Final Reflection

For me, I feel like the most formative assignment this semester was the elevator pitch portion. That type of thing is so far out of my comfort zone and I've never really had to do anything like that before, so it was really a change and sticks out in my mind from all the other assignments. I feel like the most joyous experience were the reading reflections simply because I like to read, and the books I chose were also incredibly interesting to me. I love history and am always looking for ways to learn more about it, so those assignments for me were a personal enjoyment. The thing I will probably remember most years from now isn't necessarily one assignment, but the comments for all the assignments. Just the process of feedback to and from a network of students was different for me but in a good way and I'll remember it for a long time to come.
I feel like at the end of the semester I have developed more of an entrepreneurial mindset, however I still don't think I have quite what it takes to be an entrepreneur on a big level. I like to be able to jump around between a variety of different projects and I love creating something purely for the sake of the process and creating, rather than actually going through all the steps to get my creation to market.
The thing I would suggest to future students would have to be to look ahead and plan accordingly. Also my number one tip, if you don't like having assignments due on Friday nights, pretend they aren't. Do them by Thursday at the latest and you'll save yourself so much stress. To foster the entrepreneurial mindset, I'd say to believe in yourself and to never discount something because of its size. All ideas have value, it just takes the right person to come along and see it.

This is me at the end of the semester, and I'm so excited to be on the other side of this last week. 

Venture Concept No. 2

1. Venture Concept:

Opportunity:

The most basic response for the need would be overcrowded animal shelters. The potential customers I would say are both small individual-owned motels and businesspeople away on trips. Since this is a bit of a two-part customer group, there are a little bit more opportunities for future growth here.  Forces in the economy that’s even creating this opportunity is the constant travel for businesspeople, and the ever-increasing amount of animals in shelters that end up resorting to euthanasia. The market is more centered around smaller towns at the moment in order to have a drawing-in factor, but as far as geographically, this idea could take place anywhere. Customers currently are just traveling to normal motels, and the motels stay in business because as long as people have to travel there will at least be some business coming in. So on that note, the customers are loyal now simply because of necessity. I don’t think the opportunity is huge, but because of the nature of the specific market, I think the opportunity will be open for a long window. Especially because there are so many animals in the shelter unfortunately being put down due to overcrowding. 

Innovation: 

My innovation is a service that teams up local motels with overcrowded animal shelters. Every room would be assigned a pet that lives there, and in exchange for taking care of the pet, the room’s fee would be paid for for as many days/nights as the business trip lasted, since I’m making the initial pitch to businesspeople on conferences. For each room that has an animal, profits for the hotel would come from sponsorships and donations, ideally from big-name sponsors like Petsmart. This arrangement would also work for out-of-towners later down the line with a love for animals looking for lodging, or potentially even college students. The money will be made from the sponsors, companies I partner with for supplies, and I’ll get a percentage from all the business I bring to the hotels involving the program. 

Venture Concept: 

My innovation will solve the unmet need of a place for animals in shelters to go rather than being put down. I feel like customers will invest in and be a part of my innovation because many people do care about animals and want to help in finding a solution for them, and my program is also a way to make a long, dreary trip feel a little bit more refreshing and like home, and these are two reasons that customers would be likely to switch to my product. I don’t think it would be too hard to get them to switch as long as the service had had a first test run to iron out all of the hiccups. As far as competitors go, the only competitors I see would be big hotel companies that have a never-ending stream of revenue in general. Their weakness against my concept would be their lack of animals. Price point and marketing would play a key role in getting my service up and running. I’d go with marketing heavily, to try and drum up interest, and then use the cheaper price points of local motels to my advantage in drawing customers in. For the business organization, I would have may regional managers to oversee the whole interaction between shelter, motel, and customer, and I’d also ideally like to have several employees specialized and working in each of these areas. I’d also like to have a team of people who work in expansion and travel to new towns with the potential to implement the program. Another element I could add to my concept would be branching out largely to other sorts of markets, sort of like in the assignment that we actually had to pick another assignment. So while initially I'd stick with motels, in order to eventually grow the service I would move to personally owned shops and other businesses similar to that. 

Three minor elements: 

1. I think the most important resource here is the creativity of the idea. This will be the factor and the difference from everything else that draws in customers. Also, just the fact of working with and helping provide care for animals I feel like will be something many people will want to take part in, which will help business even more. It will be hard to compete with because of the feeling that it gives the customers- feelings of helpfulness and of having a home-away-from-home. 

1. What’s next for the venture is more resource to go through every last detail that I have yet to think of or any of the ones that have come up in the interviews. After that, I’ll probably start with polling of large samples of people to see if this product is something a large group of people would be interested in and what other improvements could be made. After this step, I’d go to implementation in a few select motels for a test period before going on a larger scale. 

1. As far as what’s next for me, if I were to get this idea up and running, I’d like to always work closely with is, as it deals to an issue so important to me. Eventually, I’d like to just be able to travel to all the motels and regions the service was in to check up on how its going and work with the design team to come up with changing advertisements. This first venture idea has helped me into thinking big and because of that, I could potentially see myself joining in with other individuals to work on new projects I feel passionately about. 

2. Feedback:

As far as the feedback goes from my first venture concept, it was very positive. The people that commented said they thought my concept was fun and had great value so to move forward with it in the future. However, there weren't really any constructive comments on how to improve upon my idea, so the changes I made in my above version of the concept were my own.
3. How you changed the concept:
I really didn't change my concept very much, as I like it right now how it is for the starting off stages, but I went back in and added a little more room for potential growth and new directions that could be beneficial in the future.
4. Picture:
Wouldn't this just be a great view to see when you walked into your hotel room?