11A – Idea Napkin No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

I am currently a full time student at the University of Florida; I work three jobs and do my best at whatever the task at hand is. I am a pharmacy technician, phone call campaigner, and I babysit. In the past, I worked at my father's grocery store in all departments (meat, grocery, produce, cooler, cash register, etc.) as well as interned at a local library and then a bakery in Naples, Florida called "Epiphany" where I was able to clean, bake, decorate, and eat the best brownies I've ever had in my life!

As mentioned in a previous post, I was brought up to work. Never was I handed anything - I always had to earn my rewards. This trained me to think as worker and push myself harder than any of my friends. While they were hanging out during break, I was working two jobs - 10 -12 hours a day sometimes.

By the time I graduated high school, I had my associates degree and a 5.04 GPA - all this because I was taught that there is no reward without much effort and nothing good comes easy.

These experiences helped form me into the person I am today: a hard worker with an ever-evolving skill set.

In the future, I would like to travel. I would like to teach English in a foreign country someday, open a coffee shop and cafe, perhaps have my own cooking show! In regards to this assignment and the business idea I chose to pursue, I don't see it playing much of a role outside of the university. I believe this experience will help guide my decisions in the future, but I do not see myself pursuing it in the long run.

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

I am offering the idea of a heating station in several locations throughout campus so that students can save money by bringing lunches from home. Accompanying this heating station, I think it would be great to have a frozen foods vending machine with cheap lunches (hello, $0.94 chicken pot pie!).

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

I am offering this to the students of UF. We all have long days on campus sometimes - whether that's because we have three lectures a day or just do all of our studying in the libraries. Either way, we all get hungry because we're all human. Unlike the staff members of UF, we don't have access to microwaves. We are forced to either starve or buy a $7.00 lunch from Starbucks, Panda Express, Subway, Firehouse Subs, etc. None of these are healthy options and they're all too pricey for students!

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

Students will care because they work hard and don't want to blow their money eating out. Some may not care and some may have a dining card. But for the rest of us, we like to be conservative and smart with our money.

Microwave access will be free of charge. The frozen foods vending machine would cost money, but not much (e.g. $0.94 chicken pot pie, $1.29 burger, etc.). It is a better deal than waiting in line at Starbucks for an overpriced panini sandwich.

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

See my answer to question 1.

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others.

I do believe that my work ethic will get me far and that my experiences will help me make some right choices, but I know that I am far from where I need to be in order to start a business. I think the first steps in this process would be to find out who at UF would be willing to listen to this idea and able to help me implement it.