Assignment 29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Assignment 29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity

Currently, at The University of Florida, many students study and complete their assignments at the major libraries on campus. The major libraries include Marston Science, Library West, Norman Education, and Law Library. All ages study at these libraries, from freshman up until seniors and even graduate level students. The libraries provide a great place for students to complete their work and studies without any distractions. However, when students forget their computer or phone chargers at home, they have to disrupt their studies, waste time, and leave the library in order to retrieve their charger from home. The need and desire for students to study with the aid of their computer is what has created this opportunity. The University of Florida uses Canvas, which is an online platform for completing assignments, as well as, offers many online courses. Thus, the need for a computer to complete work at the University of Florida currently is much greater than earlier times, as well as, other universities. Currently, the market is in Gainesville, Florida, specifically on the University of Florida campus. Currently, the only ways for current students to satisfy their need when the forget their charger at home is to either go home to retrieve the charger or to try and borrow someone else’s charger at the library, that is if they have the same model. There is no loyalty to either way they are currently solving their problem when this situation occurs. The opportunity to rent out computer and phone chargers at the University of Florida’s major libraries is a huge opportunity. There is an extreme need for the libraries to offer this service and students would never have to worry about remembering to bring their charger or the consequences of forgetting it. This window of opportunity will be open until someone else begins to provide this service or until you don’t need a charger for your computer or phone. The latter is very far away in terms of technological advancements. Thus, it is important to act on this opportunity quickly before someone else proposes the idea to the University of Florida.

Innovation

This innovation will solve a major problem and annoyance for the students and graduate students at the University of Florida. It revolves around the idea of a vending machine. A vending machine operates on it own, without any physical person having to be there and work. As a result, people will only have to work on the business operations side of the business idea. The vending machines will be strategically placed on all floors of Marston Science, Library West, Norman Education, and the Law Libraries at the University of Florida. They will have different model and versions of the most popular phone, computer, and tablet charger. This will include Apple and PC chargers for iPhones, iPads, computers, tablets, etc. A customer will be able to rent a charger from a specialized app on their smartphone. The app will allow customers to pay for their rental of the charger of their need, put in the time they will be using the charger for, and enter the time at which they returned the charger to the vending machine. They will be able to rent phone and tablet charger for $2 per hour and computer chargers for $3 per hour for University of Florida students, graduate students, professors, and administration. For others who complete work at the libraries, they will be able to rent phone and tablet chargers for $3 per hour and computer chargers for $4 per hours. There is a slight discount for being a direct student or employee of the University of Florida. My business will be selling a service that rents out a physical product, and that is how my innovation will make money. The chargers will be a one-time fixed cost and we will be able to make money as we have very minimal costs to run the business.

Venture Concept

My innovation will explicitly address this current need and opportunity occurring at the University of Florida. Students at the University of Florida are always pressed for time and have limited amounts to study and complete their work. Thus, when they forget their chargers at home and have to leave the libraries to retrieve their chargers and waster precious time that they could have been studying. Thus, by providing the service and making computer and phone chargers available to rent at the major University of Florida libraries, students will not have to waste their time when they forget their charger or maybe just don’t feel like carrying it. I think customers would have no reason to not use this service when they are need of it. The only other option to solving this problem without having to leave the library is to borrow someone else’s. Thus, it will not be very hard to get them to switch to using my service. There are currently no other competitors to this business venture. There is an extreme ease for the customer and great accessibility by placing them strategically on all floors of the libraries. There is also a very low price making it financially possible for almost all students to rent. I would organize a business to be very concentrated on growth. I would want to bring this idea to other school with a major online population. There will be minimal employees, just people working on the business operations and marketing end. Thus, there is a huge potential to grow this business like no other.

Three Minor Elements

My secret sauce or unfair advantage to my innovative service, is the ease of access and reachability of the product. We have such a large, untapped market, and growth is limitless for out innovation. Competitors will not be able to infiltrate our market or copy our innovation once we have a set contract with universities, beginning with The University of Florida. The next venture for us to grow to other universities. We will begin at the University of Florida, and then move on to other universities with large population, online courses, and big libraries. For me personally, in the next five years I want this idea to be at five different universities, one per year. I think that is an awesome and possible goal to have. In the next decade, I want us to be at ten universities.

Summary of Feedback

Overall, everyone that comment on my first venture concept was very fond of my idea. Grant, Jacob, and Daniel all think my idea is a great one and that they would use this service. They think it is great that I am expanding past just computer chargers into phone and tablet as well. The feedback I received from the what’s next assignment made me realize that expanding to high schools will not be the next best idea, but rather expanding to more universities and colleges.

Changed Venture Concept

Rather than change what I had, I chose not to include my idea of expanding to high schools in my venture concept. I learned from the feedback that I received that it may not be that profitable or beneficial to expand to high schools.