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.