20A - Growing Your Social Capital

Domain Expert:

1)   Who they are, what their background is: 

a.    Jack, Intern with Orlando Police Department

2)   How this person is a “domain expert”: 

b.    He spent the past summer working as an intern with the Orlando Police Department, giving him knowledge and insight into the prevalence of abduction/sexual assault crimes

3)   How I found and contacted this person: 

c.    I went to high school with him so I gave him a phone call and asked him about his experience working with the OPD as an intern and about any information he learned about sexual assault/abduction crimes.

4)   Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation: 

d.    He provided me with valuable information about the prevalence and frequency of sexual assault/abduction crimes within the Orlando area during this past summer. I discussed with him my product concept and asked for his opinion about the effectiveness of my product. In exchange for helping me out and discussing my product concept, the return expectation is probably that I be available for him if he has any needs/issues that he needs to discuss with someone with a more finance/business background.

5)   How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity: 

e.    He provided me with great information about the frequency of abduction/sexual assault crimes. He confirmed my belief that the most difficult part in handling these crimes is response time, as sometimes it can be difficult to directly locate victims. He enjoyed hearing about my product concept and thinks it can be effective in reducing sexual assault/abduction rates. Including him will enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity by providing me with more background information about the problem and about its prevalence in the United States.

Market Expert:

1)   Who they are, what their background is: 

a.    Linda, Sales Representative for Life Alert

2)   How this person is a “market expert”: 

b.    She is a market expert because the Life Alert is similar to my product in its functionalities and goal, as well as her experience surveying and conducting consumer research within the Orlando area.

3)   How I found and contacted this person: 

c.    My grandma actually just purchased a Life Alert, so while she was there overlooking the installation, I made sure to ask her some questions about her experience selling the Life Alert and identifying consumers through market research.

4)   Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation: 

d.    I asked Linda about the functions of the Life Alert and how the product could potentially be improved. I also asked her about how much the Life Alert was and how the company continues to generate revenue. I gave her a little bit of insight into the product that I am trying to develop and she seemed very interested in the advanced technological capability of the product. I don’t really think there was a return expectation, she was simply being polite and exemplifying customer service as my grandma had just purchased a product from her.

5)   How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity: 

e.    Including them will enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity by providing me with some insight into how a similar product is designed financially. I was able to find out that the Life Alert charges originally for the product and then there is a monthly operating charge as well. This gives me something to think about as I continue to figure out the ideal price for my product concept. Her experience conducting consumer research could also be an asset as I continue to identify market segments to target for my product.

Industry Supplier:

1)    Who they are, what their background is: 

a.    Tanjay, Mobile Developer at Wearsafe

2)    How this person is a “industry supplier”: 

b.    Wearsafe is a company that is focused on creating personal safety products. He has experience in selling Wearsafe products to various organizations worldwide.

3)    How I found and contacted this person: 

c.    I actually found him through LinkedIn and sent him a message asking if I could speak with him to discuss his experience working for Wearsafe. I explained to him my product concept and wanted to know about the challenges that Wearsafe has experienced in operating its business.

4)    Nature of Exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation: 

d.    He provided me with a lot of useful information surrounding the personal safety technology industry. Some of the key challenges they faced were mainly financial, however they did experience some problems with implementing technology into their products. I told him about my product concept and the functionalities of the product and he agreed that the technological aspect will be very important in distinguishing myself from competitors. The return expectation will likely be that I am available to him if he needs any feedback on one of his projects or assistance in the future.

5)    How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity: 

e.    Including him will enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity as he has experience with operating a business in this particular industry. He has seen how products are sold to various organizations, which can be important in creating a supplier chain in the future. He provided me with information about potential setbacks that I may face, allowing me to better prepare for them and understand the rigors of becoming successful in this industry.

Finally: Reflect. This experience requires you to do a little 'targeted networking.' How will this experience shape how you participate in any future networking events? Did this experience differ from your networking experiences in the past? How?

a.    This experience differed from the networking that I have done in the past because instead of talking about myself, I was more so talking about my business concept and about the problem that it aims at addressing. This experience will shape in how I participate in future networking events as it provided me with additional networking practice. Talking to experts in these particular areas proved to be less intimidating than originally thought, and I learned that I can still network with people even if I am not directly talking to them face-to-face. Taking advantage of the internet and websites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor can be important in identifying connections and opening up communication with them. I learned that networking is not that difficult and all it takes is just putting in the effort to contacting someone.

Assignment 19A - Idea Napkin No. 2

1)    Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

·      My name is Javier Chacon and I am a 3^rd year Finance major here at the University of Florida. After interviewing the 5 people that I feel are closest to me and reflecting over my own unique characteristics that contribute to my human capital, I can see that my biggest talents are financial/data analysis and my work ethic. My past experience operating my own online business has given me experience with marketing, communicating, and selling directly to customers in both an online and in-person setting. I also was able to further develop my financial analysis skills through utilizing Microsoft Excel to track my finances and identify areas where I could improve in order to maximize profit.

·      If I were to start this business, I would see it playing a very significant role in my life. I am very passionate about everything that I do and once I start something, I put in 100% of my effort and time into it. The purpose of my product is to decrease abduction/sexual assault rates worldwide and I think that the fact that my business concept could have a positive impact on many people’s lives will inspire and push me to continue to improve my business.

2)    What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

·      I would say that what I am offering to customers has not really changed from the first idea napkin. I am offering consumers a product that will provide them with additional safety protection and peace-of-mind. My business concept is to create clothing accessories, such as rings, bracelets, and necklaces, as well as chips that can be inserted into any article of clothing. These accessories and chips would contain a “distress” button that, when pressed, would alert the authorities and emergency contacts of your choice and provide them with your live location. The technology is currently available and my goal is to modify this technology so that it can be better utilized for personal safety. Abduction rates are very high in this country, with almost 2000 children every day that go missing, and even though sexual assault rates have begun to decline, they are still very high. My product aims at solving consumer’s unmet need of personal safety protection and provides them with assurance that they will have a greater chance of a positive outcome if anything were to happen to them.

3)    Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

·      This part has not really changed too much. I am primarily targeting female college students and families. My reasoning in targeting these two groups is that I am 100% confident that those are the two groups who face the need the most. With the increased awareness and exposure now of sexual assaults on college campuses, I think my product provides additional assurance to female college students that will aid them if they were ever faced with that situation. In addition, families would be more inclined to purchase this product for their children, with child abduction rates still predominantly high. Families want to make sure that their children stay safe and protected, something that my product can provide to ease their mind. I would say that all of my customers have a common need of wanting to stay safe. In today’s world, there has been unfortunately a lot of crazy stuff happening and everyone just wants to be safe. My product aims at trying to do that exact thing and to ease people’s mind’s a little bit knowing that they have a product that will help keep them safe.

4)    Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

·      Consumers care because their personal safety is one of their highest priorities. We are only given one life to live, so it is very important that we do everything that we can to protect ourselves. My product cannot promise to 100% eliminate the risk of anything negative happening to the consumer, however what it does do is protect consumers and provide them with a greater chance of a positive outcome. The primary goal of my product is to decrease abduction/sexual assault rates and to provide victims with a greater chance of a better outcome through increased response times. One of the biggest problems when dealing with abductions/sexual assaults is locating the victims and my product directly handles this through the “distress” button that sends out live location to the police and emergency contacts.

5)    What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

·      From all of the search that I have conducted, there are currently zero competitors with a product similar to mine that sends out live location to authorities/emergency contacts. The closest thing to a competitor is honestly the Life Alert, and that does not contain the live location feature and is primarily targeted towards senior citizens. What sets my product apart is the advanced technological capability to be able to send live location to authorities/emergency contacts, leading to faster response times to these crimes. Other personal safety accessories, such as pepper spray necklaces or alarm necklaces, obviously haven’t been affective or have not been marketed effectively because otherwise the rates for these crimes would be going down much faster. I have connections with individuals with engineering/computer science/programming backgrounds that I think would be great assets in bringing this product to life. When looking at my current network and the overall landscape of the industry, I think I have what it takes to take my concept to the next level and make it a success.

6)    In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others. 

·      When looking at all 5 of these elements, I believe that all of them fit together very nicely.  I really don’t think that any of my elements are weaker than another, just because I have done a lot of research in determining how effective my product could be and who would be the main consumers to purchase my product. The connections that I have make it very possible to bring this concept to life and to continue to improve the overall design of my product. The media is doing a great job right now on bringing light towards abduction/sexual assault crimes and this increased awareness will only broaden up the market for my product. The need for personal safety is a very serious one and offering a product that can help improve that need is very important in satisfying the current market.

7)    Feedback Memo: 

·      One important piece of feedback that I received directly addressed the product concept. Someone commented on my post suggesting that I think about adding a microchip that can be inserted into any article of clothing with the same technological capabilities as the accessories. I decided that this was actually a brilliant idea, as it offers a more discrete product that can be transferred from one article of clothing to another. This could also potentially lead down the line to the chips being licensed with different clothing manufacturers to create “smart-tech” clothing that aims at solving the personal safety need.

·      Another piece of important feedback that I received involved the landscape of the industry. Since there are no direct competitors to my product, I had someone ask me what, if any, were the alternatives to my product. I was able to conduct more research on alternative products and found out that there really wasn’t much out there to compete with my product. Other than pepper spray necklaces, taser bracelets, or alarm necklaces, there is a lack of personal safety products that utilize the current technology that we have today. I think that in mentioning this in my idea napkin, I provide more information about the landscape of the industry and why my product has serious potential to become successful.

17A - Elevator Pitch #2

https://youtu.be/ZRZm6ZCE2pg

Reflection of feedback: From my first elevator pitch, I received a lot of positive feedback surrounding my energetic and passionate tone that made the elevator pitch more engaging and enjoyable to listen to. I changed the tone of my voice a lot to keep the audience engaged and I didn’t realize how important my use of hand gestures would be in keeping the audience interested in what I was saying. I think that keeping good energy and being excited about your product is very important because how can you expect the audience to stay interested/engaged when you can’t even do that about your own product.

What I changed, based of feedback: After reviewing the feedback I received, I decided to slow down my elevator pitch a little bit so that my speech could be more easily understood. Sometimes, I would get passionate about what I was saying and that would lead to me speeding up and making what I was saying harder to understand. I also decided to spend more time discussing the problem that my product is aimed at addressing by specifically including statistics that emphasize the seriousness of the issue I am trying to solve. Including a price estimate for my products was another tip I received and I made sure to include that as well in my elevator pitch so that consumers can get a better idea of what I am offering them.

18A - Create a Customer Avatar

For my product concept, the customer segment that I have identified and researched is female college students. My prototypical customer would be an 18-year-old female college student who is a freshman here at the University of Florida. She lives in Florida and has grown up with a loving and supporting family who are excited to see her begin her college journey. She is very excited to start university life, meet new friends, and enjoy the social nightlife that Gainesville has to offer. She is very active and social, putting herself out there to meet new people and make new friends. 

She does not have her own car since she lives on campus, however she relies on the “reliable” RTS transportation to go around campus. Living at Broward Hall has allowed her to meet new friends as she socializes with her floor-mates and enjoys the wonderful food at Broward Dining. Going out to mid-town is a regular occurrence as the weekend nears and that provides ample opportunity to relieve some stress and have a good time.

Prior to university life, she would enjoy going out to parties with her friends and engage in drinking and partying. However, now that she is far away from home, the bar/club scene is very new to her and she is still trying to get the hang of it. She grew up in a protective and safe environment, so being surrounded with strangers partying/drinking is definitely a new experience for her. When she is not socializing and partying at mid, she prefers to binge-watch new Netflix shows after completing her school work, such as the Office or Gossip Girl. Excited about her future at UF, she realizes that she must take advantage of her time here and make the most out of every opportunity that is presented to her.

What do I have in common with the customer avatar?

o   When looking at the customer avatar, I would say that we are similar in how we view university life. I tend to drift towards the social aspect of college so going out is definitely a part of that experience. Taking advantage of different clubs and organizations is also something that I do to meet new people and make new connections. I also don’t have a car on campus, so I do a lot of walking/riding the bus.

I don’t think it is a coincidence.

o   When looking at the things I have in common with the customer avatar, I don’t think there is a coincidence with the similarities. I think that the prototypical customer for my product would likely be one that is social and does like to go out, making them more vulnerable leaving the bar/club since it is dark, they are likely “buzzed” or drunk, and they may not be with a whole lot of people leaving. While I, myself, do not think I would likely be a victim of an abduction/sexual assault, I do think it’s possible since I do leave myself vulnerable at times and I think that just by being very socially active, you tend to put yourself in a lot of new opportunities/experiences that lead to your guard being lowered and of course this leads to an increased risk of something potentially negative happening.

16A - What's Your Secret Sauce?

1)    Describe five ways in which you think you have human capital that is truly unique.

o   Prior experience operating my own online business where I was able to achieve $8,000+ in sales

§  I think this prior experience has allowed me to learn a lot about how to run a successful business and the importance of marketing/communication.

o   Prior experience studying business in Madrid, Spain, which allowed me to develop a sense of global cultural awareness in understanding different markets

§  This experience opened my mind and allowed me to identify opportunities available in markets outside the United States, which could potentially provide expansion opportunities for my businesses in the future.

o   Strong Financial/Statistical Data Analysis Skills

§  Operating my own online business required me to learn/develop financial and statistical data analysis skills through tools such as Excel and QuickBooks.

o   Fluency in both English/Spanish

§  This allows me to be a better communicator and to reach a larger audience of people with my product.

o   Self-Motivated with a strong work-ethic that allows me to overcome anything that gets thrown my way

§  In starting up a company, having a strong work-ethic is very important as you will experience many obstacles and challenges and you must have the right mindset to become successful and overcome these hardships.

2)    Interview Summaries

o   Dad: The first person that I decided to interview was my dad. He mentioned that my competitive nature and work ethic would allow me to become successful as I always am working on bettering myself through learning different skills and exposing myself to new opportunities. https://soundcloud.com/javi-chacon-358244547/dad/s-0Gqdy

o   Mom: The second person that I decided to interview was my mom. She also mentioned my strong work-ethic and my attention to detail and related that to my online business that I operate. She stated how my online business allowed me to grow and develop key analytical skills. https://soundcloud.com/javi-chacon-358244547/mom/s-vf1ey

o   Brother: The third person that I chose to interview was my younger brother. Again, he mentioned my strong and determined work-ethic and my self-driven nature. He also mentioned something new, stating how I am a thoughtful thinker and make sure to think of the consequences of actions before deciding what decision to make. https://soundcloud.com/javi-chacon-358244547/brother/s-jTq5U

o   Roommate: The fourth person that I chose to interview was my roommate Pedro. I have known Pedro for almost 10 years and he mentioned that I am a logical thinker and make sure to think from different perspectives before making a clear decision. My background in finance and data analytics is also mentioned as a unique strength to me that would allow me to become successful as an entrepreneur. https://soundcloud.com/javi-chacon-358244547/pedro-dahl-roommate/s-Fq9B3

o   Roommate: The final person that I chose to interview was my other roommate Randimal. I have known him for 10 years as well and he mentioned my logical thinking and background of finance/data analytics as a major strength unique to my human capital. He thinks that my background operating my own online business will do good and serve as a unique experience that will allow me to become more successful in the future. https://soundcloud.com/javi-chacon-358244547/randimal-fonseka-roommate/s-nn9Qs

3)    Reflection

o   After conducting all 5 interviews, I can see that, for the most part, most people tend to agree with the unique attributes I bring to the table relating to human capital. My strong work-ethic was mentioned frequently and that allows me to become laser-focused on tasks thrown my way and that is especially important for an entrepreneur because there will be many challenges early on. There were not any clear differences that I could identify, as all of my interviewees pretty much painted the same picture of my skills/knowledge unique to my human capital. I think that my interviewees were all very accurate with their reflections of my human capital and even though new things were mentioned (such as my logical thinking skills), I wouldn’t really update the list as I feel the five that I have identified are the ones that make me the most unique and that are my strongest abilities.