Growing My Social Capital

University of Florida student Jonathan Katz can be both a domain expert in the industry and a domain expert on the market. He was the inventor of Qwerk, which is an app that is used by people in Gainesville, primarily by University of Florida students, to make money completing small tasks, or to pay for people to do small tasks for you.  Since my product, SafeCard is an app, Jonathan Katz could help me design the app, as well as help me market it to college students in the area, as I am trying to do.  I have found this person through knowledge and word of mouth about the app, and contacted Jonathan through linked in.  He gave me advice on developing an app, and a ballpark amount of money it would take to get the app up and running.  For marketing ideas, he mentioned his promo video, where he got well known UF students to participate in the video and share it with their friends, who then shared it with their friends.  The video has over 55,000 views now.  In addition to Jonathan, almost anyone in the industry of marketing would be able to help with the marketing of my product, because beyond the people of Gainesville, my product relates to almost every demographic, and can be successful in any market.

Priyanka Kotian of Thane, India, could be a supplier to my business.  Kotian is a manager at Euclid analytics, which is a location tracking company.  They could supply the tracking chip device necessary to make the credit card look alike tracker.  I searched the employees of this Euclid company on linked in and sent an "Inmail" message to one of the managers who looked like they worked in sales.  They replied that they do not have a sort of chip that I am looking for, but other options.  This means I would have to tweak my idea a little, but that some version of my product is still possible.

Before this assignment, I had never reached out to anyone on linked in.  I had also not spent a lot of time on linked in searching companies or the employees of these companies, so that was really interesting for me. This experience will definitely change my networking events in the future, because now I am much more comfortable with messaging strangers on linked in and asking for help or advice.

Week 10 Reading Reflection

After reading this chapter, I concluded that it was mostly a summary of my financial accounting class.  Most of the information was extremely familiar, such as the balance sheet,  income statement, and the explanations of these two finance tools. Especially because I am a finance major, paragraphs about aspects of finance such as cost of goods sold and cash flows were review. One thing that did surprise or interest me was the information about pro forma statements. The book described them as forecasts or projections of a firms financial period during a future period.  I either do not remember covering this information in earlier classes, or we did not have time to go over it in the semester. This chapter is complicated, not confusing.  There is not much to debate or disagree with because the information is very straight ford and deals with math and finances.  There are set ways that business's keep track of their funding and accounting, so theres really no disagreeing with the author.  If I were to ask the author a question, I would ask if he thinks that the financial aspects of a business are the most important part.  Are entrepreneurs still able to successfully start a business if they know little about finance?  What is the correlation between entrepreneurs being successful, and their finance knowledge?

Elevator Pitch No. 3

After the first pitch, people where a little confused.  I had focused too much on the fact that the tracker was identical to a credit card.  Some people I interviewed about the product thought the tracker was only a replica for a credit card so a thief would try using that card instead of a real card.  I got the response, "Well, what if the thief tries all the cards?"  For the second pitch, I tried to make my Elevator Pitch clear that the tracker is only for tracking purposes, not to stop the thief from spending any of the money in your wallet.  I also included the fact that a lot of people are now making purchases on their cell phones, so less people are carrying wallets.  Because of this, if you are carrying a wallet, it is more likely to be stolen, because the decrease in the amount of wallets for thieves to steal.  My third change to my product and pitch was the addition of an app or website, where people can access information about the whereabouts of their wallets.  Some of the people I interviewed seemed confused as to where they could track it from. 

After the second pitch, I concluded from the comments that almost all changes had been made that needed to be, to be clear about the product.  One suggestion that I added to my pitch was that the tracker could be used for luggages, duffles, and backpacks while traveling.  If your luggage has ever been lost while flying, the tracker can tell you exactly where it is, so you know where to call.  Overall, the four comments I received on my second elevator pitch were very positive, and people seemed excited about the idea, and happy with the changes I made on the second pitch.