Assignment 24A - Venture Concept No. 1

My Product would be called: Freshman Help!

Opportunity

·        The people with my need falls into two categories: students and universities. I believe that students have a need for my product because they are stressed and are lacking skills, they need to be fully independent and thrive on their own when they live away from home at a university. I also believe the universities are apart of my customer base because they will be the ones buying the curriculum and implementing it within their coursework.

·        The need for the students lies within my research that most freshmen have a hard time adjusting from living at home and only having to focus on school/work and not on the tasks like grocery shopping or banking, the things most parents/guardians do for kids until they leave for college. This lack of skill can overwhelm students and divert their focus from studying and enjoying college and turn it to the tasks that shouldn’t have that much stress.

·        The forces that allow this to occur is that there is a growing emphasis placed on students to get perfect grades and to project an image that they are happy and thriving and doing good on their own, when in reality, its ok to ask for help and accept that you don’t know everything because you are still a student.

·        There is no geographical market for my product, where ever there are university students who need help adapting, there is a need for my product, but the exact curriculum would be adapted to the specific university and language of wherever it is implemented. And the demographic for my product is mainly underclassmen university students who are living away from home for school. There is no specific age or gender requirements.

·        From my research, students are currently satisfying this need by “faking it till they make it”. All my interviewees said that they eventually figured everything out over time by trial and error, but they all consistently said that it was time-consuming and stressful and they wish there was an alternative. And the universities offer counseling and on-campus resources to help students deal with stress, but you must seek them out and most students are not aware of them. 

Innovation

·        My innovation is a packet of curriculum that tackles the main areas of stress that students have identified that they lack skills in when they start school and start having to “adult” on their own. The main topics I have identified are banking, healthy eating, fitness, grocery shopping, and basic politics.

·        I would make the curriculum outline and market it to universities who would then adopt it and design it to fit their specific campus and demographics of students. For example, if UF adopted my course work, in the section on healthy eating, they could give the example of resources UF has to offer its students like cooking classes in the Retiz and the resources GatorWell offers its students for free. You can tailor it to meet your student’s needs, which is really good quality.

·        As of right now, I would be making money by selling the curriculum and charging the university an agreed upon price every semester that they teach the course work. It would also come with a corresponding workbook that each student would buy, and I would make money off every workbook that would be sold as well.  

Venture Concept

·        My innovation will help solve my opportunity because it will address students’ main source of stress during their early years at college. It will allow them to earn credit and help their GPA while also creating a space where everyone is experiencing the same feelings so they can freely express their emotions.

·        The universities will buy my product because it would be a good PR experience for the school because they would be promoting an image of supporting students regarding their mental health. It would also hopefully have some correlation to better grades for their students because they would be less stressed and be able to devote more time to their studies.

·        They are not really switching from one thing to another because there aren’t really any competitors for my product. The only possible competitor is the on-campus services, but they are not as close to being as specific as my product. The on-campus resources are generalized and open to the whole student population and could easily be overloaded, the benefit of mine is that the information is only available to the students in the class where they would be able to have a better relationship with their peers and professor.

·        Package, price point, and distribution do not really play any role in my product because the curriculum will be in a PDF file sent to the university and able to be edited as mentioned earlier. The workbook will need to have a price that is reasonable and distributing it will be the only thing that could pose some difficulty.

·        I would be the CEO of the business and I would hire teachers and people experienced with making curriculum to write it according to my qualifications and hire an author/illustrator to help develop the workbook for the class. I would have to have some employees who have marketing experience go out and market my new curriculum to the universities and convince them that they need to adopt it in their school.

Three Minor Elements

·        My unfair advantage would be that I am in the demographics of the students who will be using my product. So, I have experienced and went through all the same emotions and frustrations that I am trying to target with my product. Also, being in the same demographic opens me up to getting good and unbiased first-hand experiences and research from students on my campus. They are more willing to talk about their struggles with one of their peers who they relate with as opposed to someone who they can’t form a connection with, like an older adult who they don’t know.

·        The next step for me would be able to create an online support network for students who would be interested in this course work or who identify with these same struggles and make a place where they feel comfortable sharing their experiences as well as being able to share advice and spread encouragement.

·        For me, I would like to hand this business off to someone else and possibly start a new entrepreneurial venture. In five years, I would hope to have been graduated with another project in the works, possibly working with a partner because I think the one thing I didn’t like about this project is that I worked alone, I would love to have someone who is as invested as I am to be able to bounce ideas and inspiration off of.