14A: Halfway Reflection

1) The behaviors that I have used to keep up with the requirements of this course would have to be time management, organization and consistency. By far, time management (especially in relation to other obligations) has allowed for me to keep a consistent schedule and ensure that my assignments are completed on time. Organization has allowed for me to understand how to efficiently execute assignment completion. Lastly, consistency has ensured that I always producing quality content on a regular basis.

2) The interviews for this course certainly can be disheartening if you were to either receive poor feedback or if your time management makes it difficult to find subjects. Regardless, persistence and sheer willpower allow for you to pull through. Because of this, I have certainly developed a rather tenacious attitude. The experience that most contributed to this was the consistency of assignments. Had it not been for the presence of weekly assignments that are similar in structure, I would not be as consistent with my work.

3) Three skills that I would offer: 1. Work ahead of schedule to ensure that all is completed, which allows you enough time to complete more arduous assignments. 2. Take effective notes so that cupcakes and assignments correlate and make sense. 3. Work to produce quality content.

13A: Reading Reflection No. 1

1) The book that I have chosen for this report is The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Wright brothers' story is the sheer implausibility of their venture in comparison to their history. These men were not college educated and was not high status in regard to their family's monetary wealth. Among their many admirable traits is their passion and dedication to their experiment. Despite the many flight tests conducted and the substantial failures that they endured, the brothers continued to pursue this goal until their dream became reality. A rather lesser admirable quality that they possess is their lack of inclusion of their sister in the effort. Rather than the Wright Brothers, it should be the Wright Siblings or the Wright Family. This is due to the sister being a tremendous aid on their journey to creating flight. Regardless, these entrepreneurs faced adversity and failure numerous times. In these numerous times they had plenty of reason to give up their endeavor to pursue something more tangible. Despite this, they pursued on until flight became a paramount aspect of human culture.

2) A large competency that these men displayed was their dedication. Regardless of the huge feat they were tasked with accomplishing, they remained dedication to this passion. Eventually, the dedication turned a passion project into a fully-functioning worldwide system of flight, allowing for new sciences, travel, socialization as a benefit to all of humanity.

3) A confusing aspect of the book was the variation in emotions experienced by the brothers. These driven people remained almost stoic in their creation process, however the author allowed for life to be breathed into their persons as he gave new interpretations to previous conceptions.

4) Two questions that I would pose to these entrepreneurs is: "How were you so certain that the project would end up working?" and "Did you consider what other opportunities you would be forgoing by pursuing their endeavor?"

5) I believe that the entrepreneurs' opinions of hard work is that it is a necessity to turn dreams into reality. I too share this opinion, although at times I seem to lack motivation.

12A - Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

1. The segment that I have chosen are people who live either on campus or near campus as they are within the targeted demographic as well as are the most likely candidates to purchase such as product.

2. The first interview that I conducted proved to be unique in that this person who lives in a fraternity house, while having his own laundry system, decided to export his clothes to a dry cleaning service. Because of his parent's well-to-do financial state, he decided that he forgoes cleaning his clothes himself and instead deliberately chooses to dry clean his clothes. Because of this insight, I have found that there is unforeseen competition with services that pick up and deliver laundry. Perhaps this will extend the venture rather than hinder it. This service would not necessarily benefit him directly, but if added to the dry cleaning service, it may become an additional feature.

3. In the next interview I chose a student who lived in an off-campus house. At this location, these students did not pay for their laundry so incentivized use would not work, however this did pose an interesting alternate route when it comes to laundry facilities in the area as they use a payment system for their services. Despite this, the off-campus house retained interesting features such as an outdoor laundry room and led me to speculate that perhaps there may be glitches in the system when in contact with environmental forces. Although those at this house may use the product, they worry about how these external factors would effect it.

4. The third interview comes from another student who lives off campus who simply does not do laundry for long periods of time. This person simply does not see the value in the product as he does not consistently perform laundry duties. Although this may be an issue for my product, I find that this is much more of a personal issue of hygiene so I feel that perhaps with a stronger marketing push, disenfranchised users such as this one would conform to my service's efforts.

Although some of these interviews opened my eyes to new markets and users, I have also found that there is a lot more potential for my product's future success. If not for conducting these interviews, people at the margins may not be able to be reached as easily as I would have hoped. Thus, my product may extend its reach in a number of various ways in the future.

11A – Idea Napkin No. 1

1) My name is Brandon Gin and I am a fourth year telecommunication: production major. My skills include leadership, efficiency, and creativity. I also come with a number of experiences that include four various part-time positions such as a server, bus boy, student assistant, and customer service representative. With these facets in place, I have aspirations of becoming a writer for a television show, more specifically something in animation. I see this business as a possible venture that I may decide to pursue if I have enough capital to commit to this entrepreneurial endeavor.

2) The service that I am offering is a more efficient way to save customers time when doing laundry duties around campus. With my product, people will be able to have a productive way to perform their laundry duties through incentivization tactics of offering a point based system for use that users accrue and eventually use for free laundry. This also include status updates to laundry cycles as well as any errors.

3) I am offering this to university students, however there is potential for expansion to other users worldwide. All of these customers share the common trait of owning clothes.

4) This product is valuable as your time is valuable. By purchasing my service, users will be able to more efficiently control this seemingly chaotic and inconsistent aspect of their lives so that they may better put forth their efforts into more productive aspects of life.

5) What sets me apart from all others is a novel product under a creative format that gives back to its users.

I believe that my business concept is solid. I firmly stand with my product as it is mutually beneficial to users as it is for business. Not only this, but I believe that it will soon be a paramount feature for all laundry-users. Because of this large demographic, I can see this product gaining power and eventually becoming commonplace. With this, I find that my product is strong and does not hold any weak aspects.

10A - Elevator Pitch No. 1

9A-Testing the Hypothesis Part 2

Who: After conducting another five interviews and searching for prototypical customers that fall outside the boundaries of my product, I have discovered that this would not apply to people that use the time doing laundry to their advantage and stay in the area and those that do not have modern or typical mobile devices at their disposal. This does not, however, create a huge rift as the vast majority of people do not fall within this outside boundary category. For these sets of people I cannot at this time foresee a potential remedy to this as these people are already at a disadvantage with other aspects of the modern social-technological age. Despite this, the first group may be willing to assimilate as time proves the product to be more useful.

What: In these instances, there is less of a need, but rather a lack of a desire to have a need on the subject matter. For these people, the extra time not focused on laundry allows for them to direct their attention elsewhere. The other group has an extenuating need that may fall outside of my control unless a tag-a-long product is established to use in place of the mobile device.

Why: I believe that differences in priorities cater to the group who use the time to their advantage by remaining in the area. As far as the other group, I believe that this may be more of a socioeconomic issue, or perhaps a lifestyle choice

              Inside the Boundary                                                          Outside the Boundary

Who: People who value their time and desire                       Who: People who do not have the        
          efficiency when timing their laundry.                                     tech. or desire.
                                                                                   

What: An application to send notification and status           What: Lack desire or tech. but make do.
            updates.                                                               

Why: Students are forced to guess of inefficiently time       Why: Socioeconomic factors or lifestyle
           their laundry.                                                                          choices dictate.
          

8A: Solving the Problem

The opportunity that I have selected is a mobile application that ascertains a washing machine or drying machine's finishing time and creates a system to inform the user of the status and thus send notifications as to the completion of the laundry. For this endeavor I have chosen to create a subscription service that is incentivized by use that works to pay for the laundry machines after a certain amount of uses of the application. With the subscription service, not only is the commitment to the product less anxiety-ridden, but also allows for an easy payment system so that students at universities may cut time costs on doing the mundane task of laundry. The application itself will host a number of features including a status update of the laundry, the finalized time for the which the laundry is complete, and a notification system that sends out alerts to the user in order to ensure that said user knows when their laundry is done. Perhaps further technological advancement will allow for newer features such as indications of laundry errors, and detailed descriptions of how to properly take care of the specific laundry entered into the machine. With this, I believe that this will become a solid product that will be equally as successful as it is desirable in the market. Not only this, but in time the application should grow with technology instead of staying behind it and build on the progressive nature of things, serving us in the process.