The best idea this class had to
offer is to look for unmet/under-met needs when coming up with a business idea.
One easy way to identify such needs is by looking for things that annoy people.
After all, annoyance and anger stem from the idea that things should be
different than they are. That being said, who is most annoyed by the state of
the world? Lazy and busy people have the most pileup of work than any other
group. Lazy people surely have plenty of tasks (maybe even every task) that
they’d rather outsource to other people for money. Busy people simply need help
with all the extra work they are responsible for because there is only so much
productivity a person can uphold. Luckily for us entrepreneurs, universities
are filled to the brim with lazy and busy people. Households full of chores
needed to be done are riddled throughout Gainesville. This is a market waiting
for people to saturate it, and the opportunity will remain open for as long as
people are willing to enter it.
My business’s
“innovation” isn’t innovation, but rather an epiphany. My business model stems
from the fact that I have a ton of free time in my senior year and I am willing
to do people chores. My willingness to work will surely come in handy for doing
the chores that people don’t want to do. I am essentially offering my free
time. My free time will be spent fulfilling other people’s tedious
responsibilities. I will advertise that free time through social media. A large
portion of my innovation stems from the marketing effort. I will have to spread
my contact information throughout the university in order to make people aware
of the convenience behind letting me do their chores for them. My services will
be the same day, and since I am focusing on tedious manual labor type chores,
will be completed in a hastily manner. I am getting paid for convenience and
the outsourcing of responsibilities.
The nexus
of these two things meeting, the venture concept, focuses on a very select
market segment. There are plenty of residencies in Gainesville who don’t have
dishwashers. As such, I will offer a dishwashing service to that market
segment. Of course, I’d like to take advantage of my willingness to complete
almost any chore, and I’d like to take advantage of the entire market. However,
focusing on just dishwashing services for people without dishwashers will
allows me to focus on growing my marketing effort (i.e. social media and local
advertising) to let people find out about my willingness to work and growing my
reputation. It will be hard to get people to try my service, but with enough
time, I’m sure people will realized just how convenient my services are.
Currently there are no competitors in the market, but there are very clear
vulnerabilities. If households and apartment complexes begin buying dish
washers that will surely hurt my business model and require me to shift my
focus on another chore. If there aren’t enough households without dish washer
who are willing to try out the convenience of having me do their dishes for
them. The price will be one of the most difficult aspects of starting this
business, since I am essentially pricing the convenience factor. Being able to
distribute my services in a timely matter is another pivotal part of the
business, since I am aiming for convenience. Customer experience is the most
important part of the business. Making the experience quick, easy, relatively
cheap, and pleasant will surely allow my service to be rendered by the same
customers multiple times, and more people will be willing to try my services. I
would structure employees one of two ways depending on the feedback I am
receiving from completing the service. If I am receiving too many requests and
I can’t possible complete it, then I will have each employee do chores
independently. If however, I see customers have a lot of chores they’d be
willing to outsource, then I would have a team each with their own
specialization.
The
business’s competitive advantage is me. I have a glowing personality that
people love to be friends with. As such, when I go to people’s home they would
want my company so much that they’d render my services multiple times. That’s
why customer experience is so important, it is a little dependent on them
liking me. My amiable personality will have them coming back for more. Once I
have become established and am getting regular revenue, I will hire employees.
Their roles, as I have described earlier, is dependent of consumer feedback I
receive up to that point. This venture will essentially give me experience into
starting my own business. In the next ten years, I hope to be building up my
resume and knowledge capital to be a valuable asset to a company. This is all
in the hopes that I work in a company that will teach me a lot and give me the
skills I need to come up with my own very lucrative idea. I ultimately want to
start my own business, so this will be me simply dipping my foot in the water.
The
feedback I received was all very positive. Every comment I received declared
how knowledgeable I was on the market, and how the progress I made in the class
shows in my writing. I couldn’t think of anything to change, so I simply copy
and pasted my previous venture concept. I’ve made so many changes to the
concept already, and the final venture is already very simplified, that I don’t
know how to further improve it. Plus, the feedback was so overwhelmingly
positive, I think it would be foolish to deviate from what I have laid out.
