Final Reflection

Reflection

Read through your posts from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had a long the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.

I think that, looking back through my posts from this semester, I have enjoyed building this idea of a company and learning a lot about the issue of sexual violence within our country, not only through research, but through actually talking to different people and hearing their thoughts about it or their experience with it. On the other hand, I did not particularly enjoy going through and having to do assignments where we went through different newspapers and articles and had to write about the regulatory changes and economic trends like in assignment 6 or the Identifying Local Opportunities Assignment. This is because in the assignment prior to that, we had already formulated our opportunity belief. So I didn't understand the purpose of doing all of that after we had already landed on the opportunity we were to focus on. That being said I think that it would be much more reasonable to have those assignments due before rather than after. That being said, Solving the Problem, was probably one of my favorite assignments. I really enjoyed putting all of the information I found together and being able to express how important this issue is.

Experience

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?

I think that this whole process in general, of creating a blog to record my journey of finding a problem, coming up with a solution and learning how to start building the concept of company was a great experience. I think that the idea that you can go back and see your own train of though grow and change and develop as you complete these assignments is great and I really appreciate that. I think the idea of having a blog made me really nervous at first, because usually you submit an assignment and thats it, you never have to see it again. But with this, not only you see it, but your classmates and really anyone who comes across it online. This is open to anyone, and that is really intimidating. But in some ways I think that it makes you work a little harder to make sure that everything you submit looks nice and is coherent with what is asked of you.

Entrepreneurship

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 definitely think that I have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset, however, would I say that I see myself as an entrepreneur? I don't think so. I think that this class really helped me in understanding what and entrepreneur is, what they do, and how they do it. I created an idea and many of the step that would be done to ideally start a company, however a lot of it was hypothetical. I mean the problem was real and me talking to and getting the feedback was real, but I don't think that I would consider myself an entrepreneur unless I actually physically go through the process of starting up my own business and run that business to a degree of success for a year or two. That is because until you actually do that, I don't think you can really understand how difficult it is, how organized you have to be, and how much on your feet thinking you have to be able to do.

Recommendations

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?

To future students going down this path, think about why you are asked to do each assignment before you do them. Each thing we are asked to do is for a reason and I think that it is really important to know that reason rather than just throwing something together to fulfill the requirement, because it helps you get the most that you can out of this class.

To preform the best you can in this class, I think that you should simply stay organized. This is a class meant to teach you something so treat it as such. It is really easy to get behind on things or treat something as less important if you think of it as an easier class. So stay on top of your work because it will end up catching up with you.

My recommendation for being able to foster that mindset is that you chose a topic that you thoroughly enjoy and put your best effort into each assignment. If you chose a topic that you don't like or you don't care about, you are going to quickly give up putting any effort into the assignments and you aren't going to be able to take away any substantial lesson from completing the assignments.

29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept

Opportunity

The opportunity is that every 92 seconds there is another American victim to some sort of sexual assault. The rape rate in America had been steadily declining since 1992 when it reached an all time high at 42.8 per 100,000 inhabitants. However, since 2013, the rate has once again started on this incline that grew from 25.9 to 30.8 in only five years. I feel as though customers needs are not being satisfied which is why this is growing so drastically. They need a company like mine, a group of people there to teach them and to be there for each other. This is a very 'hush-hush' topic that you don't hear many people talking about. The reality is though, that an overwhelming majority of women are afraid to walk alone at night, afraid to go out by themselves and afraid to take a bus unaccompanied. This should not be the case. People should not have to live their lives in fear that someone else might try to harm them. By creating a well marketed and advertised platform for my company, showing women that we are there to help them feel safe, we will have a large window of opportunity. This will show them that they have somewhere to go to help protect themselves, and I believe this window will be open until this statistic is obsolete because all anyone wants is to feel safe.

Innovation

The innovative aspect of my company is incrementally innovative. Many self defense classes involve going to the class, learning some moves, and leaving. My company is innovating on the idea of what self defense should involve. What I mean by this is that we will not only have classes teaching you about how to defend yourself, but we will teach why we need self defense, and how to be aware of your surroundings. We will have a strong focus on these classes and can entice the customers to attend the classes by offering coupons or rewards to those in attendance. Our company will be subscription based, having payments on a monthly or yearly basis (or whatever would work best for our customer). In addition to this, when signing up, each individual will be assigned to an instructor and paired with a buddy. The importance of this is so that way the class does not end when you leave the vicinity. You can keep in contact with both of these people and have them as resource to call when you feel like you are in a fishy situation. This company wants everyone to feel like family, to feel safe when around each other. Loyalty from customers comes when they feel important to an organization.

Venture Concept

Teaching

Competitors to my company are the other self defense companies. However, more than this I honestly feel as though Personal Defense Devices are a bigger threat. This is because people often think "oh i am safe, I have my pepper spray," even though they have never used it, might forget it at home, or don't know how they would react under the more intense circumstances of sexual violence. This is why my company would teach them all of these things. These classes will be offered probably two to three times a week and spanning for only around 30 minutes and each class will cover an array of different information. Customers will be encouraged to attend at least a class a week and if they are unable to attend we can work with their availability or make sure that the information is available for them. There are not a lot of sexual defense companies that are at least well-marketed to have made themselves known. I suppose gyms could possibly be a threat to the company, however, most gyms either don't offer classes or their classes are limited and people with jobs don't have time to attend them. We combat all of these things, as said previously.

Three Minor Elements

1. I believe that my most important resources for starting this venture are my keen interest in what I am doing, my contacts to start up the business and my communication skills. These resources are not only unique to me, because all of these resources are, but they are also what is going to help start up my business, and what is going to make me keep going even when the company faces hard times. I think passion is extremely important, you obviously need more than that, but without passion for what you are doing, there would be no drive in your work ethic and nothing keeping you there.
2. The next opportunity that I think that I would like to tackle with my current innovation would be to aim it at children and have programs where children could use the Buddy system for bullies. We would tech self defense and what to do if they are facing bullies along with giving them confidence to speak up about it. This is because a big problem is that most children who are being bullied, do not tell anyone.
3. In five years from now, assuming that I launched, I would hope that we would have around 33 locations in Florida, spread out to be about 1 location for every other county. I would also hope that it had begun to spread out of Florida. Alaska, Michigan, Nevada, Arkansas, Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico, District of Columbia, Nebraska, Oklahoma. These are the states with the highest rape rate in America and so my goal would be to definitely have a least one franchise in each state within five years and grow from there.

Feedback

Most of the feedback that I got was just about how important they think the classes are. "I think that it is important and such a good idea that you plan to teach your customers why self defense is necessary."
This feedback has changed my original in that I made the classes a more focal part of my innovation and venture then they were before. I wanted to make them available to all customers and to entice customers to attend by giving rewards. There will be multiple classes a week so that more people have the opportunity to attend.