The Twenty Percent

Hero,

So in this exercise, I am delving into a conversation about the "80/20" rule. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, the 80/20 rule is a rule in business stating that, of your target market, 20% will provide you with the vast majority of sales and will make up your most dedicated customer group. In a startup, funds are very limited so using market techniques that actually reach that 20% will save startups from wasting money they can't afford to waste. To illustrate this principle, I've interviewed a Gainesville entrepreneur by the name of Sheldon. He founded his company Cocovana to sell his product, the Coconut Twist. In the following interview, he and I talk about how he targets his 20%.

Also, here's his answers to a few questions I forgot to ask in the interview:

• What are their customers' unmet needs?
• super portable compared to machete and unmet needs are having a tool to safely open coconuts
• Where do they find their customers? 
• in health food stores, buying fresh coconuts
• generally Asian and Latino markets
• What are their customer's demographics? 
• Latin and Asian groups because coconuts are a part of their culture
• large cities to target Asian and Latino communities
• What kinds of media do their customers consume?
• everyone is on facebook
• not too sure, need to put more effort into figuring this out

Secondly, I went to grocery stores (Wards and a local Asian market) to talk to his 20%. Unfortunately, I didn't actually find anyone buying fresh coconuts... Everyone I explained Sheldon's product to were interested and said it was a neat idea but they didn't feel the need to buy coconuts... So here are 2 sad videos of me talking to myself at different grocery stores. 

Reflection: From my interview, I conclude that Sheldon definitely knows his customers problems. The need for a safe, portable coconut opener is the unmet need his company is solving. A difference I encountered may be in where his customers are located. I was at grocery stores for a total of an hour and a half trying to talk to someone buying fresh coconuts, and I couldn't find anyone. If his customers are in grocery stores, I couldn't find them. Maybe his market is so niche that his customers, and I'm talking about the target market, not even the 20%, are more geographically spread out and he's going to need to find some way of reaching them beyond being in stores. I think he'll be able to figure it out though.

That's all folks! Here's a picture of some coconuts:

Free Money

So this exercise was pretty weird. For my class, we had to take 5, 1 dollar bills and hand them out to people in public. For this to occur, we had to develop a strategy. My strategy for this exercise is listed below:

• Where will you go?
• Checkers!
• What kind of people will you approach?
• I will approach anyone who is walking up to the Checkers. I designed a sign that says "do you like money?" so as to gain their interest. The people I assume who will take my money are hungry, curious people walking by or to the Checkers. There is also a large homeless population that hangs around Checkers so I think I'll be able to give out money fairly quickly.
• What will you say to get the conversation started?
• I will say "hi! Are you getting something to eat?"
• What is your plan for the conversation?
• After my initial question, I plan on saying "here's a dollar so you can get something extra with your food!" If they don't want the money, I'll just say "okay" and "enjoy your Checkers." If they ask me why I'm trying to give them a dollar, I'll say something like "I want you to be able to get that extra milkshake or fries that you may have written off b/c you didn't want to spend the money."
• Out of five attempts, how many dollar bills do you think you will be able to give away?
• I believe all of them. 

Here's the resulting video:

Reflection:
At first, this was a lot harder than I realized. People kept giving the dollar back to me because they said they didn't need it. I also had to change locations because there wasn't a lot of people where I was. I ended up in front of the gas station and that's where I had the most success. Checkers was a bust.

Later, though, it was easier. I changed my tactic of telling people that I was giving them a dollar to buy food to telling them to keep the dollar so they can pass it on or do whatever they want with it. They were offended when I originally told them to go buy food with it. One guy even asked if he looked homeless and I had to do some quick back-peddling.

So my predictions for the assignment were definitely off. I had to change my location, my strategy, and it was a lot harder than I realized. At first, I assumed that anyone would take a dollar since it was just a dollar and this was suppose to be harmless. I thought people would love getting a dollar to get some food. Instead, they were offended.

In conclusion, this was a strange exercise that I enjoyed but also had some trouble with. It was fun giving money to people who enjoyed getting it. It was super weird when people were offended... selling things is hard!!!!

Week 7 Reading Reflection

1) What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations? 

Definitely the author's assertion that psychographics weren't the most effective way of segmenting a market. That really blew my mind because it contradicts what my business classes and my professors have been telling me. 

2) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

The intro of the reading was kind of confusing because I felt that it made assumptions that I didn't entirely understand. Also, I'm confused about what's the difference between psychographics and the kind of data they described was the better than psychographics. Wouldn't you figure out what features and benefits matter to your customers when you put them in a certain psychological identity? Jk, I'm repeating this question for the below section.

3) If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

Is it really true that people were "bursting with variety" only following the 1960s? 

-I didn't like how the intro described the issues that arose and I want to know why they ruled out technology as a factor.

Can't you figure out what features and benefits matter to your customers when you put them in a certain psychological identity? 

-I guess this just doesn't make sense to me. Like aren't psychographics basically the features and benefits that companies are looking for???? No se.

4) Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

I think the assumption that the people had changed following the 1960s while the advertising had not downplays the role of technology in the need for more evolved advertising strategies. I can agree that there needed to be a revolution in advertising based on segmentation other than by demographics but I dislike that the authors didn't go more into the why that drove this need. Seems to me like they glossed over it.

Elevator Pitch No. 2

Howdy,

Here's my second elevator pitch for my venture Post Back. Hope this clarifies my idea for anyone who has commented on my other posts without me explaining the idea!

As for reflections on the feedback from my last pitch, first thing is that I now know to set my youtube videos on "public" when I upload them. I had a lot of encouragement but unfortunately some people were unable to view my pitch due to my incompetence. My favorite comment from the first pitch was the person who suggested report buttons for unwanted or inappropriate content on every site. My knowledge of the internet is limited, but I do know that you can download extensions to your web browser that could serve in this function. I'm adding that idea to the list of things I can work on.

The comments saying that so and so would never send nude photos of themselves even if they were dating were insightful but overall not too helpful. My idea deals with the end result of someone violating another person's trust by posting confidential photos. Saying you'd never send photos is great but that's blaming the sender and not the person who posted them. It's a personal preference to send nude photos or videos but it is, or at least should be, a crime to post something of someone that was meant to be private.

Other than that, most of the comments were about people urging me to take on this opportunity because they felt that there is a need for my idea. Which is encouraging and really appreciated, but I am looking for more feedback on things like the profitably of the business or the legality or the threat of competitors. All thoughts welcomed, though, and big thank you to the people who commented on my last pitch!

As for how I changed the pitch, I condensed my information and tried to point out the harmful effects of revenge porn as well as introduced the technical ways in which I hope to achieve my business.

Interviewing Customers: Third Time's The Charm!

Hi Folks,

So here's the third round of interviewing customers for my business venture. The videos are post below! Also, if any video can't be viewed for any reason, please PLEASE comment saying that you can't view them. I had trouble with the last batch of videos I posted so if you could let me know, I would greatly appreciate it.

Strategy: 

The strategy I used for my interviews to try and make them as unbiased as possible by saying I was going to interview them for a class and I wanted their honest first reactions to a business venture. I really tried to not give them too much information so that I wouldn't change any of their responses. I wanted to hear what issues people had with this idea. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs think they have great ideas and don't ever ask potential customers what issues they could foresee with the idea. I asked younger people who could possibly be in the situation I describe to them in which they would need this service.

Reflection:

I got a lot of "this is a good idea" reactions from people, which is nice but overall not really helpful in finding the kinks in this idea. I'm really glad that the people I talked to thought my idea was cool and would actually help people but I was surprised that I didn't get more people who were doubtful that I could actually do this service. I don't know how to code or really how the internet works! Maybe my enthusiasm for the idea influenced what people though. Though I really tried to not be biased... I think I should change the people I'm talking to for any future interviews. I still haven't interviewed anyone who's actually been in the position to need my venture's services so I think that I should definitely do that before I proceed with my idea.

Idea Napkin No. 1

Alright, so I think this is a really cool assignment. Today I wrote on a "napkin" (aka a piece of paper) my business idea and my strengths and weaknesses. Take a look! I think it's pretty neat:

After writing this out, I found some discrepancies in what I want to do and what I can do. Other people have raised the question of how I'm actually going to do the service that I want to provide. The answer? Not really sure. I worked at an SEO company last summer so I do have experience with trying to get particular content to show up in google for a particular keyword search, but I'm no expert. People are also right in saying that you could figure out how to do what I'm offering for free online. I think that's why I'm attempting to market the idea as "peace of mind" since I'll be providing a community forum and legal resources for free so as to shape the idea of growing a community of survivors rather than solely providing a service that people could figure out how to do for themselves. 

Competencies was the hardest part of this. I need to do more research on if there are companies out there providing the same service that I'm attempting to provide and then figure out how to do this service. I'm still kind of confident in the market that I'm targeting, though. Every time I look for help for survivors of revenge porn I see a lot of "you shouldn't have sent those pictures in the first place" aka victim blaming, rather than any service or resource that is providing help to people.

Let me know what you think! Feedback is much appreciated in this case :)

Interviewing Customers No. 2 (aka No. 1 for me)

Hiya folks,

So I spent today walking around campus, talking to people about my venture idea. I got a lot of useful feedback that's changing my outlook on the venture so this exercise can definitely be called a success. This assignment was suppose to be the second time I interview customers but, alas, I suck so this was the first time I did this. Meaning these interviews are kind of rough when they were suppose to be refined but they're still very useful.

Here's my revised idea: a for-profit company that provides a personalized online image restoration service to survivors of revenge porn along with free community support forums, legal resources, and (maybe) a service where survivors can get back at their aggressors.

Customers? Survivors of revenge porn and people who want to restore their online image.

Interview strategy? I didn't do the first round of interviews so my strategy hasn't developed other than asking people who look like they aren't busy.

Here they are:

If anyone has any other feedback, I would love to hear it! 

Reflection on the interviews: I got positive feedback on my idea but also had people wondering about the practicality of providing this service. Someone pointed out that, if you wanted to, anyone could research on how to bury unwanted pictures or videos and do it themselves. That got me thinking. Of course anyone could do what I'm providing, if they wanted to, but what I'm providing is a peace of mind. That survivors don't have to worry because this situation is being taken care of by professionals. I don't know how to become a professional of the interweb (yet) but the interviews helped me refine what it is I'm trying to provide to my customers. "My venture provides peace of mind to survivors of revenge porn" sounds a lot better than how I've defined this idea previously.

Lastly, here are a few tips for students interviewing customers:

1. Talk to someone who has their own company or any entrepreneurial activity about what kind of feedback they looked for from customers when starting out. This will really help in getting the most out of your interviews.
2. Try talking to people who are leaving a building rather than going in. They're more likely to talk to you. Also, make sure they're walking slow enough not to be hurrying anywhere.
3. Don't question criticism. Just take it. You want people to poke as many holes as possible in your idea so you figure out if it doesn't work in the beginning rather than in the end. If someone is criticizing you for something that you don't think they understand, it's not that they're stupid. It means that you probably need to work on how you're explaining your idea.

Elevator Pitch No. 1 - My Venture

Here's the deal. My entrepreneurship class required me to pick a business venture and do a pitch for it. Here goes nothing....or everything.

Problem: Some people* post nude or pornographic pictures, usually of their exes, online, without the consent of those in the picture. The US government (just focusing on the US, though this is a world phenomena) is really bad at regulating this crime and, in actuality, only 26 states have laws criminalizing these attacks. Needless to say, this leaves a huge unmet need from survivors of revenge porn.

Solution?  Post Back! (the name of my venture) "Taking the Power Back" My first entrepreneurial endeavour providing legal resources, a reverse SEO service designed to bury the pictures down in the internet (or take them down as much as possible), and a community forum where survivors can communicate, and maybe even get back at their attackers. (I'm brainstorming spam services that survivors could use to inundate their perpetrators emails or FBs.)

That's it! More to come as I flesh out the idea. Let me know what you think :)

P.S. After reading this post, I went back and changed "victim" to "survivor" in my sentences. Wish I had done that in my video but too late!

*Thanks again for your comment Linda. I should have been more descriptive of the problem I was identifying but you helped me clarify my idea :)