Week 15 Reading Reflection

One of the things that surprised me about this week's reading on the basics of running a business and how it does not change from New York to China to India was that one is able to obtain similar profits and results whether conducting business with wealthy and not wealthy people in a  sense of the basics. Simple automatization undercounting procedures do indeed help out immensely in the Third World as well as global financial hubs. If I had two questions for the author I would ask in what ways conducting business in places such as India differ from places such as Europe or China. I would also ask in what ways could shying away from customer relations affect a company that conducts mainly business in India. I did not find anything confusing or anything that I specifically disagreed with in the reading.

Final Reflection

Looking back at the semester in this final reflection I feel a bit moved and certainly proud of how far I have come as a student, an entrepreneur and mainly as a person. My most formative experience is also on that I am certainly most proud of. It was not necessarily reaching out to potential customers or gathering feedback from experts and peers; but rather the class as a whole and how it changed my mindset whenever I approach things. I am now more dedicated and feel that with proper preparation, drive and work ethic many things that seem too grand are actually completely doable. One of my most joyous experiences was definitely giving money away, there was just something great and fun about that part. Comparing myself and my entrepreneurial mindset from today and the one I had back at the beginning of the semester I would say I have grown as an entrepreneur. While I can't say I know everything there is to know, and probably never will, I have begun a journey with a different mindset and that I believe is a great start. One recommendation I would definitely make to students taking this course in the future is to stay ahead of the curve. Do you think its alright to turn things in the day before they are due? Try having them done 4 days before. Think you can be done 4 days before? Try a week early. These things help foster a go getter mindset that will have you reaching to be the best you can be and that is a huge help with this course, in an entrepreneurial environment in general and life as a whole.

Venture Concept No. 2

The time has come to revisit one of my old posts about my venture concept. This time I will be adding at the end of my original post some of my thoughts about the feedback I received and my vision on how I plan to change my venture given the feedback and my considerations on it.
My idea first arose from observing; as in many cases, when one observes the world around, it becomes easier to identify things that aren’t being fully taken advantage of and therefore improve them. Another common occurrence is the identification of a problem and the subsequent creation of a solution. Well my venture concept is based on the latter, as I one day observed a pet owner frantically search for her missing dog. This event reminded me of my younger days, where I would chase my dog around my neighborhood every time it ran away and sometimes I was simply unable to find it. This motivated to find pet owners and simply ask questions; through such simple inquisitive means I was able to generalize that there is no current means for a pet owner to properly and reliable locate its pet. This generalization was able to bring to light an issue that many local pet owners suffer from, thus creating a target market for me. This newly found market consisted of young adults ages 18-30 that owned pets. In a geographical sense, this audience was mostly local due to my confinement and limitation to the city of Gainesville. The fact that pet owners value their pets so highly translates to immediate demand for any means of locating them if lost; yet while this opportunity seems to present itself locally, it is only logical to extrapolate this situation to any town or city with a big enough population of pet owners, thus allowing for the creation of growth for this venture. Thus began the process of creating a solution for this newly found opportunity. The creation of a solution isn’t always as easy as some might perceive it to be, rather it is a meticulous process in which many ideas are subjected to trial and error more times than I’d care to count. Nevertheless what really seems to drive a good venture is a reliable innovation that appeals to a certain market, in my case, local young pet owners. In due time, I came up with an idea which can be considered incrementally innovative as opposed to radically so. I thought that there are current ways to locate lost pets, through installation of chips and other devices that allow for localization of an animal. This process, however, has a cost drawback as not many young adults have the means to afford such an expensive process. This is where I decided to take advantage of a currently popular means of interaction, social networks. Through the modification of a basic network plan, I would in theory be able to create an interconnected social structure dedicated to pets, whether it is finding them or simply interacting with other pet owners. This way I am not creating a drastically new idea, but rather modifying an already successful one and repurposing it to fit the needs of pet owners, my target market. Through the creation of this application and possibly a website, I would attract the attention of many businesses who provide services as well as products to pets and pet owners alike. This source of revenue would be highly marketing based, with some side revenue collected from selling data such as user preferences and interests. With the creation of this new application, users will be able to easily access a network of similar individuals with common goals besides simply interaction. The original goal of this venture is to allow for pet owners to easily and accessibly engage in the finding of their lost pets. What makes this venture especially attractive is the simplicity of access and usage; the user interface will be as simple as some of today’s leading social networks. This venture will be organized as a tech company, driven largely by programmers and information technology employees as well as marketing personnel in order to spread the brand, thus ensuring appropriate staff is in charge of tackling any issues or problems that might arise. My most important advantage going into this venture is the untapped market I will be exploiting, as I am the first to enter this market, I will hold a large market share with virtually no direct competitors. My next target opportunity will be to spread the usage of my network to a national scale and firmly grasp bigger cities and major metropolitan areas. The feedback I have gotten has been overwhelmingly supportive. I cannot express into words how helpful the students in this class have been; whereas I initially thought many would simply type in vague comments that wouldn't be much help, the feedback proved to be vital in shaping the way that I conduct my venture. This being said, I plan to expand to larger markets once I prove that my venture can be sustainable and profitable in a local one.

Week 14 Reading Reflection

The biggest surprise to me in this chapter is that there is so much focus and content into the social entrepreneurship and ethical challenges of entrepreneurship. I previously was pretty certain that there were little ethical challenges and dilemmas when compared to jobs that can be just as stressing. I found out I was pretty wrong too, as a company often faces challenges on a daily basis, much more than i thought.
One thing I would ask the author is if there is any way that these 2 chapters tie together, as I want to be able to visualize social entrepreneurship when it is compared and contrasted with the corporate some of entrepreneurship. I also would ask if there is similar growth and advances in both areas? Or which one seems predominantly the right one.
I did not have any confusing material that I countered while reading the chapters and also I seem to agree with the authors on both of these chapters and what they entailed.

Google Gold

Search Engine Optimization is a term that many throw around and often times try to define yet there are really few who truly understand the meaning and the power and importance behind it. A few of the things I tried to do in my blog in order to increase hits in search engines is to use regular, every day words that people will oftentimes search for on the internet, this will increase the likelihood of one of their hits being my blog. Also, I tried to keep the language relatively simple as opposed to super complicated so that my blog could really be understood by a majority who may not be such an expert in a certain field. Lastly, I simply tried to keep things interesting, this blog wasn't so much a requirement for the class but rather a means through which I can tell of my accomplishments and failures and experiences in it.
My key words were things that could relate to the topic I was talking about, and I don't just mean entrepreneurship in general but rather pets, finding lost pets and mobile applications. This I believe will target a certain audience that will be more likely to be interested in my blog and future plans than your average person on the internet. While my key words at first started with pet related cases, it evolved as my venture evolved and once I had a more complete idea of what I wanted, my key words reflected that change as well.
To be honest, there must have once only one instance in which I can recall I used social media when referring to my blog, and that must have been a complaint about all the upcoming assignments I had to do, which was quite sarcastically worded on Twitter. It got a couple of likes though.
My most viral post was my Elevator Pitch No.1, I believe this was the case due to this being my introduction to my main idea and the concept that I would be working towards for the rest of the semester. Thus I feel it is important that people first understand my idea in order to fully grasp any other of my subsequent posts.
I did not make it to the first page of google, as it seems that there are quite other websites out there that talk about pets, pet finding services and application development services in general. I could not find my own blog as it must have been buried very deeply in there somewhere (I looked up to page 8, then gave up and grabbed a beer).

Very Short Interview Part 2

When I look back at my original interview with my choice entrepreneur, I think that I covered only the very basics and the essential foundation of what it really means to be an entrepreneur. Now that I have progressed in this class, I realize that there is a lot more depth to the matter and a lot more meaningful questions I could gave asked.

The following is a translated transcript of a Skype call:

Q: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me again, I am basically following up with my last interview now that I have learned and experienced a greater deal of the field of entrepreneurship. Looking back again to your beginning years as an entrepreneur, was there any time in which you thought you had utterly failed? What was that like and how did you deal with it?

A: Im glad you got back to me, it is always a pleasure to talk with future entrepreneurs. Yes, there were actually a few failures before my initial success; I often thought the work I was doing wasn't worth it as I constantly had to start over quite a few times. When it comes to how I dealt with it...I mean, it was rough, you know? Losing everything you work for not once but multiple times. Yet I kept trying because what else was I gonna do? Give up after all this? No way.

Q: How did you go about raising capital for your business? How did you get the gears moving?

A: I was lucky to have been blessed with an affluent family who helped me a lot when it came to funds. Nevertheless that was just start up costs, what really got us going were government contracts. You have to understand that in a country such as Ecuador, a lot of wealth circulates around government and any close ties to it, so naturally I aimed at where the money was.

Q: What have you learned about this entrepreneurial journey as a whole that you can say you are able to widely apply it to your everyday life? What stuck with you?

A: To be perfectly honest, it was failure. I learned from it like a mistress teachings you things, you know? Haha. I learned to fail and I learned not to fail in the same way twice, that way I can say I am always moving forward, and that is something I think you can apply to life in general.

Q: Thank You so much Nelson, you have been a huge help for me in this class and in counsel for my venture.

A: Anytime! Tell your dad I say hi, will you?

During this interview, I fell a lot more comfortable not only with myself and the entrepreneur but also  with the subject at hand. I felt I was able to ask much more meaningful questions that probed deep into the essence of the entrepreneurial journey as opposed to my first interview where I feel I only skimmed the very surface. I could tell that the entrepreneur thought of me in a different way, maybe it was the fact that I seemed more knowledgeable on the subject.

Celebrating Failure

One of the things that has always gotten to me is my lack of appropriate work ethic. I have been trying to recently change that and actually do my assignments in an early fashion so as to not be rushing at an incoming deadline in a last minute kind of way. However, I have seen little progress in that situation and I find it frustrating how I often can be so decided on doing work but most of the time simply lack the motivation to get started. I have failed at this change in midst a number of times this semester and to be honest, if I learned anything at all it is that I am not good at this change in lifestyle kind of thing, maybe its just not for me. I will keep trying nevertheless because I think that if I ever do achieve this change it will be beneficial for me in the end. The way I handled this repeated failures is by simply trying again, there are still assignments to do and even though I have started doing some things in advance, the harder stuff I usually leave for last, I still do not know why. This class changed my failure perception by helping me better analyze which risks I take and why, because it is senseless to take risks just for the sake of it, but rather if you truly believe something will come out of it and are willing to work for it then it is perfectly fine to take risks.