29A Venture Concept #2

Opportunity:

·        Within this market, there are freshmen college students who must live independently for the first time and need a way to hold themselves accountable for maintaining a balanced healthy lifestyle. By not having a way to hold themselves accountable, these students risk not living a healthy lifestyle which could have consequences in the future.

·        Having a healthy lifestyle includes a balance of all aspects of life: diet, fitness, work vs. leisure time, sleep, mental well-being, etc. By achieving a healthy balance of all these aspects, students can have a healthy lifestyle which will help them be successful in the future.

·        The forces that are creating this opportunity is the fact that freshmen are living independently away from home for the first time. They now must do everything on their own without the help from back home. Having to figure out everything on their own can be overwhelming and as a result their lifestyle can become unbalanced.

·        Currently this market is satisfying this need by seeking academic resources, athletic facilities, mental health support, calendars, and books on how to manage different aspects of their lifestyle. They are only loyal if the resource is affordable and it constantly produces the results they are seeking.

·        This opportunity is very big. According to the US Census Report there are currently around 16 million college students in the US, a portion of that being freshmen (stats vary per college).

·        The “window of opportunity” is around August and September when the freshmen are first starting college. Some of the freshmen may need a little help with living on their own for the first time and have manage their own lifestyle without much guidance. That does not mean those it is the only window of opportunity. This can be a year long opportunity as well.

Innovation:

·        The product is application for mobile devices that helps users track the different relevant aspects to their daily lifestyle. The application will auto generate goals for users to meet in order to maintain a healthy balance of the relevant aspects of their lifestyles. The application will also provide access to additional resources that users can then use to complete their daily goals.

·        Since it is simply an application, the only data it can track on its own is the data that the mobile device itself can collect. Other information (for example, diet) users would have to input manually. This is done intentionally so that users are encouraged to track their own progress.

·        On the individual level, we are selling this product in any app store that comes preloaded on their mobile device. To stay competitive with many other apps on the market and to stay in line with students’ tight budgets, we will sell it for $0.99-$1.99.

·        On the business level, we would sell the application to universities who can then provide the service to their students for free. We would customize it for the universities in order to include any resources or services that they may provide. The price would be based merely on the amount of customization wanted by the universities.

·        Another way to make money would be to have local businesses pay to be included as “resource” in the application. That way they can advertise their services to help students.

Venture Concept:

·        This application is a solution to help students solve their need of needing a way to track and hold themselves accountable for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This application will allow students to track their progress in the relevant areas of their lifestyle. The auto-generated goals provide accountability for students by giving them a form of motivation to complete the tasks and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

·        The reasons customers will switch to this new product are that there is not another product on the market that tracks all of the aspects of one’s lifestyle. Most services only track one or two aspects. Until the reputation is built, and it can prove that it can provide good results, there may be some difficulty in getting people to switch to the app.

·        There are some competitors in the market. However, the idea is to act as a platform that allows people to have access to the other services out there and be able to use them to reach the goals within our application.

·        Since it is an app, we lose the face-to-face element with consumers. In order to work around this, we would have a strong customer service team to be available to users. The important thing is to keep prices low for the consumers, and make sure the product is motivating and providing enough resources to help students meet their goals and feel good about themselves. As long as the results are positive, they will continue to use it.

·        On the “business” level, we would need to make sure we have some keeping the software running smoothly, someone who can help generate appropriate goals for the system to give out, and some one to research the kind of resources that are currently available.

Minor Elements

1.      There are many important resources that this product has that can make it successful. Besides its uniqueness and ability to be customizable, I think our “secret sauce” is having someone with app development experience. Having gone through app development in the past, and already knowing what to expect that first- time app developers may not expect is crucial. Also, having social capital and connections to developers and market experts is also very important.

2.      There are a couple things next for this venture. The hope is to develop new features like rewards systems and social connections that further enhance the overall experience for users. There are other markets that this product could be successful in, but the primary focus is on this current market.  

3.      What’s next for me? Assuming we launched, my hope is to build a very successful product that really can help people. As an entrepreneur, within the next decade I hope to have built a very good team of people developing a really good product for consumers. This venture helps me achieve this vision by giving me a better idea on how to approach markets and how to develop a product based on their needs.

I looked at the feedback I received from both my last venture and the “What’s Next” exercise. From my feedback, it was recommended that I find an aspect of my app that will substitute for face to face interaction. I totally agree with this point. It was also recommended to narrow down a specific time as to when my product will be demanded. This is also good feedback as it would help with marketing and other aspects of the venture.   

I updated my venture concept based on the feedback I received. I clarified the specific time as to when my product would be demanded (August- September when freshmen are first starting school). I also mentioned how the app could include a customer service feature to help with the lack of face to face interaction. Finally, I talked about how the current market is the primary focus for the product, but other markets also exist.