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.