Assignment 29A- Venture Concept 2

•        Opportunity

o   Many people want to move into an apartment, but many times don’t have the time to go to every single possible living space by themselves. Many then turn to online resources for a quick and convenient solution. However, many of these websites have outdated or completely inaccurate information. This can cause a lot of frustration and wasted time.

o   The ones who could use my product are people trying to move into apartments that don’t want waste their time searching for the perfect place and is advertised as it is sold.

o   The forces that create this opportunity is the simple nature of the apartment market. It is ever changing with multiple different kinds of markets within the overall market of apartments. This opportunity will continue to be available until the apartment market becomes non-existent or new regulations are put in place to stop the fluctuating prices. Seeing as neither of these things will happen this opportunity will remain for a very long time.

o   Customers currently use websites and personal visits as their means to satisfy this need. However, both methods can be time consuming and frustrating especially since much if the information received from the current products online is inaccurate.

•        Innovation

o   My product is not anything new or radical because of the fact that it exists already. It is a website online that provides information on apartments and helps potential customers of the apartments to save time and patience. What makes my product different is the fact that it updates day to day and always has the most accurate information possible. This keeps people from having to spend an entire day searching for accurate information on one possible place to live. I am attempting to sell what every other similar product tries promising but falls short on. The way I am selling this is it will be a membership-based system that is five dollars a month. With it being a website, I could also sell advertisement space, which I will sell for 30 dollars per week originally.

•        Venture Concept

o   People will want but my product because of the convenience and the amount of time it will save them. My product will solve the issue of wasted time and misinformation being spread around by other services that claim they have the information that they promise. This is something that people would be more than willing to switch over to because of the fact that they are fed up with receiving information that is not reliable and makes you double check all of your research.

o   My competitors would be any place that one can receive information on apartments at. Even if they are dispensing inaccurate information, they take away potential customers and can also cause distrust towards products like mine. Their primary weakness is the fact that the information they provide is not accurate. This causes people to get angry with them even if it may not be their fault for the information being inaccurate in the first place.

o   For my business I would need quite a few employees. Starting out I would say about 20 or so employees. There are several roles that these employees would need to fill. At least three of these would be programmers to create my website, update it, and maintain it. Another position that will need to be filled is individuals to go out and collect the information on the apartments. I would think that I would designate about ten people to this task. It is the life line of the company and therefore it needs to be as efficient and accurate as possible. I would also need individuals to work in the customer support area. This is to ensure that customers can call and ask questions that they have in order to make their experience as quick and enjoyable as possible.

•        Unfair Advantage:

o   My biggest advantage compared to other competitors is my vast amount of connections into the market of apartments. My mother has worked in the market for over 20 years and is now one of the heads of a prominent company in the market. This rare opportunity has helped me to foster connections to high up individuals in multiple companies involved with apartments and management of apartments. This in turn gives me a unique perspective on the market as a whole as I have grown up with it being a part of my life.

o   These connections also provide me with a place to receive help and guidance in times of stress and difficulty. This is something that not many people have in their corner and can often times need.

•        What’s next for the venture:

o   Something I have wanted to do with this innovation but haven’t worked out quite yet is using it to shop renter’s insurance. This is also a very important part of moving into an apartment. This is also a very long and tedious process just like looking for an apartment to move into. This market has many of the same issues as the apartment market as well. It can change very rapidly and unexpectedly, making it difficult to keep track of. This aspect could also help to bring more people to either product because of their needs and the timing of them using the product.

•        What’s next for me:

o   If I was to launch this product, I would hope to still be working closely with it in the future. By the time a few years have passed I hope to have expanded my employee base and will have expanded the area in which my product will be available. I hope that this business will serve as my base that helps to push me into other ventures and markets so that I can continue to expand my opportunities for profit that can go back into all of my businesses.

Summary of feedback and changes

     The feedback that I received had many good things to say. They thought that my selling advertisement space was a good idea and that knowing my edge against the competition was important. I did shift some of my numbers in my employees due to them pointing out that having one person to take care of the entire website wasn't going to work well. They also saw my connections into the market as a huge bonus for my product. I also changed my price for advertisement slots to thirty dollars because it seemed like the feedback thought if I was going to leave the subscription low I would need all the money I could get from advertisement space.