30A: Final Reflection

Final Reflection:

1. When looking through my posts over the course of this semester, I can certainly pinpoint moments of both highs and lows. Some of my favorite assignments were from the tail end of this class, such as Creating my Secret Sauce and Creating a Customer Avatar. They really caused me to tap into what makes me an entrepreneur and an innovator over my competitors. Both with any highs, there will always be lows and for me those were the assignments from early on in the year. I despised having the list generic problems and rely on such an antiquated form of thinking things through in such a linear manner.
2. I don't think I'll remember anything I've done over the course of this semester even a month from now, but if I had to take a stab at what will probably remain the longest it would probably be the all of the Elevator Pitches. They were pretty unique and something most people (I would assume) weren't exactly trying to hone but nonetheless did over the course of the class. I think my most joyous assignment would actually be this one since it marks the final post, and it pleases me to begin a new chapter.
3. In actuality, I definitely identify opportunities far easier than most people would thanks to the mindset and thought processes I've learned through both watching lectures and repetitively posting on blogger. While I don't quite see myself as an entrepreneur I can assuredly conclude that my mindset has definitively moved in that direction.
4. The advice I could give to others who will follow along this entrepreneurial path is be open to the change of mindset from hearing Pryor talk about identifying opportunities on both a grand and local scale, it requires you to let go of what you've always heard big time speakers and billionaires say. Achieving success in this class comes from attentiveness to assignments and really analyzing what  traits serve a business best.

29A: Venture Concept No.2

2nd Venture Concept

My fully venture concept is centered upon the unmet needs of a rapidly aging population in Middle and Southeastern United States in the form of health-care predicated on the needs of deteriorating individuals. This opportunity was created in part to multiple factors, but primarily the failures of the American Healthcare system. American Healthcare has been constantly adjusted and redefined both legislatively and parochial to varying degrees to minimize spending and maximize coverage policies, but the actual affect of the current system does well to protect the general interests of middle class middle aged Americans but leaves gaps in the coverage of the senior citizens, resulting in ineffective recovery options for a demographic known to have the most tumultuous of health complications. Other such forces are the corporations that dedicate themselves to solving the problem but fail in their ability to provide the care necessary to ensure a healthy life and recovery period to both the customers and the family members of the cared, these companies like to prioritize the maximal profit margins by cutting costs on quality of life actives like meals and medications and labor costs by hiring individuals unqualified to be called a care-taker let alone a nurse; these factors culminate in a system that fails to meet the standards of conditions of the customer and chooses to neglectfully hire unequipped caretakers to continue to make maximize profits at the expense the customers health and the price point of the service. My market is defined within the demographic of Americans ranging in age from sixties all the way up to the late eighties, as these individuals are most likely to have an immediate family member or themselves be unequipped to provide the care necessary to continue an average day to day life. Geographically my market rests within the eastern seaboard as it is fairly common trend for Middle and Western America to live to a higher age without the need for a form of assisted living. A perspective customer of mine might seek to hire a live in nurse to assist with their health complications but such a measure is immeasurably expensive and tends to not be included in insurance, and the customers loyalty lies within what can provide them with the best care. Perhaps the best testament to my opportunity is the fact that it’s window of exploitation is endless, as it is a constant of life to grow older and in that fact lies the inevitability of disease and failing health, meaning my market never ceases to exist. The Innovation of my service lies in the ease of access/use for family members and the usage of qualified individuals to act as care-takers and nurses rather than hiring the cheapest labor possible to care for loved ones. The ease of access comes in the form of my automated payment system and navigable website both in beta testing as of this moment; the payment system is entirely automated and goes through the user’s registered email and of course is encrypted by hash-table prime number generated encoding, I intend to abuse my competitors lack of technological incorporation to care to my advantage and create a system that puts the user experience before operational performance, which creates a system that makes my companies billing easier and payment plans just as easy. My service functions on the basis of insurance coverage and tentative residence within the nursing home / care facility. Price point is dependent on supply, labor, and mortgage, but within the range of 1,000-1,750$ a month for recovery at the institution in exchange for peace of mind and unbeatable care. Now as to the reasons for why my venture product should work, the first being that the concept of nursing homes in general are a fresh concept, and as a result my current competitors happen to charge insane rates for a lackluster care facility, my price-point falls far short of theirs and my modernized payment plans are more than enough to have customers come to me over the competition. My main competitors are BrookDale, Helms Home, and other one-off elderly care facilities, but with confidence my staff and online services put  Pendleton Care a fair way ahead of them in scope. A definitive change I would make to this plan would be to outsource most of the care and patient needs to a nursing firm who could supply the labor necessary to work with and care for the patients.

• Feedback: Most of the changes I made were in part to whether or not selling the business so early on would be a good decision, so I decided to outsource the workforce to a nursing conglomerate rather than maintain the architecture myself, so leaving would be a bit easier now. Other ideas I noted that I could change would be to lean harder on newspaper advertising and pursue blogging to advertise my business.

28A: My Exit Strategy

My Exit Strategy

• The Plan:
• My current exit strategy to vacate my business is to sell over control of the company to either a different nursing home conglomerate to ensure employee's have a safety net underneath them, or possibly give my position in the company over to someone from within as a promotion, but also ensuring the responsibility to share holders isn't lost on them or my replacement.
• Reasoning:
• My current reasoning for either of my exit plans is simply that I have no personal passion for what it is that my business does; it merely exists as a result of a problem I identified and as a solution in a market where there is very few. By selling the company to another firm I can ensure that the business will continue to be operational in a similar capacity despite the inherent loss of my personal touches and new policy/ legality, but also to ensure that it has some kind of foreseeable future.
• Influence:
• My possible exit strategies have influenced quite a bit of how I conducted both my business and my opportunity. The goals and expectations I have for my life is not to be an operational manager/owner of a healthcare facility, but to work towards the conduits of life I have passion in, like engineering. Having a way to exit from this opportunity unscathed was a deciding factor in what I choose to do as well as how I would execute it.

27A: Reading Reflection No.3

The Final Read

• Theme:
• The general theme of the book is using the connected world we live in as to a business advantage by using elements of social media to broaden marketing opportunities and foster further connectivity with customers. Guy Kawaski makes an effort to emphasize elements of exploration, throughout the book Guy constantly mentions that social media is unquantifiable, what is effective one day may be mundane the next, so it is necessary to continue to experiment to find peak productivity.
• Learning:
• Guy's theme of exploration and blogging to better a business certainly connects with the courses material. Pryor taught his with the use of these blogs that social media and business can be on in the same, which Guy hammers home very well.
• Exercise:
• I would define an exercise centered on creating a Pinterest board that is occupied with content prior to public posting detailing business innovation mixed with social media suave.
• Aha Moment:
• I guess the aha moment for me would have been when Guy outright says the he doesn't fully understand the dynamics of social media himself, but that it serves to the advantage of you, the reader. It really sank in the way finicky nature of social media itself.

26A: Celebrating Failure

Celebrating my Failure:

• The Failure:
• Early on in this semester, a failure overtook my ability to control both my academics and my future. Every spring, UF Engineering holds C.D.W; or career development workshop where undergrad CS, CPE, and EE majors can go and attempt to sell yourselves and interview with big shot companies like Walmart, Ultimate Software, and even the likes of the NSA. So I went, and when it was my turn to sit down with a team-member of Ultimate Software and sell myself, I froze. I stammered, sweat, and stuttered through each and every question until I shook the recruiters hand and left. I prepared myself intensely for the questions and knowledge but putting it into practice was an entirely other story.
• The Wisdom:
• I guess what I took most from this experience was that preparation means nothing in place of resolve to meet every opportunity head on. I'd say that the biggest take-away from that experience was that I have to through away any self doubt I have when I tackle new ventures.
• The Reflection:
• I tend to handle failure by internalizing it, and molding how I feel about it into future scenarios similar to how I experienced the failure; essentially cataloging it into how I think and act later on. Thanks to this class however, I realize that failure is an inevitability, and that as a result I should be open to taking on more risks.

25A: What's Next?

No Seriously What's Next?

• Existing Market:
• My existing market coincides with the elderly population of the southeastern seaboard, and I see that the next step for my product is to begin advertising and release open beta access for possible customers.
• Interview 1:
•  "What I think is the next step for Pendleton Care is to do some customer outreach, and go into 55+ communities and talk a bit about yourselves and how it is you can alleviate the stress of day to day life with your services."
• Interview 2:
• "One thing that you could do is begin advertising in the papers! I think you would definitely see an interest bump once you get to where your customers are, which is the newspaper"
• Interview 3:
• "I think with your business model in mind, you could hold a press conference with Commissioner Dick and have him publicly back your healthcare".
• Summary: It should be clear from each of the interviews that the quality of the suggestions can very quite wildly. I feel as though my demographic has to be catered to very specifically or I run the risk of appearing as out of touch or unapproachable. However Interview 1's suggestion resonated with me quite well, and I think this is definitely something I can consider doing at a later date.
• New Market:
• I suppose to target a new market I might set my sights on the financially dispositioned. HealthCare for elderly and the poor go together quite nicely.
• Interview 1:
• "I think one thing you could do would be to host community wide events about what kind of affordability your program has for people in the community"
• Interview 2:
• "Something I could see you doing to show yourself a healthcare provider to the community at whole would be to make a wing in the facility dedicated to to walk-in 20$ copay type health issues, but that of course would require a doctor and many other factors."
• Summary: It is not as surface level as I once thought it would be to enter a new market based off of an already existing venture capitalist idea, and the modifications necessary to include a new share of a market would be a tremendous strain on what I would be able to do for my current clientel and market as a whole. The suggestions from Interview 2 however are definitely something to take into consideration.

24A: Venture Concept No.1

My Venture Concept: Pendleton Care

My fully venture concept is centered upon the unmet needs of a rapidly aging population in Middle and Southeastern United States in the form of health-care predicated on the needs of deteriorating individuals. This opportunity was created in part to multiple factors, but primarily the failures of the American Healthcare system. American Healthcare has been constantly adjusted and redefined both legislatively and parochial to varying degrees to minimize spending and maximize coverage policies, but the actual affect of the current system does well to protect the general interests of middle class middle aged Americans but leaves gaps in the coverage of the senior citizens, resulting in ineffective recovery options for a demographic known to have the most tumultuous of health complications. Other such forces are the corporations that dedicate themselves to solving the problem but fail in their ability to provide the care necessary to ensure a healthy life and recovery period to both the customers and the family members of the cared, these companies like to prioritize the maximal profit margins by cutting costs on quality of life actives like meals and medications and labor costs by hiring individuals unqualified to be called a care-taker let alone a nurse; these factors culminate in a system that fails to meet the standards of conditions of the customer and chooses to neglectfully hire unequipped caretakers to continue to make maximize profits at the expense the customers health and the price point of the service. My market is defined within the demographic of Americans ranging in age from sixties all the way up to the late eighties, as these individuals are most likely to have an immediate family member or themselves be unequipped to provide the care necessary to continue an average day to day life. Geographically my market rests within the eastern seaboard as it is fairly common trend for Middle and Western America to live to a higher age without the need for a form of assisted living. A perspective customer of mine might seek to hire a live in nurse to assist with their health complications but such a measure is immeasurably expensive and tends to not be included in insurance, and the customers loyalty lies within what can provide them with the best care. Perhaps the best testament to my opportunity is the fact that it’s window of exploitation is endless, as it is a constant of life to grow older and in that fact lies the inevitability of disease and failing health, meaning my market never ceases to exist. The Innovation of my service lies in the ease of access/use for family members and the usage of qualified individuals to act as care-takers and nurses rather than hiring the cheapest labor possible to care for loved ones. The ease of access comes in the form of my automated payment system and navigable website both in beta testing as of this moment; the payment system is entirely automated and goes through the user’s registered email and of course is encrypted by hash-table prime number generated encoding, I intend to abuse my competitors lack of technological incorporation to care to my advantage and create a system that puts the user experience before operational performance, which creates a system that makes my companies billing easier and payment plans just as easy. My service functions on the basis of insurance coverage and tentative residence within the nursing home / care facility. Price point is dependent on supply, labor, and mortgage, but within the range of 1,000-1,750$ a month for recovery at the institution in exchange for peace of mind and unbeatable care. Now as to the reasons for why my venture product should work, the first being that the concept of nursing homes in general are a fresh concept, and as a result my current competitors happen to charge insane rates for a lackluster care facility, my price-point falls far short of theirs and my modernized payment plans are more than enough to have customers come to me over the competition. My main competitors are BrookDale, Helms Home, and other one-off elderly care facilities, but with confidence my staff and online services put  Pendleton Care a fair way ahead of them in scope. 

In general, the most defining characteristics that can be indicative of success would be location, price-point, and customer experience; as any care facility would have. The next in line for my venture is to begin looking for perspective locations to place my very first business / facility, and to begin the screening process for qualified nurses, and as for me, my next steps within the process of my business is to see just how far I can reshape the process of care and recovery for the elderly, sell the business off should it find success and begin the work of opening my own one-stop-shop technology store, like a Best Buy of sorts and see if the market can handle just one more competitor.