Elevator Pitch No. 4

I have always gotten good feedback in my elevator pitches so for the last elevator pitch, like in my other pitches, I did not change much. Some people pointed a few things which are the things that I changed, but they are mostly presentation related and not related to the pitch itself. I dress up for this pitch and try to get a steady shot while it being nicely lit, unlike my other elevator pitches. I also added the price of my product which I did not have on my other pitches. I also expanded the places in which I was going to sell my product so I changed that in my pitch. Other than those changes my pitch is the same as before. I hope you enjoy the last elevator pitch:

Final Reflection

      After going back all the posts and everything I did for this class, I have to say that the experience that I will always remember is the time that we had to give free money to people. I will always remember how doubtful people look and untrustworthy. Especially when there is a camera around, they think it is a prank or something and because they are that way they lost the opportunity to get a free dollar. My most joyous experience was "My Secret Sauce" since I heard what the people closest to me think about me and that made me happy. It made glad that I surrounded myself with awesome people. The experience I am most proud of has to be the creation of the business we had to do. Even though I did not put as much time as I could have put into it, I think I did a great job with it and I am proud with the end product, and it also thought me a lot and that is why I am the most proud of that experience.

       "Entrepreneurs don't wait. They act. And they don't quit. Entrepreneurs fail. A lot. But in this forge of failure, entrepreneurs sharpen their edge, ready to face the future. Entrepreneurs thirst for negative feedback. Too much praise leads to complacency, while criticism provided clues to improve. Entrepreneurs work harder. To pursue their own lives. To improve the world around them. To build a better future for themselves, their families, and communities. I am an entrepreneur." This is the mantra that started everything and it is what will keep me going as an entrepreneur. After doing everything we did in this course I do feel like I have become an entrepreneur and I will always be an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur not only means to be a business owner but I has a whole new meaning now and whatever I do in life I will always be an entrepreneur.

       For future students who down this path I do recommend to do their best. To learn from everything, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem. I recommend that they do their assignments ahead to be able to do their best and to not end up with a big load of work at last minute. Enjoy the class and keep in mind that you are an entrepreneur.

Week 15 Reading Reflection

  What surprised me the most of this week's reading was honestly the whole reading. The story of the extortion and the then the spread of false rumors against her company. And then how her company help other people. And how she had no money or investors when she started the company but still was extremely successful. It was a great read.

I was not confused about anything in the reading, I was just hooked and enjoyed reading it.

The two questions I have for the author are:
1. If there was anything different she could have done beginning her business, what would it be?
2. Is it better to set up customer loyalty even if it makes a small loss of profit than to just not take the customer?

I do not think the author was wrong about anything in this week's reading

Week 14 Reading Reflection

In this week's reading the thing that I found to be the most surprising is corporate entrepreneurship. I never really thought corporations to be entrepreneurial. I was thought of entrepreneurship to small business or new business.

I didn't really find anything confusing in this week's chapter.

The two questions I would ask the author are;
1. How easily do large corporations, that have been doing the same thing for years, accept change like corporate entrepreneurship?
2. What are some repercussions to NATA?

I did not think the author was wrong about anything in this week's reading.

Venture Concept No. 2

OPPORTUNITY:

              I found an opportunity in the area of skateboards. The opportunity that I found, after overhearing someone complain about it, is that people who use boards to get around do not like to carry their boards with them whenever they are not using them. I find myself in that same boat as those people, because I do not take my board to class because of having to carry it. I asked both friends and strangers and they both agreed that something to carry their boards on their backs would make their lives easier when taking their boards places, and some even said that they would probably use their boards more. The customers that meet this need is anyone that uses a board and uses a backpack on a daily basis. This description fits mostly to high schoolers and college students but the potential customer could be virtually anyone in any part of the world. As more people, college students, realize the difficulty to get cheap and easy transportation in a college campus they also realize that using a board is both cheap and easy to transport in. It is efficient and you go faster than walking, you also don’t have to worry about parking with it and it is small compared to a bike, making it the best way to transport oneself in a college campus. These changes create the opportunity that I found. As I was saying before this opportunity has no definition geographically or demographically since it is targeted mostly to college students that use any type of board, and you can find college students with that need anywhere in the world. Some customers satisfy this need by buying a backpack that already has straps included to carry your skateboard, and they are mostly loyal to this backpack. I believe that the window for this opportunity will stay open for a while considering how long it has been open. This a great opportunity which a few skateboarding companies have tried to tackle too so I would have some competition.

INNOVATION:

              My innovation that came for the opportunity described above is an adjustable strap that hooks onto any backpack, which allows the user to carry any type of board, whether the board is a skateboard, a longboard, or a pennyboard. My product is both simple and innovative since it allows the users to carry any board and keep using their favorite backpack, therefore not adding extra expense for a backpack you don’t need. The strap is made of fabric and it has to hooks on each end, which is where you connect them to the backpack. The strap then separates in two in the middle and that’s where you would put your board which then you would tighten the strap and therefore hold the board on your backpack. The board would be vertically attached to your backpack and it will be tightly secured that way it does not hit your legs as you walk from place to place. The best way to strap the board would be with the wheels of the board facing away from you but you could do it the other way around too. The strap wouldn’t be hard nor expensive to produce, the materials for it wouldn’t be expensive to gather either. So I would be selling my product on stores that sell any type of board and they would be selling around $5 - $10. This innovation can easily expand to being more than just straps for boards. With a little of creativity this business could expand to make straps for the things that people do not want to carry that do not fit in a backpack.

VENTURE CONCEPT:

            The innovation I described above will solve the opportunity by allowing people who use boards and that don’t want to carry them with theirs hands by giving them the choice to carry them on their backpacks with straps that hook onto one’s backpack. Customers will buy my innovation because it facilitates their life and allows them to do carry their board on their backpacks freeing their hands. I believe that customers would switch to this product because it is cheap, they don’t have to buy a new backpack so they can keep using their favorite backpack and they can carry any type of board without any problems. I don’t think it will be hard for customers to switch to my product since the other products that exist in the market are straps that have backpacks attached to them, without being able to remove those straps, so my product will allow them to use any backpack they want to carry their boards and not only the one with the straps. The competitors are the business that create the backpacks with the straps already on them, and I think that in itself is already a weakness, since people want to use the backpacks they already have and don’t want to spend more money to buy a new backpack. I think that price point plays a huge part in defining my business concept since my product is both simple and cheap, that way appealing more to the customers than my competitors

             I believe what will make competitors to copy my success is my adaptability and open mind and my also my products adaptability. I think that with my open mind and adaptability, I will be able to take feedback easily and constructively and keep improving my product as it goes and I will also be able to improve my business. And as I improve my business I can keep going to create the next product. As I was reading some of the comments on my elevator pitches, a person suggested to create straps or something to carry textbooks, and I liked that idea. I think my next product would be to create like an expansion to small backpacks that something can’t fit big textbooks, so that way the customers doesn’t have to carry the textbooks every time they go to class or a library or something. And if this all works and it is successful, I actually don’t think I see myself working with this venture in five years. If it’s successful, I would most likely sell it and create another venture. And that’s where I see myself in the next decade, with a few ventures sold and with enough money to follow my own personal dream.

            Most of the feedback I receive was good. A lot of people like my idea, even if they have never skateboared or used any type of board before in their life, and they think it could be very successful. A few said that since it was simple it could be easily modified to fit any of the customer’s needs.  A few comments did question a few things of my product that I have not thought about before. About how the board would hang on a backpack and what material the strap would be made of. Since I received a lot of good feedback and very little bad feedback I did not change my venture concept that much. I added a few things to clarify my idea and added a few new things to the idea itself. But overall I did not change almost anything, because of all the good feedback that I received.

Google Gold

    My general approach and strategy that I used for search engine optimization (SEO) is that I put my URL for my blog in every comment that I wrote for other blogs. This allows my blog to be optimized by search engines like Google or Bing. Hopefully reaching the first page of Google search when searching for my blog or in the first few pages. This searches are found by keyword that are used in the blog and then searched for. I did not have any particular set of keywords that I used in this blog to optimize the searches. I never really thought about it until now but I guess the keywords that I keep using that help search optimization are "journey", "boards", "straps", and "business". I did not use any social media to to enhance the search engine optimization although I think that using social media would improve the search engine optimization greatly since social media is used everywhere all the time.

   My most viral post was my second elevator pitch, "Elevator Pitch No. 2". It got a total of 21 views minus 2 views that were viewed by me. It was the post that got the most comments with a total of 5 comments. I do not really know why I got so much traffic on this post than I did with the other posts which averaged in in 9 views per page. Unfortunately I did not make it to the first page of Google using my keywords and I got bored of going through the pages, but I did not make it in the first 10 pages of Google. But now that I know better about SEO, I can be more successful for future blogs or websites that I create.

Very Short Interview With Customer, Part 2

My impression from the first interview I had with Wendy was that she was right about almost everything she told me. And now I understand the answers that she gave me and why she gave me those answers. She focused mostly on the risk factor on being an entrepreneur. So you can say that she mentally prepared me for taking risks which happened a lot in this class.

So the entrepreneur I interviewed last time and this time is my Guatemalan best friend's mom and her name is Wendy Cifuentes. These are the questions and answers from the second interview:

1. Q: What was the hardest part of being an entrepreneur?

    A: The beginning is always the hardest part. When you start a business, it usually takes a while before you start to get back what you put in. So in the first few months, or maybe years, you barely make any money. That beginning part might have been the hardest but there were a few times where I needed to change my business and that also took a toll. So I guess the hardest part is when you are not making any money.

2. Q: Did you ever fail and had to start form scratch?

    A: I did fail a few times in the past but luckily never had to start from scratch again. I only really started one business, which is the one I have right now, and I have had to change every so often, but stuck to the basic idea. So I guess I have never had to start from scratch all over again.

3. Q: If you could do anything you could, would you still be an entrepreneur?

    A: Yes, definitely. Being an entrepreneur gives me the freedom to attend to my kids' events and help them whenever I need. It has also keep my well financially, with a few dips along the way.

(These might not be the exact answers since they were translated from Spanish into English.)

It was easier to talk about entrepreneurship this time around. I was able to ask more personal questions and found it as we were just talking from one entrepreneur to another, instead from it being and interview between a student and an entrepreneur. She did remark about how much more confident I sound and how I could make connections with her better than before.

Week 13 Reading Reflection

After reading this week's reading I have to say that the thing that surprised me the most was the difficulty and how complicated the valuation process was.

One thing that confused was the relationship between buyer and seller. How the buyer thinks a seller's business is less but the seller thinks his business is more. It can't always be that extreme. I wonder if it's ever viewed in a less extreme view.

The two questions I have for the author are:
1. How can the relationship between buyer and seller be improve?
2. Is it possible for the buyers to avoid all the start-up costs?

I do not disagree with anything in particular in this week's reading.

Celebrating Failure

I have failed many times in this past semester. Although I can't think of something in which I have failed multiple times (unless its a video game). I am a quick learner and tend to fix my mistakes and make my failures into lessons, where I know what not to do in the future again, pretty quickly. But one specific time I failed this semester was when I slacked for a class and then tried learning everything for an exam the day before. I failed the exam and I failed myself but I do not cry for spilled milk. I made that failure into a lesson and now I am keeping up with my class and every class, so I do not repeat that mistake. Failure is a lesson and that is why people should not worry about failing anything in life. You should not be stressed, enjoy life and learn from it but not pout and complain, and don't back down. Keep trying, even if you fail a million times because where there is a will there is a way.

My Exit Strategy

The exit strategy that I intend to take for my business is to sell it in the next five years for a large return. I decided to take this exit strategy so that I can create other ventures through out my life and then make more. I think this would be the strategy I will take for most of my ventures, since I believe it is the plan that will make the most money of all, unless the venture becomes extremely successful. I think that my decision on my exit strategy hasn't influenced my other decisions that I have made for my concept. I think this to be true since I never really thought of an exit strategy until this very moment, so the decisions I previously made wouldn't be affected by the decision I made today. Although I can't say that my decision on the exit strategy I made today will not have influence on future decisions that I make for my concept, or any future changes.