30A - Final Reflection

Final Reflection

Most formative experience: The experience I had in this class that has had the most profound impact on me is the pitch video. Learning the key elements of a proper pitch has helped me succeed outside the classroom, specifically in a company I am starting right now.

Experience I'll remember years later: The experience that I think I will remember years later is the venture concepts. Learning how to explain a venture concept and all the elements that make a business successful will be stuck in my mind forever.

Most joyous experience: My most joyous experience from all of my posts is the growing your social capital assignment.

Most proud of: The experience I am most proud of is also the venture concept again. It took me a lot of thought to piece together exactly how I would go about selling a cooling controller and I am proud of myself for it.

I do see myself as an entrepreneur now and I have definitely moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset.

One recommendation I would make to students going down this journey in the future would be to stay on top of due dates and to make sure you fully do every assignment to get the most out of it. To perform best in this course, I recommend you read the instructions carefully and just make sure you take the most out of each assignment. To foster the mindset, I recommend that you take on every assignment like it is a real life business venture.

29A - Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept No. 2

After playing video games for 16 years of my life, I recognized there was an untapped opportunity that if correctly exploited could be very profitable. This opportunity arises out of a pain point in gaming and something that has always been a problem, the fact that there is no way to limit the amount of sweat you release on to gaming controllers. Playing video games has always been fun but when you have to wipe off the controller every time you use it or someone passes it to you, it takes away from the phone. The force in the environment that created this opportunity to create a gaming controller with an internal cooling system is the fact that too many people get frustrated from sweaty controllers and no other company has fixed this problem yet. The market is defined demographically rather than geographically. Our target market is basically anyone who plays video games and uses gaming controllers. However, the prototypical consumer for our product tends to be males aged from 10-21. Customers currently attempt to satisfy this need for a way to reduce sweaty controllers by either just wiping off the sweat with their shirt or towel, or they buy controllers that have grips. Although these grips make it easier to hold on to the controller while you sweat, it does not actually limit the amount of sweat there is. They are not very loyal to these grips because it is not that efficient. This opportunity is huge solely because there is such a need for it and no other company has created a controller with an internal cooling system yet. The window of opportunity will be open until someone creates the actual controller.

Our product is a controller with an internal cooling system specifically designed to limit the amount of sweat that gets released from one's hand to the gaming controller. It basically works when the sensor inside the controller senses it is getting overheated and then the cooling system gets to work. By making the cooling system start with a sensor, we are able to save money in production because you can use a smaller battery. We will sell the cooling controllers for 75 dollars.

Our innovation will solve the problem of sweaty hands while playing video games. Customers will definitely switch to this new product because there is currently no product like ours out there. They will easily switch over from using grips to using our product when they hear that our product will completely solve the problem rather than just attempt to make it a little less worse like grips do. There are no direct competitors but companies that put grips on controllers would be the closest competitor. They are very weak and vulnerable because grips just make it easier to hold sweaty controllers, it does not actually make you sweat less. Packaging plays a huge role because the customer should be able to clearly see what our product is and how it works from the packaging. I would rent out a big factory and pay employees to make the product. I would probably need about 50 employees for production. I would need about 25 employees to package the product and then another 25 to distribute the controllers to retailers.

I think my most important resource will be my human capital. My perseverance and hard working nature will make my company successful because I will never give up on my product until it is is successful. It is impossible to match someones personality and that gives us a leg up on competitors.

Our next venture will be to get our technology, the internal cooling system, in to any small device that gets overheated such as iPhones or even computers.

In five years, I want to be the leading gaming controller company and as an entrepreneur, I want to have had started another company in a different segment to diversify my portfolio. This venture helps with my vision because it gives me valuable experience on how to run and start a company.

I received some feedback on my last venture concept that was very helpful. I received feedback from people asking me how it would be possible to have a cooling system inside of a controller without it making it heat up and actually make you sweat even more. We would have to make a system inside the controller with a fan, using technology already developed today like someone told me in one of my feedbacks. This would make it cost less to design the controller as we would not have to spend as much on R & D. This is the only way I would change my venture concept because now we could charge less for the controller and make it more affordable for the average consumer. 

28A - Your Exit Strategy

Your Exit Strategy

1. In 5 years if my business is returning profits of more than 10 million a year, I would protect the venture as a family business and pass it down to my family. However if the business has been mildly successful over the 5 years, I would strongly consider selling it to a larger corporation for a large return so that I do not have to worry about running the daily operations that a business entails.

2. I choose these exit strategies based on the amount of money that the company will have brought in over the 5 year span. If a company is highly profitable, there is no reason to sell it for a lump sum when you can bring in recurring revenue every year for the rest of your life.

3. I do not think my exit strategy has affected how I identify an opportunity. However, it definitely affects the way I plan on acquiring resources and growing the company. I definitely want to put more resources in to the company and grow it as big as possible so that I am bringing in enough profits that I can keep the venture in the family. However if the resources do not help the company grow, I would limit the amount of resources I would acquire and just sell the venture in 5 years. 

27A - Reading Reflection No. 3

Steve Jobs

1) You read about an entrepreneur:

·       What surprised you the most?

·       What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?

·       What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?

·       Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?

What surprised me the most about Jobs was that even though he agreed to have this book written about him, he did not want to have a say in what was said about him and he did not even want to read it. I admire this about Jobs more than anything because it shows he does not want to tell people to think about him in a certain way. He just wants to live life and let people express themselves how they please. He focused Apple around this type of ideology. What I admire least about Jobs is that he focused too much resources on projects that could have never been completed the way he wanted them to be. They were lost causes.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? 

I noticed that Jobs is hardworking and resilient which are two keys to his success.

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

The part that confused me the most in the book was when he talked about Bob Dylan’s music. I don’t understand the meaning behind this excerpt in the book.

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

I would ask how he decided that his role in life was to be someone who would create products that have never been dreamt of before and I would ask him how long he thought of each product before deciding to get a team to work on it.

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

I think that I have the same opinion of hard work as Jobs and that is that you cannot give up until you have accomplished what you set out to do.

26A - Celebrating Failure

A time I failed this semester, specifically in this class, was when I submitted my first video pitch assignment. I did not read the directions correctly and unfortunately my video pitch was not as good as it should have been. I recorded the video without being dressed professionally and I was not as prepared as I should have been, thus it was a lackluster performance. I then make the second video and although it was better, it was not as good as it could have been.

For the third video, I learned from all of my previous mistakes and I think I made my best version of a video pitch. I dressed professionally and spoke clearly and concisely.

I think I handle failure pretty well because I see it as a learning experience rather than just a plain old failure. This class has helped me realize even more than you should take every failure as an opportunity to learn how to be better. I'd see I am just as likely to take a risk now as I was before this class.

25A - What's Next?

What's Next?

Existing market: The next move for us for our venture is to start making our controllers and to find a production facility that is affordable and spacious enough.
After interviewing three customers who are already part of our identified market, when asked what we should do that we aren't planning on doing, all three people told me that production is the most important thing to focus on which is exactly what I said. Production is the most important part of our venture because this is when the actual product is made. This is also where the profit margins either become big or slim.
In terms of growing in our existing market, the only way to grow more would be to increase production by hiring more people and creating more facilities. Also, we could spend more money on advertising so that we reach more people.

New market: A new market we could target is current gaming companies like Sony and Microsoft instead of targeting the consumer directly. This way, we could sell to them our entire product or just integrate our cooling technology into their current systems to make them better. This would reduce production costs for us and increase our profits. After interviewing two people, it is evident that the cooling technology mixed with established technology from a reputable company is a recipe for success.

I learned that the new market, targeting other companies rather than consumers, is actually very profitable because costs decrease. What surprised me most is how easily other companies could integrate our technology into their systems. This new market is as attractive if not more than our existing market.

24A - Venture Concept No. 1

Venture Concept No. 1

After playing video games for 16 years of my life, I recognized there was an untapped opportunity that if correctly exploited could be very profitable. This opportunity arises out of a pain point in gaming and something that has always been a problem, the fact that there is no way to limit the amount of sweat you release on to gaming controllers. Playing video games has always been fun but when you have to wipe off the controller every time you use it or someone passes it to you, it takes away from the phone. The force in the environment that created this opportunity to create a gaming controller with an internal cooling system is the fact that too many people get frustrated from sweaty controllers and no other company has fixed this problem yet. The market is defined demographically rather than geographically. Our target market is basically anyone who plays video games and uses gaming controllers. However, the prototypical consumer for our product tends to be males aged from 10-21. Customers currently attempt to satisfy this need for a way to reduce sweaty controllers by either just wiping off the sweat with their shirt or towel, or they buy controllers that have grips. Although these grips make it easier to hold on to the controller while you sweat, it does not actually limit the amount of sweat there is. They are not very loyal to these grips because it is not that efficient. This opportunity is huge solely because there is such a need for it and no other company has created a controller with an internal cooling system yet. The window of opportunity will be open until someone creates the actual controller.

Our product is a controller with an internal cooling system specifically designed to limit the amount of sweat that gets released from one's hand to the gaming controller. It basically works when the sensor inside the controller senses it is getting overheated and then the cooling system gets to work. By making the cooling system start with a sensor, we are able to save money in production because you can use a smaller battery. We will sell the cooling controllers for 75 dollars.

Our innovation will solve the problem of sweaty hands while playing video games. Customers will definitely switch to this new product because there is currently no product like ours out there. They will easily switch over from using grips to using our product when they hear that our product will completely solve the problem rather than just attempt to make it a little less worse like grips do. There are no direct competitors but companies that put grips on controllers would be the closest competitor. They are very weak and vulnerable because grips just make it easier to hold sweaty controllers, it does not actually make you sweat less. Packaging plays a huge role because the customer should be able to clearly see what our product is and how it works from the packaging. I would rent out a big factory and pay employees to make the product. I would probably need about 50 employees for production. I would need about 25 employees to package the product and then another 25 to distribute the controllers to retailers.

I think my most important resource will be my human capital. My perseverance and hard working nature will make my company successful because I will never give up on my product until it is is successful. It is impossible to match someones personality and that gives us a leg up on competitors.

Our next venture will be to get our technology, the internal cooling system, in to any small device that gets overheated such as iPhones or even computers.

In five years, I want to be the leading gaming controller company and as an entrepreneur, I want to have had started another company in a different segment to diversify my portfolio. This venture helps with my vision because it gives me valuable experience on how to run and start a company.