money. They have current knowledge in career planning, resume building, interview prep, and other skills required in the job search because they are doing it for themselves now. They are also motivated to gain leadership and mentorship experience, as this is something recruiters and schools look for on every resume. The University of Florida provides a strong community of potential employees that competitors will find it difficult to replicate. Another resource that will be extremely important is the career building worksheets that I can use as tools throughout the workshops. Without these, I wouldn't have a foundation of what to teach my customers. Combining these two resources make up my most important resource.

2.     Ideally I would like to create a “one-stop-shop” for career services, offering advice to people in current jobs, providing wardrobe for interviews, and hosting networking events for workers in the Gainesville community. In the long run, I could attempt to open other branches in college towns such as Tallahassee or Orlando.

3.     In five years, I want to sell this business in order to invest in other ventures. I think starting with this target group of customers will expose me to new ideas and opportunities to solve unmet needs. With exposure to this group, I can build a loyal relationship with them and use it to convince them to buy in to my future ventures.

Feedback: I gained positive feedback about my resources and business idea. However, I received mixed feedback about my most important source, with some agreeing that it's my human capital with others disagreeing. My feedback also supported my idea of expansion and eventually selling the business.

Change: I changed my resource section based on my feedback, and added a second resource that when combined with human capital makes up my most important resource. I also changed my response of where I will be with the business in 5 years, based on what I realized I wanted for the long term future.

My exit strategy

1. My intention for my business is to grow it as much as possible over the next five years, and then sell it in order to gain capital for another business. 
2. This business concept is not something I could expand nationally on my own, and I think I can make a difference by building it up in the Gainesville community before turning it over to someone with more financial resources. I could then invest in something bigger, that I can hopefully keep growing with in the future.
3. This plan has kept me focused when developing my business strategy. I want to grow quickly, but in a very specific direction. I don't want to expand to the point at which I am making a loss, because I don't want this to be a long term venture for me. I want to do the most good I can with the time I have, and focus on quality instead of quantity.

Reading Reflection 3

1. For this book review, I read Cognitive Surplus by Clay Skirky. The main argument in his book, is that social media, the internet, and technology in general can actually propel us towards a more engaged, democratic society. Shirky makes a contrast between his optimistic tone and the typical view that the internet has taught us to be lazy, passive, isolated consumers. Television, on the other hand, does just that. We pour our time into it and get nothing in return. In this way, generations that are participating in interactive media will be better off than those addicted to the tv.
2. This book argues that making connections and having interactions with others is how we advance ourselves and our world. This is definitely something reinforced throughout this class. We do exercises to analyze and grow our network by interacting with others. We do this through an online platform, but it doesn't make it any less real.
3. An exercise we could do in this class based on this book is to report how much time in the past week each student spent watching tv. Then, each student should come up with a list of other activities they would complete if they had spent their time on anything else. The class can see how much the class as a whole could accomplish if everyone gave up their tv time.
4. I think Shirky's comparison of America's allotted television time to gin in 1720s London gave me the biggest aha moment. It's not a bad thing, and it helps us cope with modern reality, but what do we gain from it? I guess I thought I couldn't waste time more than I do using social media, but Shirky's book points out that at least there is human connection and some value when using the internet.

Celebrating Failure

I think one example of failure that most college students can relate to is the job search. This semester, I experienced a lot of rejection throughout my internship search. Not having a true path or plan I wanted to follow, I initially applied to what seemed like  every company with an internship that matched my career goals. I quickly received rejections from some, and never received a response from many others. This can seem frustrating, especially after spending a lot of valuable time on the applications. Despite feeling pretty diminished, I reminded myself to be resilient, and kept improving my resume and application skills. Just when I was preparing for a whole shift to applying for internships I didn't truly want, but thought were better than nothing, the perfect fit came along. This company, which seemed almost too good to be true, ended up giving me an offer.
I learned to be resilient and have grit. When facing failure, especially a pattern of failure, funnel your disappointment into finding out what you can improve, and working to make those adjustments. I know that before this semester, I feared failure. I didn't want the embarrassment or the sense that I wasn't good enough. But throughout my experiences, and reflection from this class, I have developed the perspective that failure is incredibly necessary. We need it to learn, we need it to guide us, and we need it to make us stronger. Failure is an opportunity to rise above a challenge and prove what you can do.

What's Next

Existing Market

• I want to extend my services from basic workshops to an all-in-one career preparation center. This could include features like an interview wardrobe room, computers with job search engine subscriptions, and an emphasis on one-on-one career mentorship.
• I think in order to grow my existing market, I need to provide excellent service to every customer my business comes into contact with. A good reputation in the
  Gainesville community will expand our business, and that will only happen if we do what we say we're going to do (help people achieve higher salaries.) This will allow our business to reach our entire existing market.

New Market

• The new market that I would target would be middle-class workers. As opposed to low-wages earners, these people would need more advanced tutoring skills, which would probably require higher level employees than college students.
• I think we could deliver to this market with professional related services, such as balancing work and home life, investment classes, work satisfaction, and virtual workspace.
• There is definitely more money in this new market than my existing market, however the skill level required to run the workshops may be difficult to obtain. Marketing strategies would also have to be creative in order to convince middle-class workers that it is worth their time and money to partake in our workshops. Virtual workshops may be a way to accommodate some of these challenges.

Venture Concept- Know to Grow

Opportunity

I identified an opportunity with motivated, low-wage workers. These are most likely people that didn’t go to college, or didn’t finish their degree for a variety of reasons. They are unsatisfied with their current job, and want to gain a promotion, or a whole new career path. They are most likely young (in their twenties or thirties) and come from low-income families. I decided to particularly target low-wage workers in a college town, so Gainesville is where I will start.  Economic and social forces have created this opportunity. The wage gap in the U.S. has been increasing over the past thirty years, and while society forms the motivation to have a successful career, it doesn’t leave much opportunity to achieve it. I think this group is currently satisfying this need by simply working hard and applying to new jobs, but there isn’t a service they would be extremely loyal to. They could be part of a job search website, or be a customer of a staffing service. It’s a large opportunity, but the challenge will be to get people to believe that the service will be worth their time and money. I believe this window of opportunity will be open for a very long time, since the wage gap does not show signs of decreasing.

Innovation

The service I am offering is workshops for these low-wage workers who want to improve their job. I will use high-achieving undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Florida as the coaches, and they will lead the workshops and offer individual meetings with customers. The customers will receive skills such as resume building, interview preparation, negotiation, and career planning. They can either pay $20 per workshop, or attend unlimited workshops for $50 per month.

Venture Concept

By attending these workshops and gaining mentorship, customers will gain the skills they need to increase their salary level. This will aid in decreasing the wage gap, the opportunity I have identified. I believe customers will purchase my service, because they want to improve their life situation. Once some customers receive higher salaries following the use of my service, the word will spread and many people in the Gainesville community will want an opportunity to increase their pay. I think the main challenge in getting people to start using this service is convincing them that it will work. If they believe in it, then they will switch. To do this, I will offer an introduction workshop people can attend for free. By attending, they will gain information on the sessions and learn how beneficial they will be. I think my main competitors are job-search services such as ZipRecruiter, Indeed.com, and Linkedin. However, these services do not provide skill advancement, they simply show you job options. Our service will not only help you find the job, but will prepare you to obtain it. Since college students will be our source of employees, they will provide the customer support services. They will be in charge of answering calls, providing promotions, and collecting customer information. This is another reason that starting in a college town such as Gainesville is so important. It’s imperative that customers experience a safe, friendly, and supportive environment during their sessions. They need to trust us, and feel that we are competent enough to give them career advice. In this way, organizational culture will be crucial to our success. The employees will need to feel competent, trusted,  and valued in order to transfer those feelings to the customers. I think starting out with five to ten employees will be enough to run the workshops, act as mentors, and do customer support.

Minor Elements

1.     My most important resource will be my human capital. The college students will be invaluable to running the business, because they have the knowledge and experience to serve as mentors, and don’t have to be paid a large amount of money. They have current knowledge in career planning, resume building, interview prep, and other skills required in the job search because they are doing it for themselves now. They are also motivated to gain leadership and mentorship experience, as this is something recruiters and schools look for on every resume. The University of Florida provides a strong community of potential employees that competitors will find it difficult to replicate.

2.     Ideally I would like to create a “one-stop-shop” for career services, offering advice to people in current jobs, providing wardrobe for interviews, and hosting networking events for workers in the Gainesville community. In the long run, I could attempt to open other branches in college towns such as Tallahassee or Orlando.

3.     In five years, I want to be managing this venture from a birds-eye view, while also investing in other ventures. I think starting with this target group of customers will expose me to new ideas and opportunities to solve unmet needs. With exposure to this group, I can build a loyal relationship with them and use it to convince them to buy in to my future ventures.

Your Venture's Unfair Advantage

1. Human capital- fellow college students
1. This resource is very valuable, as the college students are knowledgable in the subject matter and won't require high wages. I believe it's rare in that a lot of organizations don't have the location or connection to hire primarily college students for a position like this. It's relatively inimitable in this area, at least. However, on a national scale it could be imitated. I believe it's non-substitutable, because using college students is the foundation of my business proposal.
2. Network- academic & career mentors at UF
1. This resource serves as a valuable stream of advice and connections, and is rare in that it's unique to college students at UF. It's only imitable by other UF students, and could be substituted with other networks, but not easily.
3. Network- recruiters at companies
1. This is valuable, as it allows for first-hand career-prep advice. However, it's not rare as a lot of people have access to it, and it can be imitated. It could be substituted, but not easily.
4. Resume building, interview prep & career planning worksheets
1. These are valuable resources to use in the workshops, but aren't really rare. They could be easily imitated and substituted with different formats.
5. Personal knowledge of resumes, interviewing & career planning
1. While this knowledge is extremely valuable and necessary for the business to function, it's definitely not rare or inimitable. It cannot be substitutable, but many people have or can obtain this knowledge.
6. Writing skills
1. This is valuable for running any business, but especially for this one. However, this skill is not rare or inimitable. It cannot be substituted, but it can be obtained by many people.
7. Editing skills
1. This skill will be valuable when reviewing resumes, cover letters, and workshop plans. It's not very rare, and definitely not inimitable. However, there may be an editing system I can come up with to make us unique. It won't be substitutable when running workshops.
8. Problem-solving skills
1. This skill is valuable and non-substitutable when running any business. It's not very rare or inimitable, though.
9. Leadership skills
1. This skill is very valuable when running a business. It's relatively rare, and can be inimitable if you create unique leadership practices. It can be substitutable, but not if you want to lead your staff successfully.
10. Location- college town
1. This resource is valuable, as it allows us to use college students as staff. It is relatively rare and inimitable, as you can't create a college town; you have to just be in one. This is relatively substitutable, but you would have to find a different population to be employees.

My top resource is the human capital: my fellow college students. It's the most unique resource, and serves as a key function of the business plan.

Pitch 3

https://youtu.be/K9lmdNMXgzY
I have seen a lot of improvement in my third pitch when comparing it to my first one. I have followed feedback, and have almost completely memorized it. I still stumble a little when giving it, and I think this is just because I haven't had the opportunity to practice in front of other people yet. However, I am confident that this will easily improve with practice. I also received feedback to limit background noise that made it into my last video. I made an effort to find a quiet space in my house, and ask my family to limit their noise so I could record without distraction. While memorizing the pitch took extra time during these recordings, I think it was worth it in order to create something that I can use to share my idea with others. I think the main things I look forward to improving are my body language, and steadying my pace of speech.