Opportunity:
The opportunity that my firm/service looks to exploit is the need for an application that can show users the most cost-effective bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues in their area and more specifically help social young people find the best choice to fit their tight budgets. College-aged individuals and young adults are known to frequent bars and restaurants but also have very little money to spend on going out. My service will be able to reconcile those two facts and provide the user with the information they need to be able to make informed decisions when it comes to choosing a place to go and have a night out at. As the children of America continue to grow older, the 18-25 age group grows more and more every year. This means that the volume of young adults going out to bars and clubs is increasing, especially in college towns. This means that more of them will need a way to continue to go out and be social while also not blowing all their money that could be used for other things like tuition, rent, and other bills and payments. Currently, many people rely on word-of-mouth or social media to find out about discounts or deals for these types of venues, while also using different sources like Google reviews and Yelp. Most people are not very loyal to these sources as they are either complicated to use and understand or the user is simply not worried or naïve about how much money they spend on going out. This is a potentially huge opportunity as our general population of young adults 18-25 continues to grow making this opportunity window last for the foreseeable future.
Innovation:
The innovative element to my application is the combination of features and the ability to fit within the niche created by the opportunity. My application AggreGator is a mobile application that is able to aggregate information about local bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues and display them in an intuitive and easy to understand way. AggreGator is a web crawler meaning it constantly scans the internet for information and keeps the user up to date with the latest prices, deals, and discounts. AggreGator uses the user’s geographic location to determine what businesses exist around them and then uses its price filter functionality to narrow down results. AggreGator’s price filter allows the user to input a range of prices that they would be comfortable paying and the application will narrow down results and show the user the most highly rated business that matches their price range. In the spirit of keeping information free and open to the user, the application will be free with revenue being earned by running ads on the application and allowing users to disable ads for a single payment of $0.99. Other potential revenue streams may come in the form of partnerships with the businesses listed on the app. These partnerships could be exclusive ad space for the business or an exclusive discount or deal exclusive to users of the application.
Venture Concept:
My application is developed with this particular opportunity in mind. Its functionality and features are made in order to give users the ability to have all the information they need in order to make informed decisions that will save them money and time. I believe that customers will download the app because it offers a unique combination of features that fill a niche not readily filled by any other application or service on the market currently. Gaining customer trust with transparency as well as gaining the trust of the businesses shown on the app will be key for the application and company to develop goodwill, customer trust, and loyalty. This customer loyalty is what will guarantee that the app is able to maintain a dedicated user base that is able to trust the information they see on AggreGator. Trust can also be built by focusing on quality support for our application and constantly improving it and keeping the thoughts and the ideas of the user in mind. With customer trust, constant app support and the targeting of our core demographic, this is possible. Currently, sites like Google and Yelp pose the most threat as competitors, with the latter being the most direct competitor. I believe that it is the fact that our application combines many features that are not present on Yelp, which puts us at an advantage. The business will be organized into a small tech startup with the main focus on development and testing with a dedicated team for marketing and user interaction. The team will be kept small enough to be agile but large enough to be competitive in the app market. Getting the app onto as many devices and in the hands of as many users as possible is the ultimate goal. In order to achieve that goal, the application must be as accessible as possible to allow for maximum adoption by users. This will be achieved by making the application free and providing complete transparency to the user about how their data is being used.
Three elements:
1. I think my most important resource is my knowledge and experience as a software developer/programmer. I think that having a team of dedicated developers running a company is disruptive enough that it will put us at an advantage against companies with a more corporate setup.
2. I see the next step as providing continuous support for our current application in order to keep the user base happy as well as keeping the application up-to-date and in a state of constant improvement.
3. In the next five years, I would like to be done with school and be working full-time as a part of this business venture. In the next ten years, I would like to grow the company to a very large evaluation and look to expand into new markets or sell and move on to my next project or venture.
The opportunity that my firm/service looks to exploit is the need for an application that can show users the most cost-effective bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues in their area and more specifically help social young people find the best choice to fit their tight budgets. College-aged individuals and young adults are known to frequent bars and restaurants but also have very little money to spend on going out. My service will be able to reconcile those two facts and provide the user with the information they need to be able to make informed decisions when it comes to choosing a place to go and have a night out at. As the children of America continue to grow older, the 18-25 age group grows more and more every year. This means that the volume of young adults going out to bars and clubs is increasing, especially in college towns. This means that more of them will need a way to continue to go out and be social while also not blowing all their money that could be used for other things like tuition, rent, and other bills and payments. Currently, many people rely on word-of-mouth or social media to find out about discounts or deals for these types of venues, while also using different sources like Google reviews and Yelp. Most people are not very loyal to these sources as they are either complicated to use and understand or the user is simply not worried or naïve about how much money they spend on going out. This is a potentially huge opportunity as our general population of young adults 18-25 continues to grow making this opportunity window last for the foreseeable future.
Innovation:
The innovative element to my application is the combination of features and the ability to fit within the niche created by the opportunity. My application AggreGator is a mobile application that is able to aggregate information about local bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues and display them in an intuitive and easy to understand way. AggreGator is a web crawler meaning it constantly scans the internet for information and keeps the user up to date with the latest prices, deals, and discounts. AggreGator uses the user’s geographic location to determine what businesses exist around them and then uses its price filter functionality to narrow down results. AggreGator’s price filter allows the user to input a range of prices that they would be comfortable paying and the application will narrow down results and show the user the most highly rated business that matches their price range. In the spirit of keeping information free and open to the user, the application will be free with revenue being earned by running ads on the application and allowing users to disable ads for a single payment of $0.99. Other potential revenue streams may come in the form of partnerships with the businesses listed on the app. These partnerships could be exclusive ad space for the business or an exclusive discount or deal exclusive to users of the application.
Venture Concept:
My application is developed with this particular opportunity in mind. Its functionality and features are made in order to give users the ability to have all the information they need in order to make informed decisions that will save them money and time. I believe that customers will download the app because it offers a unique combination of features that fill a niche not readily filled by any other application or service on the market currently. Gaining customer trust with transparency as well as gaining the trust of the businesses shown on the app will be key for the application and company to develop goodwill, customer trust, and loyalty. This customer loyalty is what will guarantee that the app is able to maintain a dedicated user base that is able to trust the information they see on AggreGator. Trust can also be built by focusing on quality support for our application and constantly improving it and keeping the thoughts and the ideas of the user in mind. With customer trust, constant app support and the targeting of our core demographic, this is possible. Currently, sites like Google and Yelp pose the most threat as competitors, with the latter being the most direct competitor. I believe that it is the fact that our application combines many features that are not present on Yelp, which puts us at an advantage. The business will be organized into a small tech startup with the main focus on development and testing with a dedicated team for marketing and user interaction. The team will be kept small enough to be agile but large enough to be competitive in the app market. Getting the app onto as many devices and in the hands of as many users as possible is the ultimate goal. In order to achieve that goal, the application must be as accessible as possible to allow for maximum adoption by users. This will be achieved by making the application free and providing complete transparency to the user about how their data is being used.
Three elements:
1. I think my most important resource is my knowledge and experience as a software developer/programmer. I think that having a team of dedicated developers running a company is disruptive enough that it will put us at an advantage against companies with a more corporate setup.
2. I see the next step as providing continuous support for our current application in order to keep the user base happy as well as keeping the application up-to-date and in a state of constant improvement.
3. In the next five years, I would like to be done with school and be working full-time as a part of this business venture. In the next ten years, I would like to grow the company to a very large evaluation and look to expand into new markets or sell and move on to my next project or venture.
Summary of
feedback:
The feedback I received
on the first venture concept post was very positive. Many of the people that
commented expressed their approval and support of the idea behind my
application. They did also continue the conversation about building customer
trust and the importance of having continuing support for the application.
Changes made
from feedback:
The changes I
made to my venture concept were as a direct result of the feedback that I received
on the original post. In this version I went into detail about how customer
loyalty is critical to the application's success and how building customer trust
is key in also building loyalty. I also included that app support would be a
big focus of our efforts as we want the application to get better and also have
users feel that it is being improved to better serve them.
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