29A- Venture Concept No.2

Opportunity 

        Millions of students all over the world every year leave their homes and head for college for at least the next four years of their lives. For most of them, they go from being under the roof of their family and having most of the main responsibilities taken care of to being completely on their own away from their homes in a whole new environment. High school didn't help much in prepping them for college outside of classes, so students find themselves completely lost on how to take care of themselves regarding responsibilities such as proper scheduling, budgeting/financing, cleaning, cooking, etc. This can become a much bigger problem than people think as it can lead to students blowing through all their money, eating unhealthy diets, living in unsanitary areas, and not having enough time to focus on their academics. This market is all over the country in all college towns such as Gainesville, Orlando, and Tallahassee for examples in Florida. The market mainly consists of 18-22-year-old college students but more specifically those 18-19-year-old freshman who are on their own for the first time. Right now, these students are struggling to find answers for this solution. They can find help for these problems individually through internet sources or just going back to their parents assistance but those are not efficient and consistent ways of solving their problems and many students hate having to bother their parents all the time for more money or food or doing their laundry for them. This opportunity is huge as there were over 20 million students enrolled in college in 2017 according to the US college enrollment statistics. As of now, the window for this opportunity is not closing anytime in the near future because more and more students have been attending college over the years, however, because of factors like the ones I described above, there are many kids who are struggling to much in college to be able to finish school which hinders the numbers a lot in the long run.

 Innovation

       To solve this problem, I have created an idea for an app that covers all the bases in one hit. This application is like a college survival guide to help college students be able to take care of themselves and get tips on how to make the transition from home to college much easier. You would initially purchase this app for $1.99, in return you get the basic run down which actually has all the essentials. Also, there is a possibility for a monthly charge or fee for additional information and tools to further assist in the college efforts so students can be even more educated about taking care of themselves. This app will help you budget yourself by breaking down how much you should be spending and saving daily, weekly, monthly based on how much you have and also give you tips like how to fill out a check, how to apply for a credit card, how to use a credit card, etc. Also, as far as shopping for groceries, supplies or anything really, the app will search for coupons available at nearby stores and send them to you to use at your convenience. For scheduling you put in your work and class schedule as well as all the daily things you need to do throughout the week and it will generate a weekly schedule for you with everything you have to do spaced out in time slots that can evenly allow you to do everything you need to do without cramming. Many students also aren't very well prepared on how to cook by themselves when they get to school so for cooking, the app has pre-loaded hundreds of recipes for easy to make meals that provide proper nutrients as well for students since their diets aren't always top on the list of priorities. All of these things also come with tips, reminders, alerts and instructions on how to do them as well so students can eventually learn to do it if they do not have the app accessible to them or near them or even if they just do not have the app anymore. I am selling the rock that will be holding down everything going on in the student’s life while they are focusing on getting an education. This app also has long term benefits as it does not just teach students these things now but also teaches them how to take care of themselves post degree while they are starting their new lives in the real world which is much more stressful. 

 Venture Concept

         As stated in the Innovation section, the app will solve the need by showing and teaching the students how to take care of themselves as well as assisting in their day to day responsibilities. Customers will switch to this new product because it puts everything in one instead of solving things individually. It will be so easy to switch too because you are just simply downloading an app and putting in your info. There are not too many specific competitors out there since this is one of the first ones of this product. There are some individual like coupon apps and cooking apps but none of them can combine everything. Packaging, location, and distribution don't play the biggest role since this is available on the app store and you just need a smartphone. Behind the scenes, we would have a marketing team, a software and IT team, a customer support team, a finances team, and an executive team to oversee it all and make the larger company decisions. Additionally, going forward there may be an expansion as far as including seminars and brief classes held at many high schools throughout the nation to give high school students a background of the basics of being able to tackle those tough adult responsibilities that they are not prepared for. This will also help marketing wise as many more students will be aware of my app and services ahead of time and can get a head start!

 Minor Elements

        My most important resource would be my ability to be one of the first of this product to enter the market because it stops mass competition and is new to everyone, so they are curious to try it. The next opportunity I may want to try is the same type of app but for newly formed families like for couples having their first child and how to get through it. In the next 5 years we would want to be downloaded in about 20-30% of the some of the top colleges in at least 30 states.

Feedback Summary

As far as feedback goes, I received generally positive feedback from my first venture concept and my whats next exercise. However on the whats next exercise, I mentioned doing high school seminars to help prepare high schoolers for college but raised my own concerns regarding how it would just lose money for my business. One of the comments said that they actually believed it would help my company in the aspect of marketing and consumer prospecting so I decided to consider it much more heavily and put it into this venture concept as well. Of course that does not mean mine is perfect, so I referred it to my roommates for more feedback. One of them did say how I should charge something like a monthly fee for additional packages and tools for the app since a one time payment of 1.99 may not give me sufficient or consistent revenue. I did strongly take that into consideration and thought they may be right so I put it as an option, however, I feel since every year millions of more students come to college, there still should be consistent income as long as people are still making good use of the app.