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.