Assignment 11A - Idea Napkin No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life? 

• My name is Izzy Chigurupati. I am an Accounting major here at the University of Florida and I hope to be doing my Master’s in ISOM starting next year. My skills and talents such as being organized have stemmed from my experiences thus far. I usually have to do a lot of things by myself; for instance, at one point I was working 60 hours a week and was enrolled in Business Finance. This causes me to be busy and overwhelmed, so I aspire to make processes or aspects of my life (and others’ lives) easier. This is what led me to my business concept. If there was a service that paired UF with off-campus housing that resulted in flexible leases for us, the student body, a lot of financial stress would be alleviated. I would be able to not worry about finding a summer sublease and could use that money to pay for my master’s.

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

• I am offering a service in which UF partners with off-campus housing. This can result in flexible leases for us. This solves many unmet needs such as international students who only need housing for a semester, parents who are worried about their children being homeless during Summer C finals week, and those who have trouble finding sublets and face a money deficit (i.e. end up paying two leases at once).

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common? 

• I am offering this to UF (and possibly Santa Fe) students who are not Gainesville-native. This entire category has the fact that they need housing (and thus flexible leases) in common. Another category which may substitute the students would be the parents/guardian of the students, if they pay for their child’s housing.

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

• The customers would pay to use this service because of the convenience. For instance, an add-on fee of $200 for a flexible lease is still substantially less than having to pay for months of unoccupied rent space and it beats being homeless.

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

• To my knowledge, the only competitors on the market are those that do not completely fulfill the needs of the students (i.e. dorms) or give up convenience (i.e. apartments far away from campus). Dorms provide flexible leases but there are often not considered because many upperclassmen prefer apartments and the only apartments that offer flexible leases are at least a thirty-minute bus ride to campus thus compromising convenience. My service will cover aspects in which the current solutions fall short.

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others.

• I believe that all of these elements work well together. For instance, I cited in my elevator pitch that over 70% of undergraduate students live off-campus which means that they face these problems regularly. It also means that there is a huge untapped market for UF. The only part that I feel that my business concept is weak is that my service depends on cooperation from UF. I know that UF is spending money renovating dorms right now as admittance numbers go up and we trek to a top five public school, but convincing UF to pair with off-campus housing might need lucrative support and could take a while to implement.