29 A

1) Provide, again, your venture concept description, using this form. We understand it will be extremely similar to your first Venture Concept and do not expect you to re-write your entire Venture Concept. Don't worry about self-plagiarism for this assignment. However, make sure you do provide some type of change based on feedback and personal growth. You will describe this in part 3. 

The world is changing! Change is all around us. We don’t write letters anymore, we write emails. We don’t go to buy DVD’s anymore, we watch Netflix. We barely go to stores anymore, we buy on Amazon. Humans creates robots to help them and soon it will be us, humans, who will help the robots. Two months ago, during a lecture of my Entrepreneurship class, the teacher said something that I will never forget. He said that you do not need a revolutionary idea to succeed. In fact, ideas that are too advanced or required too much of a change, often fail due to their incompatibility with society. What humans want are the “small changes” that do no not required too much effort and it is the succession of those small changes that creates big changes. The hours my mother spent cooking and serving us the same dishes made me think of an opportunity for a “small change “ idea” . In fact, it was the whole society around me that made me think of an idea, an idea that could become one day business.


Opportunity 

Too many people from all ages and sexes face a common problem when it comes to cooking: they do not know what to cook. This result in many people ordering food online or go to restaurants. This is not only a western developed countries problem, it is a world problem. Because people do not know what to cook, they often eat the same exact things which is not always healthy for our body and which makes us pay more money on additional ingredients. The opportunity to find a solution is huge here but as soon as someone will come up with a solution, the “window of opportunity” may not be open for a long time. Even if someone comes up with a solution, they have to really understand every aspects that customers need.



Innovation

This wide range of opportunity is the reason why I believe, our society needs an application that will analyze the components we have in our fridges and send us the options we face. Let’s have a concrete example. You have eggs, meat and cheese in your fridge, you are home alone and do not know what you cook based on these three ingredients you have in your fridge. You take your phone and take a picture on my application. My application will recognize these three ingredients and thanks to the internet, it will make connections with different dishes. From there, the application will send you the different options you have with these three ingredients. The application would cost a total of $5 with a monthly fee of $1 to be able to use it. If anyone wants to have a more advanced level of cooking, they could be the “chef gold ” option for $ 20 with a monthly fee of $2 a month. This “chef gold” option will give more details than the regular option as the customer will also receive options with additional ingredients they could buy. For example, the customer could put on the application that they want to spend a maximum of $10 dollars on new ingredients in order to make a meal based on cheese, meat and eggs. The application will then give the customer the option of food they can buy within the range established by the customer with the meals they could cook with this additional ingredient.


Venture Concept:

There are two reasons why buyers would buy my application and they are pretty simple. The first reason is that it will save them money! On the long term (and even short term for some people), this application will prevent them from buying expensive ingredients for no reasons and go to restaurants because they couldn’t come up with ideas of dishes based on what they already had in their fridges. The second reason is time. It will save them some time, there is no doubt about it! Knowing what to cook and the length of it will save you from countless hours of indecisiveness. You will have clear choices and the customer will be able to choose accordingly. In this case the competitors would be the restaurants and delivery places. It could hit them in their pocket if my project picks up. The fact that the monthly fee to connect with the application is only a dollar could crush their market. Who wants to pay extra money for products when you know exactly how much that meal you are getting could cost you if you did it by yourself? I do not know many people who would pay twice or three times to price difference between cooking home and going to a restaurant if they knew how to cook those meals with the same quality and for a lower cost.


The three minor elements

What my most important resource will be? What’s my secret sauce? My most important resource would be the human capital on technology who will help me develop this application. This whole project is based on the foundation of this application. Without the people creation this app, my project will never be more than an idea. Other important elements would be the different versions this application offers and also the different variety of dishes offers by my application.



What’s next for my venture?

Once this project becomes a reality, I would then sell it to a bigger corporation and “ cash out “ quickly. Life is short, it’s time to enjoy it.



What’s next for me?



I want to be a successful man in the silicone valley, I want to be able to live and breath innovation. If this project is the success that could lead me to my dream then I’m ready for the challenge. I can see myself live in the Valley in the next couple of years and develop other projects, invest in VC companies. It’s been a childhood dream that I want to exploit. I am sure I will do it ,I am just unsure on how I am going to get there . Only god knows.

2) Provide a summary of the feedback you received from your previous venture concept description. You certainly want to include the student feedback, but you may also include the feedback you received from others during the "What's Next" exercise. You want to summarize all of the feedback, but be sure to place an emphasis on what people recommended you change about your idea. (In other words, don't just describe the positive feedback.)

Since I did not receive any feedback on my venture project, I can only talk about the feedbacks about my “what’s next assignment”. They told me that my project may not succeed in the long term and to an extent, I agree! I changed my mind on this concept! I would sell my start up quickly if I ever get to that point. Everything other comments I received were positive. I received extremely positive feedback about my idea, about my development strategy and about my possible future partnership strategies. The comments were so positive that it gave me the confidence to go ahead and actually look into developing this business ( not only for this class but in real life).   

3) Describe how you changed your venture concept, based on what you learned from the feedback.

I have to be honest, I barely changed anything from the venture concept. Not because I am closed-minded but because I haven’t been challenged once by any of the feedbacks about the nature of my business. If this project ever becomes a reality , I am sure I would have to make a couple adjustments in order to maximize my profit and satisfy the customers. The only venture concept that I changed is my exit strategy which went from a long term project to a “start up” kind of business.

30 A

1) Read through your posts from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had along the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.
As I read through my posts for this semester, I have to admit that I felt a kind of a nostalgic feeling. I remember the first week when I had to form an opportunity belief and I told myself that the amount of work for this class would be very challenging. I also remember when I had to make my first speeches and post my first videos online. I had so much fun doing that. I would say that my “peak” moment in the class was when I read the beautiful comments of my peers for my last speech. It was truly heartwarming.


2) What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing?

As mentioned before, the speeches were my most “joyous” experiences. The experience I’ll always remember in a couple of years was the assignment when I had to find the positive aspects of failure. It was a very challenging and interesting concept. I am not proud of any particular moment more than another, I would say that I’m happy in general about the way I handled this class.

3) At the beginning of the semester, I mentioned that I wanted each of you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, at the end, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset?

I think that I always had an entrepreneurial mindset but this class challenged the way I used to view myself. In fact, I understood that it takes way more than just being an innovator to become an entrepreneur. I understand it better now.

4) What is the one recommendation you would make to the students who are going to journey down this path in the future? What would you recommend they do to perform best in this course? What would you recommend they do to foster that mindset?

I would tell them to never give up and take the maximum from what this class offers us. It was hard but at the end of the day we are all here alive and well. It’s all about time management and focus.Focus on what matters and forget about the rest.

28 A

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future





1. You read about an entrepreneur:

. What surprised you the most?

I was very surprised to that his success story could have been the story of any random entrepreneur who is not afraid of risk. I really thought that he was born rich and just became richer.



 What about the entrepreneur did you most admire?
I admire his vision. He succeeded in very different field that have literally nothing in common. He made it because he never gave up. That’s what I admire the most about Elon.



What about the entrepreneur did you least admire?

There is nothing I don’t admire about him. Maybe the only criticism I could give him is that he never sticks to his project as he always wants new challenges.



Did the entrepreneur encounter adversity and failure? If so, what did they do about it?

Yes, monetary budgets were his biggest threat when he first started. He barely had any money to launch his projects but he found ways to beat the odds and associated himself with the right people.



2. What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited?

Elon is the perfect example of a successful entrepreneur as he chooses risks over comfort and eventually realizes his projects.



3. Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

I got a little b it confused about his “conception “of genetics when he claimed that you need wo intelligent parents in order to produce a smart young children. He then linked that to the business cycle.



4. If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

My first question would be : “ If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently ? “

My second question would be more specific and would be related to life on Mars. “ Do you believe that you will see the day in your lifetime when humans would be able to live on Mars?



5. For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?



I am positive that Elon believes that only hard work produces results. That’s how he succeed at least. I share this vision too.

27 A

1) Identify the exit strategy you plan to make. Do you intend to sell your business in the next 5 years for a large return? Do you intend to stay with the business for several decades and retire? Do you intend to protect the venture as a family business, and pass it down to your children?

If I end up developing this project, I would end up selling it as a start-up kind of business and use this money to invest in real estate and other projects.

2) Why have you selected this particular exit strategy?

Because as much as I have faith in my project, I am a realist. I understand that once this idea is on the market many other people with more funds than me can compete and crush my market. I would rather sell the idea to other people who have the means to develop this idea in order to make eternal profits due to copyrights.

3) How do you think your exit strategy has influenced the other decisions you've made in your concept? For instance, has it influenced how you have identified an opportunity? Has it influenced your growth intentions or how you plan to acquire and use resources?
Yes! Since this whole business was directed toward a quick exit, I decided to inject a lot of money and time on the “acceleration “ aspect of my business. I never really calculated my plans based on possible long-term benefit from my product.

26 A

As a transfer student, who also happens to be international, integration wasn’t that easy this semester. I am not talking about social integration but more about an integration related to the system. I’ve had a hard time understanding the structure of some of my classes and I am not ashamed to admit that I failed to achieve some of the objectives I set to myself before starting this semester. 

I didn’t perform as well as I wanted to in some of my classes due to time management. After my first Business statistics exam where I got a 76%, I understood that I had to change the way I will have to work at the University of Florida. I understood that studying a couple days before an exam would not satisfy myself with grades. After this failure, I worked harder than the previous exam and I got a 95% on my second exam. If some of you may think that this is a success, for me it only means that I failed the first one as a different method of studying would have got me a very similar result than the one I got on the second test. 

In General, I believe that it is hard to accept that you fail. It hits your ego and sometimes it pushes you backward. For me, failing only gives me more motivation. It helps me move forward. That is exactly what we learned in this class! We will fail times and times again, but it is only from those mistake that we will be able to move forward. This class also pointed out the fact that we should also learn from other people’s mistakes. Today, I am more than ever ready to take risks because I know that failure isn’t really failing.