Venture Concept No. 2

Following is a compilation of: a summary of feedback from the posts Venture Concept No. 1 and What's Next, a venture concept revisited and re-vamped, and what I've learned from the feedback.


Some of my feedback consisted of excitement for my newest venture concept "What's the Move", a social media platform for locals in the area to see what's happening out on the town that night. Others commented on their interest in having half of their membership purchase go toward housing scholarships for students in need and the great leverage that charity would give my concept over other similar business ventures. I also received comments which contributed their subleasing experiences and how they have a great unmet need for a service such as mine to help combat their financial obligations.

Most of my feedback was procured from my "What's Next App". The most practical insight was that concerning the addition of a timeline or news feed consisting of the newest posts in the area. This individual stressed that he was already so comfortable using that platform and would be intimidated and frustrated to have to become accustomed to a new platform that he doesn't trust just yet. People have to believe it works and believe in the platform in order to deem it worthy of possession of their time and energy. This one I had to jot down, it was an obvious obstacle I hadn't even considered due to my enthusiasm for the cutting edge platform.

Through my interviews conducted in my "What's Next" post, I tried to do as much as I could to re-vamp and re-brand the entire idea of my original application, and almost make it a completely new application and expanding to a whole new target audience. I want to tune in on the "connection" factor that my leasing service currently provides, and help others connect directly to services they need within the local area. This spawned from feedback I received from a customer which encouraged me to create a new application for bands and for venues seeking live music: a band manager app that manages your band for you, finds local gigs and notifies you of the opportunities, connects you to individuals in need of live entertainment for the genre of music that you provide, and has features which facilitate communication between the band and the party of interest, and allows all payments to be made through the application. We felt like we minimized our target audience from the last one which could be a good and bad thing, we have found a very specific set of individuals: party goers and noise makers, allowing us to more specifically define our audience, but then again we have reduced the market which could buy into the application and use it sufficiently.

However, what served as the catalyst for Venture Concept number two was the rarely asked question: Does that already exist?

Think about it.

There are so many applications and services being developed right underneath our noses. There are so many up and coming, brand new business ventures that Gators right here on our campus in this very community are trying to get off of the ground and expose to the Gainesville. Why not create an application that connects you to these ventures? If you have needs regarding:

Housing
Scholarships
Entertainment/Live Events
Tutoring
Transportation Service/Repair
Parking
Costumes
Fresh Markets
Vegan Options

Why don't you go local and contribute to the community right here at home. There are hundreds of services, ventures, and mobile applications that are developing right here on campus. My next venture is to create an application which serves to connect the local community with student ventures, helping the community to flourish while also funneling customers into student concepts and giving Gator entrepreneurs the chance to develop a serious and sustaining market. The application will not be limited to the University of Florida, and it will serve as a main platform for all university student ventures to advertise in and personally connect with their local communities. In efforts to help get student ventures off the ground and running, the application will be free for users to search through the categories of ventures that students are producing. To connect with those ventures through our application, the application will prompt that the user pay a small one time $2.00 fee, a portion of which will be donated to the student business or organization. As an incentive for students to use our application and encourage users to locate them through our app, the portion donated will begin at 50%, and increase by 1% for every customer that connects with their organization through our app. This will help generate funding for the student ventures as well as increase traffic within and awareness of our application.

The business backing this concept and online service will consist of the following teams: • Tech – programming, mobile application development, and website development
• Marketing – developing strategies and materials to reach our target audience
• Promoting – active advertisement of the business through tabling efforts, material distribution, and sustaining an active media presence
• Customer service – ensuring that members receive aid by answering emails as well as sending emails to receive feedback, welcome members, and update them on news such as local listings if they subscribe
• Management – overseeing the company flow, project flow, team development, and tracking progress to continually enhance the application and marketing strategies.
• Campus outreach - company ambassadors at each university who develop marketing teams to help promote this application and encourage student businesses and organizations to join, allocating student emails at tabling opportunities and creating a campus wide network

Venture on, ENT3003 C/O Summer 16.