Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity: All throughout life there is opportunities to spend more money than you expected to. A simple night out with boys at midtown can get financially out of hand quickly. With costs of pre-gaming, finding reliable transportation, and then buying drinks while out to keep the night alive add up quickly. Once under the influence sliding the card becomes easier and easier, never really focusing on the amount that is being charged to that card. The only way of finding out how much you are spending is by looking at your checking account the next morning and by then it is too late. Going on vacations with the family always have unexpected turns and expenses. The thought of not bringing enough cash forces you to bring you card. However once you start sliding your card you lose a sense of how much money you are actually spending. Again by the time you check your account to recap your expenses it is already to late. The opportunity here is finding a solution that make consumers constantly aware of how much they are spending before they go past the point of no turning back.

Innovation: CardBlock will be an app that allows people to put a limit on how much they can spend on their card on one night at multiple different places. You can allocate specific funds for transportation, pre-gaming, and the amount being spent on particular clubs. This app has the limits of cash but the flexibility of a credit card. This app will notify the consumer when 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of their budget has been used up for each particular activity. The main issue is focused on what happens after being under the influence. When drinking it is easy to get carried away and be the person to buy a round of shots for their friends. Multiple times. This app will notify users when they are getting carried away and will eventually freeze their card at that specific place once the allocated money is spent. This simply means if you desired to spend $30 at a particular bar, once that cap is met, your card will be frozen from that specific place. This still allows you to use that $10 you set aside for an Uber that night. It also still allows you to go to a place and buy food if it was not given a specific cap through the app. This app will not freeze your card completely making it impossible for you to pay for emergency items. This app will help you not over spend at places you designated before going out that night.

Feedback: I only received two comments which was not much to go off of to revise my initial product. However the first comment raised the concern of freezing their card and not being able to get a spontaneous ride home that night. To be clear, this product will not completely freeze your card. It simply disables the use at specific places you chose that night. If you have a plan to go to swamp and have a history of spending excessive amounts of money on drinks you can choose to put a cap on the amount able to spend at that bar. If you have a cap of $30, once it hits that cap you will no longer be able to use your card at that specific bar for 24 hours. Therefore this will not prevent your card from being used on an Uber if plans have changed and need a ride home late at night.

Another concern I saw come up on one of my previous posts Napkin Idea No.1 was the risk of security through this app. Therefore when I revised my app I thought of the idea to make this app similar to apple pay. This feature takes out the need to swipe a credit card. Instead this app will have a passcode security feature allowing only you to use your phone to buy drinks. This prevents people from card skimmers that can steal your credit card information. Also this prevents the risk of you misplacing your card and being used by others. However if someone did steal your card people can only spend the amount you budgeted that night, therefore will not wake up to hundreds of dollars gone forever. If the comment was aiming towards trusting me with the consumer’s bank information then the reply is that I will have no information of their banking accounts. They will set up their banking information that remains completely anonymous to me. I have no interest in how much money is in your bank account that is between you and the bank. My app simply budgets the money it assumes you have in your account, not manage it.

Based on my feedback I tried to make it more clear in my innovative section that this card will not completely freeze your card, It just freezes it at the places the consumer specifically chose to not accidentally get carried away at.

Final Reflection

            1) The highs: My favorite moments through this course was doing the interviews in the beginning stages of my venture. Coming up with ideas are relatively easy and seem to be bulletproof. However once introducing your idea to new people who do not have a bias towards you, they can sometimes deliver a harsh reality. The first interview was nerve racking. When I actually got a multiple response from my first peer was the highest moment in all of this. An outsider reinforcing your belief that you have a good idea on your hands is an amazing motivational booster. This first sense of encouragement made me feel as if I had real potential to develop a successful venture. There will always be some people that will discourage you including yourself. Positive feedback from people who aren’t friends and family can be more motivational than I thought.

The lows: When being asked what the next step is to your venture can be extremely tough. I spent weeks creating an app that I thought was perfect. When being asked what the next step is, it led me to a creative wall. There are always areas that can be improved. Finding them was very difficult and constantly halted the progress of my venture which was difficult to accept at times. Also when reading comments on how to improve my product can sometimes be a little disheartening. However it led to me expanding my horizon and overall a new and improved product.

Fun: I enjoyed doing the elevator pitches the most. To create an elevator pitch I could not resist coming to realization that I am becoming a true entrepreneur. Trying to sell this idea of an app finally sold the idea to myself. I took this app from just an idea to a potential money maker and this is what excited me the most during this class.

Drudgery:  Finding potential users of my app to interview sometimes seemed to drag on. The interviews proved to be vital to the success of my product but initially felt like a burden.

2)The elevator pitch will always be my favorite experience in this class. This gave me experience in forming idea and trying to sell it to people. The skill of being able to explain an idea clearly to others is extremely valuable. There are many times people’s million dollar ideas never get recognized because they could not express their vision clearly to their peers. I have a long way to go but practicing in a safe, judge free environment was a good way to practice vital skills I will need in my future career.

3) Being able to fully invest myself into a product of my own helped reveal my entrepreneurial mindset. It is very easy to hop on board with the next big item or product out on the market. However creating the next big thing and fully believing in yourself is the mindset of an entrepreneur and I had to have this mindset throughout the entire semester to be successful. I always thought I had an entrepreneurial mindset and this venture reinforced that claim.

4) My strongest recommendation for future students is invest in your peers the same way you invest in yourself and your venture. The comments from fellow classmates as well as the interview responses were some of the most vital resources when revising my venture. Seeing different responses is key to crafting a perfect venture.

My Exit Strategy

1)      I ultimately plan to either sell this app to someone else or keep it as a side business for as long as I can. My reasoning is the fact although this was my first entrepreneurial venture and was a fun and valuable experience, I never stay put for long.

2)       I want to continue investing in and launching new ventures. I had my experience and I would like to cash out on my app and use the money to help others have their experience. I would like to not have “all my eggs in one basket.” I want to be a part of many ventures and if I continue with this venture for too long I may get too consumed with it to move on. If no one is willing to buy it I would create a small department of employees to keep maintaining the app while I move on to other ventures.

3)      I think the way I like to move from one project to another helped influence my decision on the problem I chose to solve and the way I went about solving it. I chose a problem me and my close peers personally experienced. This is because I believe if you are not happy with something change it. I hated wasting a ton of money foolishly on a night out and vacations so I created a plan to fix it. The reason I chose an app as my solution is because the idea never expires. I can use this app for as long as I’d like and the effectiveness will never diminish. However I also needed a solution I do not have to manage 24/7 so I can continue to search for day to day problems in my life and fix those. If I had come up with a solution that took up to much of my time I would not have a chance to experiment with other ventures. This venture helped me locate resources I did not have as well as shed light on myself being a huge resource to any venture I choose to take on.

Making it Real

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0qOoMqDL4xxSjBfeTA4V2lkVzg

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity: There use to only be three or four ways to use currency. You either had to pay with cash, write a check, or slide your credit card at places. With today’s technological advances there are now many more innovative ways to pay for things. There have been apps such as apple pay, venmo, snapchat, etc. Though there are more ways to pay for things this brings the complication of keeping all of your information safe. In 2014 there was around 31.8 million cases of credit card fraud which is three times the amount in 2013. I believe this has to do with the increasing amount of ways to spend currency. This number alone shows the number of people that could benefit from an app like mine. The fact there can be a limit on the card and not have to physically have it with you can help decrease the number of credit card scams occurring. Most of these frauds do occur online but still about 15% happen from lost cards and credit card skimming. The fact you don’t have to physically have your card to pay at places can help prevent you from losing your card on a night out or getting it skimmed at sketchy bars or restaurants. Consumers are beginning to see this trend and begin to look for safer forms of payment. No form of payment will ever be 100% safe for consumers, however my app will greatly reduce the risk as well as the financial impact of a credit card scammer. With this enormous amount of consumers being victims to credit card fraud every year I would say there is huge potential for my app to be successful. If I could even capture 1% of the people effected it would give me a customer base of around 30,000 people which will make my app more desired to advertise on and create great revenue for me. This window of opportunity will remain open for as long as people need to spend money.

Innovation: CardBlock will be an app that allows people to put a limit on how much they can spend on their card on one night at multiple different places. Whether the customer is going out to a bar, going on a date to the movies, or even out of the country on a vacation they will be able to electronically budget their spending habits. The customer will be able to pick the desired locations they plan on going to and then set up the amount they plan to spend there and will not allow them to go over budget. This app will also alert the consumer after every transaction and tell them the percentage of the limit they have already used. These constant alerts keep people aware of how much they are spending and do not get carried away. This app will be 1.99 to download which if I got the projected 1% on people in need of an app like this one that will generate around $60,000. After that I will allow advertising space on the app which will be how I get constant revenue after the app has been downloaded. There will be short advertisements in the beginning while users are signing into their accounts and little banners of advertisements posted around the site while users are navigating through it.

Venture Concept: My innovation is set out to help make a form of payment that gives consumers the flexibility and convenience of a credit card but the limitations of cash. When cash is involved you can only spend up to the amount on you. With credit cards people can make large payments on cars, houses, bar tabs etc. without actually having that amount of money in their bank accounts. This app will make your money more secure because it cannot be lost or stolen from you like cash or a card can. Yes the phone the app is on can be stolen, however due to a fingerprint or passcode lock, nobody except the owner can use their money. Also it will help with spending too much money foolishly on a night out or while getting caught up in the moment on vacations, shopping adventures, etc.

My number one resource will be my communication skills. When dealing with money people tend to shy away from using third party services like my app. People want to use more “secure” ways of payment that may come from banks or other financial institutions. I believe my use of good communication skills will help me make my customers feel safer when trusting my app with their money. Once they are convinced they will voice their opinions to their peers who trust them, therefore helping my app grow in popularity.

The next thing I would like to tackle is making this form of payment more convenient for my consumers. I will need to be able to get local businesses on board first and then branch out to larger corporations to allow my app to be used in their stores.

In the next five years after this launch I would like to use my profit earned from this first app and invest it into other startup companies and local entrepreneur’s ideas. I would like to have a small department of employees who continually run maintenance on my app and keep it up to date. However I do not like remaining on one project for a long period of time and would hope to move on to “the next big thing”.

Celebrating Failure

One thing I have failed at was becoming a pescetarian this spring. This is a lifestyle of a vegetarian with the exception of eating fish. My main reason for this change was just to live a little bit of a healthier lifestyle. This diet change prevented me from eating out a lot more of the times and save money by doing meal preps. I went without eating all meat except fish for about 4 months and finally broke down and ate a chicken sandwich.

                From this experience I learned that eating healthier made a huge difference in the way I felt every day, and my weight dropped and I began to look more cut. I also began to make more health conscious decisions just because I would start my day with a healthy mentality. Sadly I also learned I was not the most disciplined in my eating habits. I learned that I have a few more failed attempts in my future until I truly go fully pescetarian.

Failure is usually said to be a good thing. A lot of people say that no one who has ever done something great hasn’t endured many failures. Although this is probably true it doesn’t make failure any easier to deal with. It’s a hard obstacle to overcome and the first few times it’s very easy to give up and not try anymore. The emotional aspect to failure is probably the worst feeling there is. I personally felt a long period of disappointment and it effected my perspective towards myself for a while. I began to eat really unhealthy again, a lot of activities like the gym and skateboarding constantly decreased taking a toll on my mental and physical health. I got over it finally and began eating healthy again although I continued to eat chicken and beef. This class has taught me a pretty good amount about dealing with failure. With the comments on my constant posts it helped steer me in the right direction for my venture and helped me see what may or may not be working. Finding out an idea I thought was full proof isn’t really working out was pretty tough and sometimes hard to let go of. However reevaluating my idea a few times helped it become successful.

Elevator Pitch No. 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCQbXf2tOBY&feature=youtu.be

This is the link to my elevator pitch,

Reflection: While reading the comments on my first elevator pitch I got pretty good reviews. I saw that my idea came off as very clear and people understood what my product does. Some tips I did see multiple times was slow my talking down a little and add a little more movement, aka stand up, hand gestures etc. 

Execution: I first off tried to speak more clearly and a little slower while keeping the video around 1 minute. I also tried to be as clear as possible on what my product will do as well as why it will be useful by comparing it to cash. I tried to stress that it is the best of both worlds by being limited like cash but safe like a credit card. I also wanted to move around more and use my hands a little more. I tried to practice a little more as well so I would not get stumbled up on my speaking. However I took a few takes and could not find one where I did not get tongue tied a little. During pitches your mouth is moving faster than your mind and trip up sometimes. I know I’ll need more practice but still fun to test the waters of an elevator pitch.