Venture Concept 2

Opportunity:
At the University of Florida and the area surrounding the university where students live, there is not a reliable, cheap and safe way to get to in from campus or even around campus at any time. This is an unmet need among the students at the university who mainly live off campus but even those who live on campus.
The demographic of my market is:

• Ages 17-25
• Students at the University of Florida
• People without a car, bike, or scooter
• People with discretionary income that will spend on transportation methods
• People who travel to campus often

The transportation methods that make up the current solution for students is walking, the RTS bus system, bikes, Ubers, or friends with cars. These solutions are use to fulfill the unmet need  but still fall short in one aspect or another. For example, the RTS is a great way to get to class when the weather conditions are not ideal. However, the bus system is not reliable the app always changes the arrival time and at night the buses are not as frequent.

There is definitely a big opportunity to solve this unmet need, as a student myself I have heard many complaints about parking and getting to and from campus. If many people are complaining about this unmet need there is an opportunity big enough to capitalize. The window of opportunity will be open for as long as the unmet need is there. Over time, I think this opportunity will grow as more and more apartment complexes are built increasing the size of the market.

Innovation:

My innovation is the UScoot which is purpose is to meet the unmet need of a reliable, cheap and safe method of transportation of University of Florida students. The UScoot is a electric scooter that is used on a rent basis. There is an app in the App Store and Google Playstore that is directly related to the UScoot. This app allows users to unlock the scooter and hook up their credit or debit card to their account allowing them to pay for their rides. The app allows has a locator on it showing you where the closes scooter is to your location. Once the scooter is unlock by a rider, the scooter will take them anywhere they want to go in a two mile radius off campus. When they are done with the scooter they leave it where they get off allowing the next user to pick it up for their turn. The cost of the ride is charged by the minute and the scooter has a flat rate to unlock it for use. To unlock the scooter it costs $1 and then it charges 20 cents per minute of use. So say it take you five minutes to get from your apartment to class it will only cost you $2. For my company, the upfront cost to start my company is so big as we have to buy the scooter upfront and hope that people use them enough to generate us profit. However, once the company takes off there are no continue costs to keep the company going besides maintenance cost on the scooters. Maintenance on the scooter would be on a per basis need and the app would let the maintenance staff when their is a malfunction with it working. 

Venture Concept:
The UScoot will solve students at the University's problem of having a consistent and reliable way to get around and to and from campus. The UScoot work on the time of the user, they do not have to stand around and wait to a certain time for them to become available. The UScoot is an easy and fun way to get places you need to be in a timely fashion. Before the introduction of UScoot there were a limited number of ways to get around campus. These ways of other transportation would be my competitors such as RTS, and Uber/ Lyft. Analyzing my competitors allows me to see their strengths and weaknesses and see how I can beat them. First looking at RTS, this is the free bus transportation for students, they have the edge over my company by being free which is huge. College kids tend to capitalize when things are free. However, RTS is not reliable at all hours of the day. At night, there are a limited number of buses and route that they bus go and even during the day the buses do not run on set times. There have been times that the app has said 5 minutes but taking more like 15 minutes putting me in a situation of being late for class. We can beat the competitor of RTS by having low prices that still entice the broke college kids and having our scooter accessible 24/7. The other competitor is Uber and Lyft. their strength is the customer loyalty of college kids that is the first thing that comes to mind when they need a ride somewhere. However, I think a great way to keep business and prevent future competitors is having a contract with the university guaranteeing a limit on competition entering the market.

Minor Elements:

1. Secret Sauce: My competitors that enter the market after me will probably have similar scooter or bikes that work the same way as mine. My advantage over them would be the customer base I built being the first of my kind being in the market. People love to go with what they know rather than switching something up.
2. What's next for the venture? I would definitely like to see how the students react to the scooter and see if it is a hit. Then I would try to add a new product of a bike to the mix. Differentiating my product line allows me to profit off two products and if one works better than the other I can adjust my numbers accordingly. 
3. What's next for me? In the next five years, I do not see myself still running the company. I would love to still be involved with the company and help them from time to time but not something I would want to run day to day. I would hopefully have a very successful company and hire people to manage the company. Also, would love to expand this idea to other college campuses around the country.

Feedback and Change:

I received a lot of insightful feedback that helped me alter some parts to my venture concept. Some things that were mentioned was how would maintenance work and how to limit other companies to come into the same market on campus. So I added that maintenance would work on a per need basis and the app would let the maintenance staff know when one is not working. Then I added that I would have a contract with the university to not allow other electric scooters companies to come on campus and steal away my sales.