Final Reflection

I would not say that I could pinpoint any assignment to be the most formative experience. I would say that doing the interviews helped me to get new ideas and redefined what I needed to create and look for. It also helped me to feel comfortable talking about my idea and gave me insight on the best ways to explain it to someone.

The experience I will remember years from now is the absurdity of having to do three of these assignments a week and a cupcake quiz. It was hard enough to be able to complete three assignments, but some of the assignments needed to be planned for and would not be possible to complete last minute. In one of my previous posts, I noted that planning is essential for this course. The cupcakes did not seem like a good way to enhance learning in this class. They focused more on specific moments or topics covered but did not seem to focus on the overall takeaways from Dr. Pryor's lectures.

My most joyous experience is the one I am having right now knowing that this is going to be my last post for this class. This class requires a lot of writing and I am glad that I was able to make it this far.

I am proud of completing as many assignments as I did. I had no intention of doing every single one and I didn’t. I am proud that I should still be able to get an A in this course knowing that I wasn’t going to have to do every single assignment.

I think that the entrepreneurial mindset has become real for me. I am constantly thinking about the way things are done around me and how I can make it better for the people who need it! It has caused me to think about things from all perspectives when making decisions about how to do things.

One recommendation I would make to future students is to always plan and view assignments early so that you know what you will need to do in order to get it done on time. In order to foster this mindset, do not be afraid to come out of your comfort zone and feel embarrassed. Always have a willingness to try!

The Currency Traders Venture Concept 2

Opportunity

               This opportunity arose with the new anti-money laundering act for cryptocurrency. This called for a necessity for personal information to be associated with each trade between currencies. It was noted that this technology does not yet exist. This problem is going to directly affect the bitcoin firms and other cryptocurrency traders. This act calls for the legal requirements of the firms and trader to reveal personal information between the trading platforms. Based on my research, this market is all over the world. Cryptocurrency firms are found throughout the world and I noticed a cluster of them in South Florida. This is where we intend to begin operations. They are currently satisfying their needs by the traditional trading methods. This can now cause legal repercussions, but anonymity has been huge in these trades. This is a big opportunity to provide a service directly to the government and local business in Florida. This window of opportunity will only be around until someone designs an information system capable of transmitting the information. I believe that even if someone else creates it, we can still develop one that will function more efficiently and safely.

Innovation

               We have begun creating an information system that will use unique uuids from the servers to attach the personal information encryptions. An informational video will be used to demonstrate how to use and navigate our platform. We are planning to use fingerprints to generate the uuids and keep this methodology as a safety mechanism. This will allow users to trade by scanning their fingerprint and their personal information will be sent encrypted with the trade information. This information system will communicate with your existing servers to send and receive the data. We are hoping this will be our secret sauce because the complexity of this system and the exclusive knowledge of its functions with my software developer and me. We want to keep safety a priority and we plan to create or recommend our own security software or one that will work with the information system. We plan to charge a percentage of the transactions in the form of a transaction fee. Starting at a 5% fee of the transaction volume, we plan to use this money to fuel our innovation and development for further improvements and fixes that may arise. This money could also be used to fund our next innovation of setting up a currency trading platform so that users can go directly through us rather than using another firm that is using our information system.

Venture Concept

               This information system is designed to transmit your information safely when trading. It was the norm to keep anonymity when trading currencies, but legal repercussions may follow if changes aren’t implemented. I think it will cause users to consider our product because of the legal repercussions that maybe facing if they have not already found a solution. The biggest concern I have is establishing credibility among investors and prospective customers. Our competitors could be the existing cryptocurrency firms. If they are trying to develop the information system themselves then we are directly competing with them. Their weakness comes from the fact that this technology did not already exist in their current operations. We have also decided to put a strong emphasis on the customer support will we provide. Problems may arise and we want to be there to troubleshoot and listen to the feedback so we can make better decisions with further development. I plan to start operations in South Florida. Targeting the existing firms there will give us useful information and feedback we will use to tailor our next steps. I plan to keep the business small to start. The software developer and I will launch the idea ourselves. My role will be in negotiations and arranging contacts. I also intend to provide support to the customers along with the software developer. We won’t need an office right away and already have begun development from home. From here, we hope to expand throughout Florida and continue development for the country potentially with the assistance from the government. In the next five years, I would see myself constantly traveling and visiting different countries to share this information system. This venture will provide a foundation for me to build off of and continue to expand my and the company’s horizons.

Summary of feedback and changes: My previous venture concept post did not receive any feedback from my assigned group. Based on some of the interviews I had, I have decided to create an informative video to explain how to use or platform and possibly include some information on how to do some basic troubleshooting. We have also decided to keep our business small in the beginning and start off with what we have right now. We agreed that finding another person at this time would be expensive and unnecessary until we have more demand for services. We were told to keep it as simple and easy to use as possible and we will do our best to make sure it is easy to use and troubleshoot. It will be a lot easier for us to start with what we have right now than to try and receive funding from external sources. Our main concern was establishing credibility and we do not want something like that to hold us back from development.

Exit Strategy

1. My exit strategy will be dependent on the success of the business. Assuming the business will survive the next 5 years I would expect to have a lot of technological changes because it is a technology-based company and technology has been changing at an unprecedented rate. If the business is as successful as I have imagined it to be than I would make it my priority and stay with it until I can no longer work. If I had to leave the company, I would pass it on to whoever can handle it whether it be my cousin or a long-term employee. Once I stop working, it doesn’t really seem like it will have much impact on my life other than my memories.

2. I have selected this strategy because I am a committed person. I have already worked for my current company for over 5 years and have been happy with the work I do and progression I have made. I made this business idea with the help of my cousin and if I had to leave, it would be right to me to leave it to him if the circumstances were right.

3. This has influenced my previous structure of positions because we would both be the authoritative figures in the company. I listened to his ideas when I conceptualized the business model we have. He has experience working in software development firms and I know that this is going to only help us to make ours better. He also explained the roles that the company would require which ultimately led me to the idea that this business idea would be started with us before we acquire any additional help. It helped me to understand the simplicity that we would have when we first launch and the complexity that it could grow into in the future.

Reading Reflection #3

Reading Reflection #3

Theme

1. The general theme of the book was dos and don’ts for your social media presence. This book gave useful tips on a variety of topics including how to design aspects of your social media accounts such as usernames, profile pictures, and goes into detail to explain how consistency can be a useful marketing strategy.

Connection

2. This booked enhanced what I was learning in class by giving me useful tips on how to create a better versions of my current social media. It gave me useful advice on improving my blogs too. It is going to make me think about the things that I say more now before I post them. This book has explained that we should think about the different ways people may interpret messages that we write. It also explained that we should think about the way things will be interpreted in the future. This caused me to think of a few things I may remove from my social media accounts because it has become outdated and may give someone the wrong impression about me.

Exercise

3. If I designed an exercise from this book, I would design it so that the requirements would be to follow tips 3, 4, & 8 and create a social media account using these steps or tips. It could be any combination of the tips, but different combinations could create unique differences among each other. Some of these differences could actually help us to really differentiate our profiles too.  

Biggest Surprise

4. My biggest surprise from the reading was the tip about using the same profile picture across all accounts. I thought that this would be strange, but the text suggests that using a consistent profile picture will help to create a consistent image of yourself. It said that this can make it easier for people to recognize your brand or image. I realized that this is true and is useful for brands that are currently marketing themselves.

Celebrating Failure

Celebrating Failure

The Failure

My biggest failure this semester had to be Exam 1 in marketing. This was not a traditional failure in which I set myself up by not preparing. I was caught up on all material including LearnSmart chapters, quizzes, and live lectures. I took active notes on all lectures and chapters. Dr. Cooke told us that if we had kept up with those three things than we wouldn’t have to worry. I also further prepared for the exam by studying a copy of his previous version of exam 1. The week before the exam, I was involved in a car accident. After that, I was left with a totaled car and a sprained back. I did not get as much time to prepare for the exam the week of because of having to deal with the insurance companies and my health. The prescription I was given made me drowsy, dizzy, and unfocused. When I took the exam, I can’t even remember if I took my medicine and it made me lose focus or if I was just so exhausted and in so much pain that I couldn’t concentrate. It didn’t help that Dr. Cooke came to the exam and made an announcement during the exam destroying my concentration. Before I even finished the exam, I knew I was going to fail.

Learning Experience

I learned that the medicine I was taking was ruining my concentration and making it way more difficult for me to study or focus. I also learned how important it is to devote time to studying before the exam which I could not because I was forced to deal with my personal health, attorneys, and insurance companies. I knew the material I was going to be tested on, but I think the circumstances and the condition I was in had a huge influence on my failure. I can say with certainty that the accident was a huge contributor to the failure. For exam 2, I did not even study as much as I did for the first and I got an 81. Given the circumstances I probably shouldn’t have even taken exam 1 when I did but I wanted to get past the accident as soon as I could.

Reflection

Failure is always hard, and I was embarrassed to have myself in such a condition. It was not something that I did to myself. The person who totaled my car almost ruined my first semester at UF. To this day, I am still in pain and forced to fit 3 physical therapy appointments a week in on top of being a full-time student and working 20+ hours at the pharmacy while living on my own! I still feel like I am failing because I am running out of money and my grades suffered after the accident. The advisor I met with encouraged me to drop a class but didn’t bother to tell me about not getting any of my money back. It was almost as if she didn’t even get how important the investment was. At that point, I realized I didn’t have a choice but to push through this and hope that I could still pass. I am already risking everything by trying to make it through this. At this point, I know I don’t have much of a choice. I think that dropping a class and losing about $750 for the class I paid for would have crippled me worse than the accident did. I don’t understand the logic behind what my advisor told me unless she didn’t see how important the money was for a full-time student living on their own with no financial support at all. The biggest risk I am taking is the fact that I am still trying to finish what I started this semester.

What's Next?

Existing Market

1. First our products and services will consist of the information system itself and support and troubleshooting services.

2. My interviews informed me that my information system should include an introductory video that will explain how to use the information system. They also informed me that our services should include teaching services to show users how to use the system through support services. Last they informed me to make the information system easy to use. This may be harder to achieve because of the current complexity and security needed.

In response to the interviews I have decided to consider implementation of the introductory video and design it to show how the information system is to be used. This would be shown to potential investors and redesigned for finalized distribution. I have also decided to devote part of our services to train proper teaching methods and consultation techniques to prospective customers.

               My interviews recommended that this information system is easy to navigate and use. We would not want to risk security and efficiency in development so it may be hard to make it seem simple to use. Therefore, we will have to have an explanatory element to our product initially. I think that if we can effectively explain how to use it, it will be easier to use.

New Market

1. We plan to go direct to consumer by providing the entire trade through our platform. Instead of having the various firms using our information system we are planning to develop our own trading platform using our information system that will allow you to trade safely and legally.

2. The interviews advised me to advertise primarily online and on TV. One of my interviewers said that advertising is going to be a necessity in my product/service mix. With a much stronger need for customer awareness, I would initially try to advertise online. I was also advised to create a security software for the information system to use and potentially to sell to others.

               I learned that this market may require a lot more resources and human capital to acquire. This differed with my expectations. It would also mean we would be competing and risking cannibalization of lucrative deals. I would continue to consider this potential market, but my primary focus is going to be on the information systems development. I was surprised by the amount of advertising that is going to be necessary to inform this segment.

This market is still attractive after my considerations. If I am providing the service to firms and customers, I believe I can create a larger market share. I learned a lot from my interviews. They provided me with useful ideas that I hadn’t considered yet and I realized that they had direct applications to my idea.

The Currency Traders Venture Concept

Venture Concept

The Currency Traders

Opportunity

               This opportunity arose with the new anti-money laundering act for cryptocurrency. This called for a necessity for personal information to be associated with each trade between currencies. It was noted that this technology does not yet exist. This problem is going to directly affect the bitcoin firms and other cryptocurrency traders. This act calls for the legal requirements of the firms and trader to reveal personal information between the trading platforms. Based on my research, this market is all over the world. Cryptocurrency firms are found throughout the world and I noticed a cluster of them in South Florida. This is where we intend to begin operations. They are currently satisfying their needs by the traditional trading methods. This can now cause legal repercussions, but anonymity has been huge in these trades. This is a big opportunity to provide a service directly to the government and local business in Florida. This window of opportunity will only be around until someone designs an information system capable of transmitting the information. I believe that even if someone else creates it, we can still develop one that will function more efficiently and safely.

Innovation

               We have begun creating an information system that will use unique uuids from the servers to attach the personal information encryptions. We are planning to use fingerprints to generate the uuids and keep this methodology as a safety mechanism. This will allow users to trade by scanning their fingerprint and their personal information will be sent encrypted with the trade information. This information system will communicate with your existing servers to send and receive the data. We are hoping this will be our secret sauce because the complexity of this system and the exclusive knowledge of its functions with my software developer and me. We want to keep safety a priority and we plan to create or recommend our own security software or one that will work with the information system. We plan to charge a percentage of the transactions in the form of a transaction fee. Starting at a 5% fee of the transaction volume, we plan to use this money to fuel our innovation and development for further improvements and fixes that may arise.

Venture Concept

               This information system is designed to transmit your information safely when trading. It was the norm to keep anonymity when trading currencies, but legal repercussions may follow if changes aren’t implemented. I think it will cause users to consider our product because of the legal repercussions that maybe facing if they have not already found a solution. The biggest concern I have is establishing credibility among investors and prospective customers. Our competitors could be the existing cryptocurrency firms. If they are trying to develop the information system themselves then we are directly competing with them. Their weakness comes from the fact that this technology did not already exist in their current operations. We have also decided to put a strong emphasis on the customer support will we provide. Problems may arise and we want to be there to troubleshoot and listen to the feedback so we can make better decisions with further development. I plan to start operations in South Florida. Targeting the existing firms there will give us useful information and feedback we will use to tailor our next steps. I plan to keep the business small to start. The software developer and I will launch the idea ourselves. My role will be in negotiations and arranging contacts. I also intend to provide support to the customers along with the software developer. We won’t need an office right away and already have begun development from home. From here, we hope to expand throughout Florida and continue development for the country potentially with the assistance from the government. In the next five years, I would see myself constantly traveling and visiting different countries to share this information system. This venture will provide a foundation for me to build off of and continue to expand my and the company’s horizons.