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When I think of my market and imagine my prototypical customer, I think of a college student with a car. As a college student, he has a lot of freedom that he can use for himself. This means when he's not at school studying, he's away having fun, traveling with friends. The most important part about my customer is that he has a car, he's young, and he's able to attend "fun" places. This could be concerts, theme parks, and even airports as a means of transportation. His youth and familiarity with technology is ideal and is where the most exposure for my product will come from. What do I have in common with my customer? I am one! I think this isn't coincidental at all because as a college student myself, I was able to identify a need that my community could use. My idea came from the thought that I couldn't be the only one who had this problem. Being a part of the market, I'm able to understand and appeal to them in a much more practical way with similar experiences to share.

Halfway Reflection

1) So far, this course has been a unique experience. To be honest, I didn't have the best start to this semester and there were many times where I contemplated giving up. Due to some unfortunate events, I ended up becoming way more distracted from school that I wanted. Nevertheless, I really didn't want to give up and through this class, I was able to continue develop my tenacity for school. I can't say that school was ever my strength, but I'm definitely learning that it's something that you can't give up on no matter how bad it may get.

2) After the first two weeks, I really wanted to give up. I had missed a lot of assignments and there were other things that I needed to focus my attention on. What pulled me through was a reflection on how I handled school during hard times in the past. I realized that this was definitely not the first time I had wanted to give up, but every time I somehow pushed through and ended up okay. Someone close to me once told me that character isn't revealed in your success, but in how you handle your failure. Even if I don't receive the grade that I had hoped for, I wanted to show myself that I didn't give up. I definitely think that I'm developing a tenacious attitude for school. It's always easier to not give up, but when it comes to something that you're not good at or maybe not interested in, it can seem so much harder to find the motivation to not stop. Hopefully this experience along with many others will help me find a tenacious attitude not just for school, but in life.

3) Three tips that I would give to any student interested in taking this class would be:

1. Start your assignments early. Even if you don't get to do all of them in one sitting, it's good to gauge how much time you will need for each assignment throughout the week. Some will take 5 minutes while others could take more than a day.
2. Reach out to your TA and professor. It's important to keep them updated on anything that you may have going on or any questions you may have. Being able to form relationships are a key role to success in this class.
3. Be creative and have fun. The class gives students a lot of room for their own creative expression. You should take advantage of this opportunity to be able to try new things that you couldn't have done before and make it a positive, learning experience. 

Idea Napkin No. 1

1)    My name’s Kalvin and I’m a 21 year old college student at the University of Florida. As for talents, I would say that I’m good at engaging people and creating relationships. In my lifetime, I went to countless different schools. From 3 high schools to 4 different colleges, staying still was definitely not a talent of mine. On the other hand, my frequent moving helped to develop skills in areas that were once my biggest weaknesses. I was a shy kid growing up and putting myself out there was always a big challenge. This soon changed when I was forced to be in new environments and I had to find new ways to thrive by overcoming my fears. My aspiration in life is simply to be able to help those around me. It sounds very vague and cliché, but to me it’s something that has kept me going through all of life’s ups and downs. Everyone goes through hardships and I figured we all have a choice to make. We can either let them get to the best of us or we can allow it to better us. For me, there is no better aspiration than to use my gifts and talents to help those less fortunate. Whether it’s being a good older brother or a neighbor who cares, I realized that life for myself was no life at all. The true beauty and joy of life came when I was able to lay myself down and put others before me. My business concept is a small step toward my aspiration. My idea would help create the capital necessary to make the difference that I would want to make. I saw an opportunity that I could help others with and also make money from and it would help make other opportunities more visible.

2)    My product will basically eliminate all the time wasted looking for parking. It’s so simple, yet we waste so much of our valuable time on it. How much more efficient could we all be if we knew the future? My product isn’t psychic, but it will be able to tell you where the available parking spots are. That means you don’t have to go up and down the floors anymore or stalk a potential leaver who you’re hoping is parked nearby.

3)    All my customers have this in common – they hate looking for parking. My market will be aimed at places where parking is essentially the worst. This includes concerts, theme parks, schools, malls, etc. It includes young and old and people of all races because parking isn’t racist.

4)    Customers will pay me money because they all know what my product aims to accomplish. They all know too well the problem that I’m trying to address and they’ll think why we haven’t done something about it sooner. Someone that I interviewed actually shared that she wasted 2 hours looking for parking at Universal Studios. I asked why she didn’t just turn back, but it was because she had drove all the way to Orlando from Tampa and it would’ve been a waste if they did. Imagine how much she would’ve paid for an app like mine in that crucial moment. 2 hours is a lot of time and that’s just one day out of all the days we spend looking for parking.

5)    My core competency is that I’m the only one! As far as I know, I’m the only app that will be able to provide a specific parking spot for a specific place.

My five elements fit very well together, but if there were an area that I would have to admit was a concern, it would be my core competency. Of course being the only app is a tremendous advantage, but I know that as soon as that door opens, there will be so many different competing applications that I would have to find another core competency to make sure that my product stands out.

Tweaking the Innovation

1) My revenue drivers are:

• The app itself
• How much I charge
• People that purchase and download it 

2) The app itself is the tangible level of my product.

3) One way that I can introduce innovation is by changing the core benefit by introducing other services that I could provide other than helping the user find parking. Another innovation that I could introduce is by changing the tangible product itself by providing my product individually to different places like theme parks or universities rather than to the general public. By doing this, it would be a lot easier to make the product more personal and useful toward its designated use. 

Elevator Pitch No. 1

https://youtu.be/YlNu-TWa9tM

My opportunity comes from a very common issue that we can all relate to. How many times have you struggled with finding parking whether on campus or at an amusement park? It's such an overlooked problem, yet so many people face it. In a day and age where technology has dominated almost every part of our life, how come parking has remained the same? Think of all the time and stress that goes into looking for parking. My solution is Parked. The name comes from its ability to locate all the parked cars to help the user avoid looking and also in its ability to get you parked. It's a simple solution to a common problem. Stop looking and start parking!

Testing the Opportunity Hypothesis Part 2

So this was the first time that I was finally able to do an interview and it was awesome. It was definitely an experience that pushed me out of my comfort zone and though my questions weren't perfect, I was able to meet some extraordinary people. The most difficult part about this specific activity was talking for 10 minutes about something that they weren't supposed to be interested in because they were "outside of the boundary". Other than that, I think I really got the point of this assignment because the people I interviewed helped me to see the different markets out there that really were outside of my boundary. These people included those who may use public transportation, work or go to school from home, or even people who were either too young or too old to drive.

I didn't really have a script when I did these interviews which led to some awkward pauses, but it's also what led to the awesome input that I would never have thought of asking for if I didn't let them speak their mind freely. To be honest, I'm not the best interviewer and I'm still in disbelief that I was able to just approach complete strangers without coming off as a complete creep.

Essentially, the biggest difference between those who were in my boundary and those who weren't were there accessibility to a car. It turns out that I have a pretty wide market for my idea which can be both a good and bad thing. Below I have a table that illustrates the main differences further:

Inside the boundary                                 Outside the boundary

People who can drive a car                      People who can't drive

They need parking                                   They don't need parking

Overcrowding of parking                        They don't drive so they don't have to worry about parking

In conclusion, I found a new appreciation for feedback from strangers. As intimidating as it was at first, I realized that these people had a lot to say and were able to see things from a perspective that I or my like-minded peers may have missed.

Here's the playlist containing all 5 of my interviews:

https://soundcloud.com/user-594772577/sets/testing-the-opportunity-hypothesis-part-2