Making It Real

My Exit Strategy

My exit strategy would be to stay with the company for a while to make sure it launches correctly and maintains the values that I will instill in the culture and community of the company. After a few years, while it is still exciting and valuable, I would hopefully have offers from other social media companies to be bought out. I would like to sell the company for enough money that I could retire early and live a luxurious life without having to pick up work. Maybe I could take this money and reinvest it to other entrepreneurial ideas. I would like to have enough from the company to provide for my children. If possible, I would like to maintain a portion of the company. My exit strategy has influenced other decisions for the company to make sure that it is adaptable to growing social media trends and people's interests. I think the pet social media website can be updated to continue to be innovative and relevant. 

Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity

My potential group of customer’s unmet needs would be an outlet to share stories, photos, and information about their pets. People who have this need are pet owners who clearly love and obsess over their pet and want to share things with friends, family and the Internet world. My potential customers are people who have this need or desire to share things about their pets via social media without bombarding their personal accounts, annoying non-pet loving friends. Users would also be able to meet other pet owners over the use of the social media site if they decide to make their accounts and posts public. The nature of the need is adding a social aspect to a pet owner’s life and routine. There are thousands of pet social media accounts like Instagram and Facebook, but these accounts mix in with other people who are not pet-lovers and may get annoyed with the pet posts.

Some changes in the social media environment that made me think of this opportunity was the desire to share photos of my puppy, but some of my friends thought I was posting too much about him. Thus, I made an Instagram account dedicated to my dog. I quickly found out that there are thousands of other accounts that only post photos and stories about their dogs. There are also plenty of other pet-only accounts, so I realized there was a market and a large amount of people who may be interested in a new type of pet-social media.

The demographics of market for this product would most likely be teenagers to adults who have pets and adore them. Users could be world-wide.

Some customers are currently satisfying this need by using existing social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. They may be loyal to these accounts, but I would like to develop a way to have the user be able to share on the pet-social media account and their existing pet accounts, so they don’t have to make multiple posts and effort.

I think this could be a big opportunity because there are so many pet owners who want to continue to share photos and stories about their pets online. It would also be a great opportunity for other pet owners to meet and share information with each other. The web world is massive and continues to grow. There are also big opportunities for pet companies to share their businesses by advertising. I think the window of opportunity will be open for a while until someone else thinks of this idea and implements the platform.

Innovation

My innovative idea is to create a pet social media website and app similar to Facebook and Instagram that is dedicated to pet owners and pet lovers. A user would create an account with their basic information along with their pet’s information like type of pet (dog, cat, rabbit, etc.), name, breed, age, etc. The user could also allow location services to activate a feature that could tell you other users that are near you or in the area. Users would share photos, videos, stories, and information about their pet to friends, or if the account is public, to the web.

The way I plan on making money by this website is to have enough users that companies become interested in advertising. Companies would pay to have their ads shared on user’s feeds based on what type of pet they have and what they are interested in. There would be multiple levels of fees that companies could pay to promote their advertisements based on how often and how big they want the ad to be.

Users would also be able to rate and share local pet friendly businesses, similar to Yelp. This would be another benefit for users to turn on their location services so they can learn about new places they can board, groom, or take their pet. I would like to have a focus on this for dog owners so that people would be able to take their dogs places, like to lunch or get some dog-friendly ice cream.

Similar to how businesses would be able to share advertisements, eventually I would like to have shelters promote their adoptable dogs, cats and more. If my social media website could be connected with pet-finder (a site to find adoptable pets), that would be ideal because there is already a massive database. Adoptable pets would be able to be advertised for free.

Venture Concept

My innovation will solve the opportunity identified above because it will give pet owners and outlet to share their pets online. Customers would use this social media account because it will be dedicated to people similar to themselves and they can make new friends who have similar interests. I think customers would switch to this new social media account from their previous ones because it will be dedicated to just pets and they would be able to share with other pet owners besides letting their posts get drown in other non-pet posts or annoying other friends. I don’t think it would be hard to get customers to switch because I would make sure to make it easily integrated with their current accounts so they don’t have to feel like their giving up one account to create an entire new profile.

There are no current competitors unless you count Facebook and Instagram, but I think they are different enough that the pet-dedicated social media account can stand out on it’s own. The possible weakness of this venture idea is that people will not want to create a new social media account because they may believe they already have too many or that they think it could be too much effort. I would have to make sure it’s clear that it would be an easily adaptable site similar to current platforms.

I would organize a business by having web developers, a marketing team, advertising specialists to help when businesses want to buy in, and a support team. I believe I could get this started with a few people like myself and some experienced web developers, but if the site continued to grow I would need additional support.

A secret sauce that my company would have would be that users will already have this account and it would be hard for another website to come in and copy the same format and ideas and have users transfer. I would make sure that my website is very user-friendly and protected from hackers. I would also make sure that my marketing is top-notch so my users feel special when they see that they’re a part of a huge pet community.

What’s next for the venture could possibly be developing spots and places that users of the website can come and get a feel for the smaller local community of users.

Assuming that this business idea launches and that it’s successful, I would like to see myself as a successful business owner, continually improving the business and being innovative. I have always wanted to do my part in changing the world some how, and I think if I could launch this and successful find adoptable pets new homes and bring the pet community closer together, I will feel accomplished.

Celebrating Failure

A time that I have failed this past semester has been keeping up with this class. In the beginning I was doing very well keeping up with the assignments, but as the summer went on and my internship got busier with work I started to let this class slip away. I have tried many times to keep myself on a schedule but other things, such as work and summer activities have gotten busier and busier making it harder to keep up with this course. I'm still doing the best I can and hope to pull through in the end with a decent grade. 

I have learned that I need to be more disciplined and realize that this class requires a lot of time and effort in order to do well and get the most out of it. 

I think failure, in general, is a good at teaching lessons. However, I have always been a procrastinator and I wish it was something I could fix. I have continued to try my best at keeping up with this class and I think I can make it to the end successfully. Other failures I have encountered make things more challenging and intimidating, but you just have to figure out a new way to approach a problem and continue working at it. 

Growing My Social Capital

*Note, I have chosen to leave names out for privacy purposes.

Domain Expert in Industry. 

1) My contact's background is working as a marketing agent for a private company. He used these skills to build a start-up of his own. 

2) My contact for an expert in the industry is someone who runs a website that has a listserve of other businesses. This is similar to one of the lines of businesses I'd like to run on my social media site. 

3) I found this contact because I have been working with him building his business. I haven't used his feedback for any other assignments, so I thought this was a perfect time to contact him.

4) There isn't a direct exchange, but I have been doing work for him for a few months now, so he was happy to help with my assignment. 

5) Including this contact in my network will enhance by abilities because he knows how to run a directory website with many contacts and businesses. 

2) Expert on the Market. This would be someone who is targeting your market with similar products services -- or knows a lot about conducting customer research in your area -- or represents a major piece of your market (this might be most applicable with B2B markets).

1) My contact's background is with customer service for the pet supply industry. They work for a pet products supply company.

2) My contact for the expert on the market is someone who is constantly working with pet owners and supplying them with products and information. This is beneficial to me because I need these types of businesses on my social media site. 

3) I found this person because I contacted the company a while back looking for internship positions. I use the company a lot to buy my dog's food and toys. 

4) There was a simple exchange of information when I asked for help with this assignment. 

5) Including this person in my network for this business opportunity is crucial. I would love for them to be a top advertising company on the site. 

3) Supplier to Industry. 

1) For this supplier I chose a person who is a supplier of usage to the social media industry as whole. My specific contact is someone who supplies stories and pet information to their current social media accounts. 

2) My interpretation of supplier for this category is a person who is supplying businesses to social media sites. My contact would be considered a customer for my pet social media site. 

3) I found this person because they run a popular dog-instagram page, therefore they are supplying the social media industry with the type of information I would like shared on my site. 

4) The exchange is that if I were to have my website running someday, that they could help be a sponsor for the project so, in return they can market themselves too. 

5) Including this person in my network will enhance my ability to pursue this opportunity because they already have loyal followers of the dog-Instagram world. If I could use their expertise to capture that market and transfer them to my site too, it would be a great start. 

Idea Napkin No. 2

1) You. My name is Kelly. My talents include horseback riding, organization, interpersonal skills and a passion for animals. I have owned pets and worked with animals my entire life and I have developed many care-taking skills from my experiences of pet-ownership and working on farms. I would love for this business of an pet social media website to be my full-time job. I love to share my passion for pets and animals and I know there are other animal lovers out there. 

2) What are you offering to customers? My product is a pet social media website similar to Facebook and Instagram combined. There are thousands of facebook pages and instagram accounts dedicated to people's pets already, this would be a specific social media site for these people. I would love to integrate with FB and Insta so that people could share on all sites at once. My social media page would also include information for pet friendly business, local parks and events, a way to make friends with other pet owners, ways for businesses to advertise, etc. Basically I would like to facilitate a pet-owner's community. 

3) Who are you offering it to? My customers could be from any demographic, but I would assume most would be young to middle-aged. Anyone who has a pet and a social media account could benefit from my website. They could use it to share photos or gain information about their pets or both! All of my users would LOVE their pets and want to share them to the online world. 

4) Why do they care? Customers wouldn't pay to use the social media account, but businesses would pay to advertise. Customers would find value in this social media site because they can share photos and stories about their pets without bombarding their personal accounts and annoying their non-pet friends. Customers would learn about businesses who sell pet products and learn new information about pets. Breeders and rescues could also share their information which would help people who are looking to get a pet

5) What are your core competencies? What would set my social media site apart from everyone else would be that it would be dedicated strictly to pets, pet owners, and animal lovers. It wouldn't be for people who are not interested in pets/animals, so we could filter out the cat videos from the typical Facebook feed. Pet information is scattered across the internet, and this could be a localized place to find information and ask questions. 

I believe that these five elements fit together to build a solid business concept. 

Feedback: Some of the feedback I received was that I have a good idea for this pet social media. At first I would direct it towards dog-owners because they stereo-typically seem to be most "out going" looking for things to do with their dogs. Next would be to incorporate cat owners followed by other pet owners and animal loves. 

One of the comments that I really appreciated was potentially partnering with big-name pet store brands like Petco and Petsmart and start advertising with them. These stores facilitate adoptions, so there could be a way to sponsor adoptable pets that will be at the local stores. Also featuring new adoption parents, which may promote adoption!

Reading Reflection No. 2

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

1) The general theme of the book describes different ways of thinking, mostly focusing on a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset.

2) The book connected with the class because it made me realize the different ways of thinking. This helps when it comes to approaching problems that I'm not familiar with, it makes me think about things differently and come up with different solutions. This is helpful to think like an entrepreneur, solving all kinds of problems. 

3) If I had to design an exercise for this class based on this book, I would have a proposed entrepreneurial problem and have students come up with different ways of thinking about a solution. From a fixed mindset, students would think of ways that have solved the problem in the past. From a growth mindset, students would think of new, innovative/different ways to solve the problem.  

4) An 'aha' moment for me was that I have mostly a 'growth' mindset in the sense that I like to continue thinking of new ways to look at the world and solving problems. I like to learn and I'm not stuck in my ways. I am accepting of challenges. I like to be innovative and learn from other creative, innovative people.