Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity:

o    From my interviews, I found that commuting students spend about 45 minutes to an hour every day waiting for buses and finding parking. This adds up to an average of four hours every week that is wasted

o   A lot of commuting students (and staff) dislike having to allot that much time everyday for commuting issues. They feel like they could be using that time to be more productive. Basically, they need a more efficient way of getting to campus that wastes the minimum amount of time.

o   The reason this problem exists is due to traffic that causes buses to not be on schedule along with the fact that the amount of parking available to students on campus is lacking.

o   The market is primarily undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Florida who live a few miles or less off of campus. They either take the RTS buses or drive to campus. These people have multiple other reasons for going to campus besides going to classes, they are often involved in various organizations. This involvement along with their class schedule requires them to be on campus at different times.

o   Currently, these customers aren’t really satisfying this need; they just allow more time in the day to accommodate the problems that come with commuting. Some have bought scooters to cut down commuting times and to find better parking on campus that is more abundant and closer to classes.

o   I don’t see Gainesville’s traffic patterns changing anytime in the near future, and there haven’t been any moves or proposals to expand on-campus parking, so there is a decently-sized window of time for this opportunity. As long as these factors continue to create commuting problems for off campus students and staff, my venture exists as a solution. I would say the window for this venture is at least 10 years.

Innovation:

o   My venture is a scooter rental service. There are a few rental services that already exist here in Gainesville, but what would differentiate mine is its flexibility and ability to meet the customer’s specific needs. For instance, current scooter rental services offer monthly rates where you pay a few hundred dollars to get a scooter for a month. The problem with that is that people here at UF don’t need the scooter for just a month; they need it for specific days during the week that they need to go to campus. For example, I only have classes on campus on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, so those are the only days I would need a scooter. I wouldn’t want to pay for an entire month when I only need the scooter 3 days a week.

o   This service would allow students to create a rental plan specific to their weekly schedules at the beginning of the semester. This way they are guaranteed to have a scooter on the specific days they need it every week.

o   I would have to look into this a lot more and crunch a lot of numbers, but for now as an estimate, I would charge $15 for each day the scooter is rented.

Venture Concept:

o   I think that customers would switch to this service because it solves a problem that exists for a lot of people at UF. People lose time and productivity while they are dealing with commuting issues caused by waiting and searching for parking. People who really value their time will be looking for a solution to this problem so they don’t continue to waste time.

o   Price points: The specific numbers are a lot more difficult to figure out for this venture, but I generally have an idea of what I would need to do in terms of pricing. I would have to set my prices high enough to cover my company’s own costs, but low enough that people are willing to pay for this service as a substitute for the free RTS system or for their own cars. Unfortunately, I can see this as being a bit of an obstacle if I were to actually try and execute this venture.

o   Distribution & Location: I would like to keep this company based in Gainesville and centered around campus transportation. I don’t want this to be just a service that rents scooters out to people; I want to tackle the specific commuting problems caused by the lack of parking on campus.

o   Customer experience: My main concern with customer experience and satisfaction would revolve around whether or not my service solves the problem at hand for my customers. It would need to be the most time-efficient way for people to get to campus, but also be cheap enough that students can afford it.

Resource:

o   I think my most valuable resource is how unique and specific my service is. Unlike other similar services, it targets a specific problem that exists around college campuses and has a very specific market. The fact that this service accommodates the customers’ schedules sets it apart from other rental places and gives the customer a reason to come back and continue to use this service.  

Whats next for the venture:

o   After starting small, I would like to eventually expand my service by obtaining more product so that I can rent to more people and help as many people as possible who are experiencing the problem.

Whats next for you:

o   I think that in five years, I would see myself slowly getting out of this business. It suits my current lifestyle as a college student, but as I move on to different things later in life, I would like to be able to put my time into things that I personally enjoy doing and have interest in. But I could use this experience to help me in later ventures and careers.