Celebrating Failure

I was on an intramural basketball team this semester in the competitive league, where that are some really good teams. My team had some really good players and skill-wise, we could definitely compete with most of the teams. We started the season 0-5, and were playing horribly. Each game we tried a new offense and a new defense but could not get anything going and the scoreboard really showed it. During our 6th game, we finally found a good system, and implemented it in our games. We finally won a game, and after that game regained our confidence and won the next 6 in a row. Instead of just giving up on our season, we put our heads together and finally found something that worked. This class has taught me to really learn from my mistakes, grow, and keep persevering in the face of failure. I am definitely more inclined to take a risk now than I was in the beginning of this semester.

Week 13 Reading Reflection

The biggest surprise to me, was that Facebook managed to raise $16 billion it its IPO! I really enjoy learning about the stock market, and I had no idea that Facebook was able to raise to much during its IPO, I think that's incredible. One thing that I found really confusing was the concept of "rollups", even after reading that section a couple of times, I still can't fully grasp the concept. I would ask the author what his most effective way to value a firm is. I would also ask him if he bought stock in Facebook during its IPO. There is nothing I really thought the author was wrong about.

My Exit Strategy

After multiple years of profitability, and once my company becomes valuable enough, I plan to sell it, and use the proceeds to open my own investment banking firm or stock brokerage firm. It has been a lifelong dream of mine to become an investment banker and I feel like once I have accumulated enough capital, I'll be able to open my own firm, and with my finance degree from UF, have the knowledge it takes to make it successful. I love the entire industry of investment banking, and I feel like I would really thrive in that industry. It is one of my passions. I think that my exit strategy would definitely affect the way I conducted business while I owned this venture. I would be so caught up with adding as much value to the firm as possible, in order to sell it for the most amount of money. 

Week 12 Reading Reflection

One thing that surprised me about the reading was the amount of work and planning that goes into venture ideas. Nothing really confused me about this reading. I would ask the author, what is the most effective way to create a venture. I would also ask, if there is a way to become more creative. I do not disagree with anything that the author wrote.

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity

The need that my business idea will address is that some college students are forced to take online courses, and also take online exams. Most students who take these online exams feel extremely uncomfortable and dread taking them. Taking an online exam with someone on your computer screen watching your every move can become extremely nerve-wrecking. College students who take online tests via ProctorU will be the targeted potential customers of my new service. This need is created because some courses at the University of Florida, as well as other large universities, have extremely large class sizes and not enough professors to handle the overwhelming number of students. So an online class allows one professor to teach as many students as needed. Most students I have spoken to would love an alternative to ProctorU, and feel like an alternative would allow them to do better on their exams. This “window of opportunity” would be open for as long as Universities are still partnered with ProctorU.

Innovation

The service that I would be offering is an alternative to ProctorU to take exams for online courses. Basically, this service would operate just like ProctorU in the booking aspect, students would go online and book an appointment with a nearby proctor, including date, time and place. Much like the SAT or ACT, there would be a set number of exam locations and times. Students could then meet up with their proctor and take a pen and paper exam, rather than an online exam, depending on whether or not there are other students in the same city, other students would be taking the exam as well in the same place. Designated proctoring sites would be either a college campus in that city, or maybe even a high school classroom. Students have been taking pen and paper exams for their entire lives, and it is what students feel most comfortable doing. Especially once a student gets to college, and the exam material is much more difficult, it is extremely important that a students feels comfortable while taking an exam. This company would make money by partnering with large universities that have unhappy students taking online exams. It would charge a base fee per year, which would most likely be a little more costly that a partnership with ProctorU, because of the amount of proctors there must be throughout the United States. But, I feel like universities should spare no expense to have students happy because of the high price of tuition. 

Venture Concept

Most students dislike taking online exams because it makes them feel extremely uncomfortable. Myself, and many other students that I have spoken to would be more than willing to take a pen and paper exam in its place. The hardest part of starting this company would be getting universities to partner with it rather than ProctorU. I’m sure universities have multi-year deals with ProctorU already in place, so it would take a couple years for universities to be able to partner with this company. ProctorU would be my biggest competitor, and it is extremely vulnerable because most students despise taking online exams. There would be many employees, but not many full-time employees. Teachers, TAs or even some professors would sign up to proctor a specific exam and be paid per exam session that they proctor. 

3 Minor Elements

My unfair advantage would be the tremendous amount of work ethic that I would put forth to get this company going and start on the right foot. There is not much innovation for a business idea like this, the only one that I could really think of is mainly to partner with exams like SAT or ACT and have our employees proctor those exams as well. In 5 years, once this company has taken off and made millions, I would sell it and pursue my ultimate goal which is to open my own stock brokerage firm. 

Amazon Whisperer

The way that my company would generate revenue is buy partnering with Universities, and having the Universities pay a fee for these proctoring services. Much like ProctorU, a student would be able to arrange a proctored test about a week in advance, free of charge, but if the student reschedules the appointment within 48 hours, the student would have to pay a small fee. My company is a service-based company, so I can't really think of any product that these students would want on top of the opportunity to take an in-person proctored test versus an online test through ProctorU. A device that I think would be useful though, is a calculator that is a mixture of both a graphing calculator, and a financial calculator. As a business major, it is pretty annoying to have to keep track of both calculators and see which one I can use for a specific problem. I think a calculator that has the features of both, could be extremely useful. I can't find a calculator that encompasses both features on Amazon, but they have each individual calculator. The reviews of the graphing calculator, specifically the TI 84 +, are extremely positive and has an overall 4.5/5 star rating. The reviews say that is is extremely easy to use, and very convenient. Reviews on the financial calculator are not as positive. The Texas Instruments BA II + financial calculator, has a 4/5 star rating. The reviews say that it is not as intuitive to use as regular calculators, and people wish that it could do a little more. It is very intricate and use must use so many buttons to perform the simplest calculations. I would combine both the financial and graphing calculators into one calculator.

Week 11 Reading Reflection

The biggest surprise to me was how much effort, thought, and preparation goes into innovation and being able to keep up the the evolving market. The part that I found most confusing how how different technological innovation can be than business model innovation. I always thought that they went hand-in-hand, because technology affects your business model. I would ask the author, what is the best way to keep up with an evolving market? And also, what sectors do you believe haven't evolved much yet? I don't think that the author was wrong about anything.