Week 10 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?

• Funny enough, this entire section is exactly what I'm learning in the Business Plan lab at UF. Like exactly the same material. The reinforcing coincidence of that is what stood out to me the most. Also, this section was presented in a way more complicated manner than I think it needs to be. Just reading this was really overwhelming and I think if it were to be explained in simpler terms it wouldn't have been as bad.

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

• I don't think the author did a great job at explaining credits and debits and how one goes on the left and the other goes on the right. When I took financial accounting this was a really confusing issue to me that I think is still confusing. And I'm doing a business minor so this has to be really confusing for non-business students.

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

• Are operating expenses the same as fixed costs? The example financial sheets are confusing me because I thought accounting was suppose to look the same regardless of the class teaching it...
• For an entrepreneur, what is the most important financial tools or formulas an entrepreneur should use? And does pricing factor in to how you label certain costs? I'm confused about that too.

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 author could have done a better job at explaining how the financials of a business all tie in together and give investors a concrete view of how the business is going to make money. Also I don't think capacity was mentioned, which is what needs to be calculated for understanding a business's sale goal. (Unless I missed that?)

Growing My Social Capital

Hi Folks,

This was a very useful assignment because it forced me to actually contact people who could give me really useful insight into my business.

For the commenters, my business idea is to provide a support service to survivors of revenge porn that includes an online website with free information on legal options, a community forum, and the paid service that finds the revenge porn online and tries to take it down or attempts to bury it under other layers of info using search engine optimization.

So for the domain expert (1) I contacted Leakserv B.V., a company that is using highly advanced technology to track down revenge porn and issue DMCA takedown notices to owners of the sites where the revenge porn is listed. They also work with law enforcement to provide evidence of the revenge porn so as to prosecute the initial person who posted it. The person I got in contact with is Bart von Leewen, the co-founder of Leakserv and the owner of an Anti-Privacy company called Onsist. I started emailing him and just recently sent him an invite to connect on Linkedin.

The interaction I had with him was really insightful for my business idea. He told me how there is definitely a need for helping survivors of revenge porn and that people are even getting creative by using photoshop to create revenge porn when no content has ever been sent. The "favor" I asked of him was basically if his tactics to take down the revenge porn differed in the US since he's located in the Netherlands. Also if he knew of any other sites doing what I hope to do. Bart said he was glad to advise me so I will hopefully incorporate him into my currently nonexistent board of advisors. He even said that we could work together in the future!

Okay, so next is the expert on the market (2). For this I contacted endrevengeporn.org and was able to talk to Anisha Vora, Victim Outreach Coordinator for the campaign and victim of revenge porn herself. At first I contacted her via her email on the site but later we talked on the phone. Now I follow her on Twitter.

The "favor" I asked of her was basically if there is demand for my business' services out there and what are the current options for survivors of revenge porn. To the first thing she said hell yes and to the second she said that there are very few options, one of which is getting the photos trademarked and paying a yearly fee of 300-400 dollars to keep the trademark. Which is insane! She mentioned that most victims don't want to go through the legal options, they just want the photos taken down.

Lastly, she mentioned that there are a lot of scams out there targeting victims and that a big issue for my business will be building credibility. She said whenever I have my site going that she could possibly recommend my services on her site! So that's cool. I plan to incorporate her into my network by continuing to talk with her as the business progresses and eventually partnering with her campaign.

God this is long. Lastly is the supplier. So I tried to contact Google 3 different ways and am currently still trying to find who I need to talk to. I tried emailing google's customer service. No response. I tried emailing their press email but they said they weren't going to respond... I messaged a friend who interned at Google and they said to use Linkedin to contact someone on the relevant team. So that's where I'm at. I haven't been able to make contact with anyone yet :(

The favor I want to ask google is how their rule for doing search engine optimization will effect the service I want to provide and what are the existing options for taking down revenge porn. I'm going to keep working on this.

Reflection: THIS POST IS SO LONG IM SORRY. I've never networked like this before and while the first two were relatively easy to contact a real person, Google is super hard to talk to. Everything is forms and "if you're not press we aren't going to respond to you." I will definitely incorporate online networking into my networking skills in the future.

Elevator Pitch No. 3

Hello Loyal Followers!

Today I will make my third attempt at my elevator pitch. I got some really good feedback last time so I've tweaked my pitch to include what I thought would be really useful. Here is the most important and influential feedback I got:

• "Maybe you could go into the cost for someone to hire this company, maybe even a promotion for college students." - Taylor Brenenstuhl

• "I'd like to hear a mention of them [competitors] and why your product stands out from theirs." - Carolina Lafuente

• "This could easily come across as an internet scam if not marketed correctly." - Alexander Gubernikoff

The last comment from Alex was the most suprising. I really hadn't thought that my service could come off as spammy. Now that I think of it, though, if I don't design my website correctly and provide that legitimate human component survivors could think that I'm trying to take advantage of them. Which is certainly not the case.

None of the feedback I got was silly or mean, thankfully. I think the first time I did my pitch I didn't do as good of a job as explaining how crazy it is that there isn't more resources for survivors out in the world and more people responded with shaming comments about the survivors. Hopefully, I have been able to alleviate some of that shame.

Anywho, here's attempt number three! Let me know what I can do better :)