Final Reflection

The most formative experience I had was the first reading reflection. I read Grinding It Out, which opened my eyes to entering new businesses at any age. The author, Ray Kroc, entered his journey with McDonald's at 52 and grew it to become one of the most successful fast-food chains. I think the experience I'll remember years later is the Bug List. That assignment was so unique and forced me to think in a different way. It'll be hard to forget that assignment.

My most joyous experience is probably completing this assignment. This is the last blogpost I need to make for this class, and although I've enjoyed this class, I'm glad this semester is over. This summer semester has been very weird, especially with the global pandemic, so I am happy I can have some free time to (sort of) relax. I am most proud of my elevator pitches. I hate being in front of the camera, and it took me multiple takes to get through each elevator pitch. By my last pitch, it took me way less time to film, which I was very proud of.

I can see myself as an entrepreneur in the future if I choose to pursue it, but I don't actively see myself as an entrepreneur unless I fully commit. I don't think I'll be one of those few people who happen to stumble upon entrepreneurship, I'll have to knowingly and fully commit to it. I do think I have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset because the assignments in this class allowed me to view the world from an entrepreneurial perspective.

One tip I recommend is to pick a target market where you have access to interviewees. I am not sure if I had a problem finding people to interview because of the pandemic or because of my target market. Nonetheless, picking a target market with easily accessible interviewees will make interviews less stressful.

To do well in this course, I recommend working ahead and taking advantage of any breaks or days off of school to work ahead. I got the majority of the second half of this class done during the summer break, which really helped me out.

In order to foster this mindset, I recommend planning out when you will be completing assignments and setting aside specific times to complete those assignments. This will help to stay organized and ahead in the class.

Venture Concept No.2

Opportunity
There is an opportunity in the market of working adults (including working college students) about their job. Adults feel pressured to work outside of their normal working hours, causing an imbalance between their personal and professional lives. The opportunity identified in this market is as follows:

Develop a product that allows adults to "shut off" work after hours, allowing a distraction-free zone in their personal life, while still maintaining the option for contact in case of an emergency. 

Who Has the Need?
As aforementioned, working adults have this need. More specifically, people who work a job that does not require an "on-call" status at all times. The need is not immediate, but important. Careers that are not included are:

• ER Doctors/ ER personnel
• High-stake law enforcement, such as FBI workers
• Lawyers
• Paramedics

This list is not comprehensive but gives a general idea of careers that wouldn't benefit from this opportunity. On the other hand, careers that would benefit include:

• Non-emergency support staff
• Regional bankers
• Teachers

Therefore, working adults and college students in the above career fields and more are the potential customers for this opportunity. 

Demographically and psychographically, the market is defined by these characteristics:

1. Ages 18-65
2. All races and genders
3. Strives to maintain a work/life balance
4. Values a work/life balance
5. Struggles to distance themselves from technology pertaining to work at certain times

Other Considerations

The rise is technology contributes to creating this opportunity, as well as the societal mindset to continuously work hard. Currently, customers are satisfying this unmet need by ignoring it. Customers are giving into working after hours and deal with the stress or pressure. They are loyal to this approach, as company culture plays a large role in working after hours. However, customers will change if a viable solution is presented.

This opportunity is somewhat large. Feeling pressured to work after normal working hours is a problem, but other outside factors contribute to this problem. This opportunity can grow much larger, depending on the other external factors. Furthermore, the window of opportunity will stay open for years, unless another competitor enters. As long as technology keeps growing and becomes more prevalent, this opportunity will continue to exist.

Innovation
Idea
My innovation idea is software that integrates with a company's messaging system. The software is similar to the Do Not Disturb system offered by Apple but different in that it's compatible with various systems. Once the software is connected to the messaging system, employees have a visual cue they can alter to display the status of working. Some statuses include: working in-office, working out of office, on vacation, and finished work for the day. Employees can choose the appropriate status, and their colleagues can see the status, making it easier to set professional boundaries, especially after hours.

There is a feature that automatically switches an employee's status at certain times of the day. For example, if the employee is done working at 5pm, then the status will automatically change to whatever is set at 5pm every day.

If an employee's status is not involving work, such as finished work for the day, the sender of the message will get an automatic reply, in which the employee can customize. In case of emergencies, there is an override button in which the sender can choose. The sender will write a small description of the emergency. This override option then sends a notification to the employee's work and/or personal phone, and the employee can choose to accept or deny it.

Making Money
We will make money through sales, upgrades, and additional features. The product will start at a flat fee of $200, including installation, support videos, tech support, and a free trial for upgraded features. There will also be an option to purchase upgraded features, ranging anywhere from $50-$500.


Venture Concept
How My Innovation will Solve the Problem
My innovation will solve the problem by allowing employees and companies to take control of their personal and professional lives by instilling some balance and relieving pressure. The system sets up clear, professional boundaries for employees, allowing others to respect when they are working, and when they are not. My innovation will also address a larger societal issue, which may trigger some societal change in the way we approach working after hours.

Customers, Competitors, and More
Customers will want to buy the product because a concrete system helps alleviate the pressure felt to work after normal working hours. Although there may be a learning curve, this product will help establish boundaries to help maintain a work/life balance.

The only competitor I'm currently aware of is Slack. Slack is a professional messaging system, which has similar features to the presented innovation. However, the company's weaknesses and vulnerabilities include:

• No emergency feature
• Inability to connect with a company's email
• Bugs in software

The packaging doesn't play a large role since our product is not a physical product, but tech and customer support, price points, and customer experience play a larger role. I want the product to be affordable while making a profit. Furthermore, offering tech and customer support are important to further improve the product and take care of the customer, ensuring that the experience is pleasant. 

Minor Elements
Secret Sauce
My most important resource will be creative skills. Creativity allows for a business to have a first-mover advantage in an industry. Being the first business to do something is vital, and creativity allows this situation to be possible.

What's Next?
I want this venture to trigger a snowball effect that elicits societal change. Society values overworking and ignores balance. If this product is the beginning of a societal movement, even more opportunities will be created.

What's Next for Me?
Five years after launching, I want this venture to generate enough revenue to make a profit and sustain its employees. I think five years is short for a new venture, so if a profit is being made and the business is sustainable, I'm satisfied. In the next decade, this venture would've hopefully taken off greatly, and I'd find myself entering causes similar to maintaining a work/life balance and possibly pursuing a new, related venture.

Summary of Feedback
I didn't receive much feedback on my first venture concept. However, in the What's Next assignment, I had a suggestion about some sort of automation with a status change, so that employees don't have to always manually change their status. I also received compliments on the compatibility of my product, as well as praise for planning to create a prototype as my next step in this venture.

Even though I didn't receive much feedback, I think people just want a prototype at this point. The features of my product sound good on paper, but creating a feasible prototype will be the ultimate test.

Changes
I added a small paragraph in the Idea section about a new feature. The new feature allows employees to automatically switch statuses at a certain time, so they don't have to manually change it.
This will allow employees to create consistency within their schedule and removes the slight hassle of manually changing the status every day.

Your Exit Strategy

Exit Strategy
I've decided to archive my venture. I think in the future, I could pull out this idea and actually pursue it. If I do decide to pursue it, I would keep it as a side venture, and eventually sell the company, or rid its resources until the company went out of business. While I like my venture, it was never something I wanted to greatly pursue.

Why
I chose this exit strategy because I currently do not have an interest in pursuing my venture. I have other goals I want to achieve first. I also do not have a large interest in an entrepreneurial venture at the moment.

Influence
I think my exit strategy has indirectly influenced other previous decisions I've made regarding my venture. I always knew in the back of my mind that I would archive this idea at the end of ENT3003. It's possible that I didn't come up with the best decisions for my venture in previous assignments. I don't think it influenced how I identified an opportunity, but I think my strategy affected any future growth plans. Since I don't plan on pursuing my venture anytime soon, I haven't paid much attention to growth plans, or acquiring resources.

Reading Reflection 3

For my last reading reflection, I read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams.


1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The general theme of the book was Scott explaining the multiple failures he had, and how he has overcome them. Despite countless failures, Scott is an extremely successful cartoonist who battled a few medical conditions that hindered his professional career. The most notable 'failure' he had was losing his ability to speak from a rare disease. Despite not having any recognized cures or trusted treatments, he was able to overcome this large adversity. 

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

This book connected to the topic of failing in ENT3003. People generally don't like to fail, and some entrepreneurs avoid failing because it's not a pleasant experience. However, Scott provides a completely different perspective on failure. By laying out numerous failures he encountered along with his methods to overcome them, the book successfully provided insight on how to fail and still be successful. 

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

I would design an exercise where the students would have to adapt one of Scott's methods to their own lives and report the results. For example, Scott wrote a section about the importance of diet and exercise. He explained that he meticulously tracked each food he ate and reported how that food made him feel after. By doing this, he figured out which foods gave him sustainable energy, and which foods made him tired a few hours later. I think it'd be a cool assignment for students to do, and it would allow them to learn more about their personal habits and patterns. 

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

My biggest surprise reading the book was his perseverance through all the failed ventures he encountered. If I was in his position, I think I would've given up on many of the business ideas and ventures he pursued. I originally thought the book was going to be about knowing when to recognize failure and determine whether or not to push through or concede, but rather the book was about how Scott gathered information about the failure and used some unconventional methods at times to continue on. 

Celebrating Failure

A Time I Failed
A time that I failed this past semester was not consistently abiding by a running schedule. I know this failure sounds quite lame and menial, but I've been wanting to develop a solid running schedule for months.

I have a treadmill in my home so I tried that. I usually ran on the treadmill at the gym, so running at home shouldn't be too different. For some reason, I hated it. I got mentally bored within 10 seconds of running, to the point where I gave up.

Soon, I tried running sprints three times a week. This schedule started to become effective, as my brother and I ran together to keep each other accountable. However, after about a month, I was tired of running sprints, and the unpredictable weather further helped me make my decision.

What I Learned
From this failure, I learned the power of our minds. Mentally, I didn't want to run because I find it boring and prefer other forms of cardio. However, I know the benefits of running, and usually feel good after. Since my mental state was stuck in an "I hate running" mentality, I convinced myself to forgo the habit. I knew our mindset was quite important, but I didn't realize how a negative mindset can completely take over and make undesirable decisions.

Reflection
I think failure is a necessary evil. Nobody likes to fail, but we learn the most from our failures. Failure puts our mental strength to the test, and pushes us to our limits, revealing what our true capabilities are.

I like to think I handle failure well, but I don't think I do. Often times, I get stuck in a perfectionist mindset, so any ounce of failure ruins what I am doing. Failure affects me more emotionally rather than behaviorally. Recently, I've been trying to change my outlook on failure by reminding myself that it's okay to fail, and at least I learned what didn't work in a specific situation.

This class positively changed my perspective on failure. For my third reading reflection, I read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, which greatly helped. The author dedicated a whole chapter to some of his failures, but he didn't seem ashamed. I am not sure if I am more likely to take a risk as I've always been a more cautious person, but this might be the beginning of me learning to take more risks in the future.

What's Next?

Existing Market

Step 1
I think the next step for my business venture is to come up with a prototype and test it. While I think my product is feasible, I need to actually develop it and come out with a beta version that I can advertise to consumers. I also think that my venture can create those extra features I mentioned in my elevator pitch.

Step 2
I had one person who really liked my concept. She stated that I should come up with a prototype and test, as that would allow for a more clear understanding of my product to others. I had another interviewee who also encouraged a more clear path for my venture in a prototype, and how my product is different than the typical 'out of office' email.

I had one interviewee suggest that customers may want an all-encompassing system, similar to Google (slides, docs, forms, etc. The system would allow employees to clock in and out of work, and potentially limiting employees' hours to maintain a balance. My first interviewee suggested an automatic status recognition, rather than manually changing an employee's status from working to unavailable.

My last interviewee also agreed about creating a prototype, and again suggested an emergency feature to receive alerts for certain situations. She wasn't sure about any future adaptations customers may want, though.

Step 3
Based on the feedback I received and my own expectations, I think the next step for my venture is to create a prototype and test it on a few companies and employees. I've gotten lots of feedback on the idea, including a need for a sense of clarity on my product. A prototype will help clear up any confusion regarding features, how the product works, and more. In addition, testing a prototype on a group will allow for even more feedback, allowing me time to improve my product.

In terms of growing my market, I think first testing on a small group, and then using word-of-mouth combined with some commercial-level advertising will help increase the number of customers. Word-of-mouth is important because my business isn't paying for it, so the reviews are much more authentic. However, some commercial-level advertising is necessary in order to make my product known to the market.


New Market

Step 1
A radically different market from my current target market (working young adults and college students) is stay-at-home moms.

Step 2
Honestly, I am not sure if my venture will create direct value for the new market. Stay-at-home parents are essentially working 24/7 because they are raising kids and taking care of familial tasks. If their spouse were to enter into my venture, they may indirectly gain value by being able to spend more time as a family with fewer work distractions.

Step 3
The first interviewee suggested the product be compatible with her phone and contacts to fit her needs. As a stay-at-home mom, she oftentimes feels that people don't respect her time because they think she is at home doing nothing. If the product somehow showed her status to her contacts, she'd benefit from it directly. She also thought that this product would indirectly benefit her if her husband had the product because he would not disturb family time with incoming work calls at night. My second interviewee liked the idea, but the main struggle will be getting people to use a product that isn't necessarily targeted towards them. She wasn't sure about any adaptations and suggested a prototype for people to try.

Step 4
I learned that the stay-at-home moms market is quite hard to target. Apple's Do Not Disturb feature can likely solve their needs of getting phone calls and text messages at undesirable hours. However, what surprised me the most was their encouragement for my idea. I fully expected them to respond in a way that rejected my product completely, but instead, I received feedback for ways I could adapt my products to their needs.

My assumption of benefiting indirectly from my product was correct. One interviewee specifically said that she would benefit indirectly if her husband had the product. However, I don't think this market is as attractive as my existing market. I think in the future, I could target this market and be successful, but in the early stages, I don't think stay-at-home moms would have a strong enough need for my product.

Elevator Pitch 3

Link: https://youtu.be/t23DO90rGU4

Reflection
I didn't receive too much feedback on my second elevator pitch, but overall the feedback was similar to the first elevator pitch I recorded. The feedback stated that I spoke well, had good gestures, and professionalism. The feedback was positive and included some concrete suggestions about improving my elevator pitch. I didn't have any outrageous or silly feedback. Some feedback suggested that I added more details about how my product specifically works, and how the Do Not Disturb feature on Apple products is inefficient. I agree with this feedback and think that adding more details to my elevator pitch will make it better.

Because of the feedback I received, I decided to add more details about how my product worked. I specifically explained how my product allows employees to set boundaries, and why my product is essential. I continued to speak at a moderate pace, and decided to dress even more professional by adding a blazer and some jewelry.

After performing my pitch three times, it is almost memorized, I am more comfortable in front of the camera, and the pitch is better. It took me less time to film this pitch since I was more comfortable, and I think the changes I made improved the pitch overall.