Idea Napkin No. 2

You. 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?

I am a first year management. I like to think of myself as an individual that puts their heart and soul into everything they do. I am the kind of person that reaches for perfection and wants to ensure that everyone is reaching their full potential. Therefore when looking into my own business plan I made sure that my concept surrounds helping others and works on bettering my community.

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

I am offering an opportunity for students to save money on books and network with their peers. My program is the gator book exchange in which I will set up an organized event that students drop off old books and in return get books for their next semester. This will be a free service and will focus on uniting gators under a common goal of making college cheaper.

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?

I am offering the product to students at the University of Florida ranging from freshman to graduate students. It is important to note that I will start offering the program on a smaller level (business school exclusive) to see the possible successes and failures and then apply it to doing the program across all majors and colleges at University of Florida and then hopefully to other campuses around the world.

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.

My customers care because they are college students that are on a strict budget and will participate in anything to save money. Especially on textbooks in which multiple students resort to just using supplements instead of actually reading the textbook. Therefore students are not learning the material, but just memorizing simply for exams and this is not the point of college especially when you pay for it.

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

My core competencies are passion, dedication, and responsibility. I set myself apart as a leader that works with others and ensures their strengths are being put to use.

5.) 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.

I feel my values align well with ensuring that my concept is successful and knowing that I can learn from my failures set me apart from others. A weakness in my concept is the possibility of people not wanting to participate due to the need of online access codes which can only work once. Although students still need books and I want to help as much as possible even if that means saving a little amount of money here and there. My strength of dedication ensure that I will stick through with this idea and ensure it is successful and help improve my community.

6.) "feedback memo"

I've learned that life is meant to learn from and I can rally my strengths to ensure I'm successful as possible. I also learned that people can benefit from my services and my love to help others.