My Secret Sauce

5 kinds of human capital I have that make me different:

1. I like to read different, random articles about economics and technology.
2. I have an ability to work on a task and complete it in a timely manner if left alone. In other words, a sense of focus.
3. I do not tend to use emotion in decision-making, which could be a good thing or bad thing depending on the situation.
4. I like to use logic in discussion.
5. I can be random at times, which could be beneficial in the generation of ideas.

Note: Sorry if the audio for some of the interviews is kind of weird; some of these were conducted over Skype with friends who are not in Gainesville.

Summary of each interview

Max – https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/max-interview

Max noted my ability to be dedicated and focused on completing a task. Although I am conventional in my approaches to problem solving, I sometimes can be creative and assess work from unique perspectives.

Trevor – https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/trevor-interview

As someone who was my high school colleague in academics and in volunteering for the local community, Trevor has worked with me both on school projects and community service projects. He refers to my enthusiasm for topics I’m interested in – specifically Economics. He also refers to skill of adaptability when mentioning the bowling fundraiser we organized a while ago with our friend Alex.

Brianna – https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/brianna-interview

She referenced my motivations to study business. Also, she talked about how I liked working with quantitative information like graphs, charts, and numbers.

Alex – https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/alex-interview

We have known each other since first grade, and we were classmates in high school. Alex notes my ability to focus on a task and immediately start planning how to complete something.

Marshall – https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/marshall-interview

He mentioned my organizational skill. Also, Marshall explained how I function in group assignments. From the interview, he stated that I do not aim to take the attention away from other members of the group, but rather I focus on keeping the group’s processes on track towards completion.

Reflection

I think that I display my characteristics and other attributes of human capital clearly when working in a group that is made up of people I know well. So the five things I listed in the beginning of the assignments were described in a similar way by the friends I interviewed. If I interviewed people who I was just acquainted with, I would have most likely received different answers. I don’t think there were many differences in the answers from the interviews. For example, when mentioning the use of “emotion” to my friends, they all said they did not think that emotion was something that made me unique. I believe that my friends were correct about me. If I had to make corrections to the list, I would correct the first item. Instead of just noting that I “like to read about economics and technology”, I could say that my interests are inclined towards those subjects.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

Summary of feedback received from Elevator Pitch No. 1:

Emote some more – use different facial expressions rather than the same one for the entire duration of the video.

Provide a better explanation of the logistics behind the venture – remove convoluted pricing. Make the logistics more streamlined in order to maintain lower prices but also make a reasonable profit.

Introduce the fact that the venture is aimed towards college students as its main customer demographic earlier in the pitch.

The most important advice would be the explanation of the venture’s logistics. Honestly, I even found myself somewhat confused by my own venture’s plan. That was obviously not a good sign. I had to change the venture’s structure in a few ways. If I did not, applying actual cost and pricing numbers would most likely reveal high prices or low profit. There were factors in pricing that would have eliminated the venture’s differentiator which is organic ingredients at lower prices. Because of that, I made the venture’s plan simpler compared to the initial logistics so that both the potential customer and I can understand it better.

Based on the feedback, I focused more on displaying enthusiasm and providing a more efficient plan for the venture’s revenue drivers. I also tried moving my hands in different ways in order to emote a little more.

My Customer's Avatar

So based on the demographics of my customer interviews, I talked to mostly female students and some male students. I figured I would give my customer avatar a name, so I’ll refer to the avatar as Sophia. That seems like a common name. Anyways, on to the customer details:

Sophia is a 19 year old college student from Tampa, Florida. She lives off-campus in an apartment complex with a roommate who’s also a student at the university. Her mode of transportation includes her fuel efficient car for long distance trips, shopping, or if she has to remain on campus for extracurricular reasons. She recently started working as a student assistant for the university. She usually rides the bus in order to get to campus if she just goes to class then back to her apartment. She lived in a suburban area near downtown Tampa before attending college. She exercises when she can and usually does aerobic or cardio exercises. As for her digital life, she’s just like most other people in her age group: Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. For television, she watches whatever captures her interest on Netflix or Hulu.

Sophia likes to prepare and cook her own food when she can, but her schedule sometimes thinks otherwise. On busy days when she doesn’t have time to go and shop for groceries, she’ll settle for something that can be prepared quickly or she’ll go out to eat with friends. However, she wants to stay healthy and doesn’t want a busy schedule to start affecting her health. Whenever she looks for new recipes on things like Facebook where her friends share videos of quickly prepared tasty recipes, she saves the ones she thinks will be affordable and healthy. Sophia has mostly done her grocery shopping at Publix. Since coming to university, she decided to try out places that sold organic food. After buying some organic ingredients to cook the new recipe she saved, she found that the ingredients did indeed taste good, but they were rather costly. She liked the idea of organic, fresh foods, but she didn’t like its effect on her budget.

Sophia does not have much experience with gardening herself, although her parents maintained a small garden back in Tampa when she lived there. It was something she didn’t really pay attention to. As for the environment, she does recycle and takes a moderate approach to sustainability.

What do I have in common with the customer avatar?

I am in a similar age group, and I’m also a college student. I currently do use my car as a mode of transportation, but that’s only for the summer. In the fall and spring semesters, I usually took the bus in order to get to campus. For social media, I do have those three things. 

(Follow me on Instagram @roy.dlc just sayin’, shameless plug) 

On Mondays through Fridays, I usually cook dinner 3/5 days and eat somewhere else 2/5. Coming from a small town, I didn’t know exactly what made college students like places such as Trader Joe’s or Earth Fare. It was mostly Publix or Winn-Dixie for me. I also went to oriental markets for groceries. I see my friends share videos of recipes on Facebook, and I think to myself, “Wow, that looks pretty tasty. Maybe I’ll try cooking that sometime.”

The common characteristics I share with the avatar are not much of a coincidence because when I thought of the venture, I also thought about myself as a potential customer before talking to others about it. Because of that, I think those aspects influenced the venture’s structure to some extent. The parts that I didn’t have in common with the avatar were influenced by talking to other potential customers and some assumptions about a normal college student.

Wait - wrong Avatar. I don't think my customer is the Master of the 4 Elements.

It's not that kind of Avatar either.

Ok this one's the right customer avatar.
I would also like to apologize for the Avatar jokes.

Portmanteau: Hurration

For this assignment, I checked out the front page of The Independent Florida Alligator, and I took some words from the article titled, “Gainesville begins hurricane preparation”. The portmanteau I constructed is: hurration

Hurration: (noun) the action or process of hastily completing a task from a nonchalant perspective

Basically this portmanteau can be used in the context of doing something quickly in a careless manner. The action can also be defined as “hurried preparation”.

In the two weeks I used this word around friends on campus, it did not really catch on. I guess it sounds like an actual word, but it wasn’t used by others I talked to after a few days. Some of my friends questioned the word – they asked what it meant and why I was using a made-up word. Others didn’t mind it. When I used the word to describe my morning routine one day, a friend of mine was amused by it. She laughed a little and asked if that was a real word. I responded sarcastically, saying that it could be, which led her to Google it to find no definition.

Halfway Reflection

In order to keep with this course, I had to develop a sense of working ahead on assignments. Most of the classes I have taken at UF consisted less of assignments but more of quizzes and exams. Some classes just had a few exams throughout the semester and a few quizzes and that’s what determined your grade. As for the online lectures, I found that watching them all in one sitting on the same day they were uploaded worked best for me. I was able to get the information from them in a consistent manner, and it allowed me to focus on the topics being covered that day. As for interviewing people, I had to work up some sense of persistence and patience when trying to approach random people to talk to.

One moment when I felt like “giving up” was after the first ‘Testing the Opportunity Hypothesis’ assignment. I always thought of myself as socially awkward, and whenever I tried to refine my awkwardness, I’d end up making social interaction even more awkward. I was able to conduct the amount of interviews needed for the assignment over the span of a few days and a lot of hesitant approaches. However, I tried to draw out the interviews as long as possible in order to meet the 10 minute minimum requirement, and in doing so, did not meet the minimum requirement. I was pretty disappointed in myself and my lack of ability to make a conversation with a stranger last at least ten minutes. I became discouraged. However, I wanted to succeed in this course – and that meant talking to more people. I decided to change my mindset and didn’t take myself so seriously when approaching strangers. Because of that, they were willing to talk more and I was able to make the interviews longer on the ‘Figuring out Buyer Behavior No. 1’ assignment.

Some advice for a student who plans to take ENT 3003 in the fall 2016 semester:

1. Reflect on why you want to take this class to begin with. Don’t take it just because there’s no exams. I assumed that because there were no exams yet it was a 4 credit course, there had to be some aspect of the class that made it equivalently as time consuming as a usual 4 credit course. You do have to dedicate a decent amount of time and effort in order to meet the requirements. By figuring out why you want to take this course, you will be able to focus on developing a ‘tenacious mindset’ rather than trying to complete this course and never think about it ever again. Tenacity is one of the most important things about being an entrepreneur, according to Mike Colwell who runs Plain Angels, an Iowa angel investor forum. Tenacity is also applicable to success in life in general.
   
2. Be constructively critical of other students’ ideas. Be open to critique from other students also. The ability to adapt your ideas based on helpful critique will leave you with encouragement rather than a sense of disappointment.
   
3.  If you find yourself in this course and feel like it doesn’t apply to what your aspirations are, then try to figure out how it can. I know that’s one of those “easier said than done” phrases, but it could really help you with determination. Entrepreneurship is a mindset. It doesn’t have to be reserved for the “business-types”. I believe that the mindset of identifying opportunity can be helpful in any field.

A quote from Louis Pasteur, a pioneer and innovator in medicine.

Need Awareness and Information Search

Segment: undergraduate college students at the University of Florida.

Interview #1:

https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/interview-1

Summary of Interview #1: I found that potential customers value time as the most important factor of buying fresh food. This could be attributed to the different schedules of various college students. According to the interview, this potential customer usually buys groceries every two weeks. Using that information, the subscriber model of my venture could still work. As for prices, the word "sale" helps the image of a food product. If I am able to integrate that somehow into my venture through marketing, it would be an improvement for both the consumers and the venture's ability to turn a profit.

Interview #2:

https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/interview-2

Summary of Interview #2: I found that this potential customer shares the grocery shopping with her roommates so that might be something to consider when redesigning my venture. This potential customer prioritizes convenience.

Interview #3:

https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/interview-3-part-1

https://soundcloud.com/user-897152105/interview-3-part-2

Summary of Interview #3: I found that this potential customer also prioritizes convenience when it comes to grocery shopping, which makes sense because of her location. It seems like there was a problem with the estimate of weekly grocery costs. The way the customer finds new recipe ideas is through the Internet - more specifically Facebook videos, which was something I knew recently became popular to share. Also, information search is considered (e.g. bogo deals).

Conclusion: In terms of need awareness and information search, this segment prioritizes convenience and does attempt to find lower cost organic foods / groceries in general but not to a significant extent. Also, the information search for new recipes is more of a passive search because a lot of recipes are shared with others through online social networks or "word of mouth".

Reading Reflection No. 1: Steve Jobs

I chose to read the biography of Steve Jobs as written by Walter Isaacson. Previously, I watched the 2013 film Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher and the 2015 film starring Michael Fassbender. With some background knowledge gained from watching those films, I still learned new things about Steve’s life and perspectives that were not included in the films. The interviews in the book were rather fascinating because the reader was able to construct a real sense for what it must have been to be Steve, or to work with him. The extent to which his lack of sensitivity was depicted in the book is what surprised me the most. It is no surprise that Jobs was portrayed as harsh and insensitive towards the people he worked with at Apple, but the extent to which things were depicted made me kind of cringe and wonder if those who worked with him just did not understand his perspective or if they were justified in their opinions. Another thing that surprised me was the foundation for his belief for integrated products. In the beginning of the book, Steve notes that he saw a calf being born and was fascinated by its ability to almost immediately start walking. From that fascination, he was beginning to build on the integration of software and hardware.

Some of his entrepreneurial characteristics that I admired were his imagination, ability to draw on his background of tinkering with electronics and an interest in design, and his fearlessness when it came to growing Apple as a corporation. However, one thing that I did not admire was his attachment to his work. It was noted that even on family vacations, he would be preoccupied with work. I also did not admire his sometimes condescending, rude behavior towards the people who worked for him. According to Steve, he does not stay mad. Isaacson asked Chief Design Officer of Apple, Jony Ive about it. He remarked that Steve “has this very childish ability to get really worked up about something, and it doesn’t stay with him at all. But there are other times, I think honestly, when he’s very frustrated, and his way to achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody. And I think he feels he has a liberty and license to do that.”

Steve Jobs definitely encountered adversity and failure. Jobs recalled sleeping on friends’ floors and journeying across town for free meals during college, in which he later dropped out after six months. He noted that dropping out left him time to take a calligraphy class, which would later inspire the aesthetic of Apple. One of the most well-known adversities was when he was basically dumped by his own company. He was fired after a power struggle in which the board of directors sided with John Sculley, a former Pepsi executive who had been brought in to manage the company by Jobs. Steve recalled the public humiliation of being ousted from Apple. However, he was able to form some kind of opportunity around that failure. He stated that “the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” During his time away from Apple, he bought Pixar and started NeXT. The company NeXT was not that successful. However, Apple bought NeXT and incorporated some of the company’s technology into Apple products. The deal also brought Jobs back to Apple, where he would eventually take over as CEO. Even though NeXT was not as successful as one would assume with Jobs leading it, the company was able to lead Jobs back to Apple in order to do what he did best: think different.

He exhibited entrepreneurial competencies such as creativity, passion, drive, and a competitive advantage. The competitive advantage of Apple was its emphasis on user-friendly and inviting technological design. I would classify Steve’s ventures as mostly opportunity creation. There was a strong belief in the potential of his products, passion for electronics that he shared with Wozniak, he never learned a line of code, he had charisma, and he was a generalist when it came to electronics as he was talented but not formally educated.

One part of the reading that was confusing to me was the reason why Jobs lied to Wozniak about dividing their pay 50-50. When Atari gave him $5,000 to work on it, Jobs told Wozniak that he got $700, so Wozniak was given $350 of the $5,000.

Two Questions:

              “How did you know when to say ‘no’ to others?” – Saying “no” seems easy on the surface, but to say it to an acquaintance or colleague can be a hard thing to do because we normally want to avoid conflict.

              “What is the one foolish thing you most regret not doing?” – Steve Jobs was quoted, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” Asking him about his regrets would be interesting, as even successful people have regrets they wish they could go back and change.

His opinion of hard work was actually stated in his Stanford commencement speech. He explained that you need a lot of passion for what you’re doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up. So if you’re not having fun doing it, if you don’t absolutely love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. Basically, his opinion was that hard work towards a goal is pointless if you do not have passion for it. I agree. No one wants to waste their time wasting all their effort and limited time on something they care nothing for. They would be better off doing something else. Something where they could use an entrepreneurial drive.

Idea Napkin No. 1

My name is Roy Dela Cruz and I am a rising sophomore, studying Finance and Information Systems at UF. As for talents in a “business” sense, my top 5 strengths according to Gallup’s StrengthsQuest are Focus, Ideation, Restorative, Futuristic, and Maximizer. While the majority of my interests are with finance, managerial economics, and analytics, I am also a little bit interested in things like international relations. As for non-academic interests, I’m into music and geeky things like comic books, sci-fi movies, and video games. My venture idea is derived from my experience with gardening back home. Some of my experiences include the usual volunteering for my local community back in high school as well as an interesting class project I did in senior year. It involved finding a local client, finding out how their business operations could be improved with information technology, implementing a solution, and performing a follow-up on how the solution affected their business. My aspiration is to work in financial management for a large financial services or technology company in a metropolitan city. Regarding my business concept, if I were to start it, the role it would play in my life would probably be a side project.

Fresh Campus offers college students a piece of their own land in which they can grow their own organic food. This will allow students who don’t have yards in Gainesville to consume fresh food at a lower cost in the long term. The venture makes money as users pay a price that differs from user to user. The factors of price determination include how much space of the total garden they choose to occupy with their garden, the type of crops they grow, and how long they want to subscribe to the service – which is currently a minimum 6 month subscription. The factors of price can be summarized by 3 things:

              Space

              Type

              Time

It works in conjunction with a mobile app in which users can track their garden’s progress towards the time to harvest their crops as well as change the type of crops they want to grow.

The venture is marketed towards college students who live in dorms or apartments. The 2 main elements of the venture are affordability and the ability to own a garden without owning an individual yard. Based on my interviews, the age group to market towards would be between 18 to 28 year olds. Other characteristics of my customers include the desire to consume more organic foods as opposed to conventionally processed foods as part of their diet as well as care for the environment to some extent.

Customers will actually pay money to use this service because it could be a better alternative to buying more expensive fresh foods. Also, it could offer a sense of community between users, as they can share things like what they do with their crops – different recipes, etc.

I do not believe there is any other similar venture like mine in Gainesville or any other college campus for that matter. By bringing the concept of community gardens to a university town, I am able to set myself apart from everyone else and hopefully help those who are starting the process of independently living away from their home town.

For the most part, I think that these elements fit together well. It brings a new perspective to a community garden, with the aim of making organic food more accessible to a new generation of household buyers on a small scale and possibly allowing for an appreciation for gardening. However, there is one aspect that I am not sure of. The aspect of the ‘minimum 6 month subscription’ might be out-of-joint with the others. It might be something that some potential customers might disagree with.

Tweaking the Innovation

Fresh Campus: Revenue Drivers and possible Innovations for each one, as structured in a table format:

Revenue Drivers
Levels & Innovation	Mobile App Subscription (monthly, yearly)	Plot Size (4’ x 12’) to (8’ x 12’)	Variety of Crops (1 to 4)
Core	For consumers, the value is in the convenience. The simplicity of subscriptions removes the thinking of purchase decisions. Consumers are left with a reassurance that they will have their garden and they will ‘have’ their food before they actually need it.	Consumers are given control as to how much of the aggregate organic garden they want to occupy.	Consumers are able to benefit by choosing how many kinds of organic foods they want as part of their diet.
Tangible	The app will be the platform for which the venture is built upon and allows for consumers to track their crops.	The tangible aspect of this revenue driver would be the actual land and soil used.	The tangible aspect of this revenue driver would be the actual crops and the satisfaction of growing your own food.
Augmented	The app will be a free download, maybe due to mobile advertisements, and would be updated with things like new recipes based on different crops. Also, the subscription business model lets consumers get the most out of the ‘save money on organic food in the long-run’ aspect.	Gardens with larger plot sizes would indirectly receive more care because they take up more space as part of the aggregate garden. However, because of this, larger plot sizes are sold at a higher price.	The augmented level comes from the fact that all the crops are completely fresh and organic and maintained by a professional gardener.
Innovation	Those who subscribe for a longer basis could receive ‘bonus’ features or free things in order to incentivize consumers to subscribe for a longer basis. (Tangible)	There could be an option to ‘share’ space in order to allow consumers to save money and build a community around this venture. (Augmented)	There could be more offerings in variety of crops in the future. Or, consumers could bring in seeds for crops that the venture does not currently offer. Other users could possibly vote on which new crops they want to be offered for gardening. (Core)