HydrationRight 2016 Reflection

Hello All! As 2016 comes to a close, we were tasked to reflect on the semester and the progress we have made with our businesses. Roughly 13 weeks ago HydrationRight was just an idea I had written on a yellow post-it. After lots of time and research, I've created a logo, a business plan, published a Facebook page, and worked on a website. The business plan was very informative for me because I was able to see the holes in the company and do more research to fix them. Although I still have things to work on before our final pitch, I am happy with where HydrationRight currently is. In the coming weeks, I would like to advertise my business on Facebook, but before hand, I need to publish my website and begin drafting a couple blog posts. I'm very impressed by the development of the company over the last couple weeks and am excited for the pitch in January! 

Mama's Meals - End of 2016 Post!!

Mama's Meals has made a lot of progress since our last post! Whether the outcome of the steps we took were good or bad, we have received helpful feedback and we are trying our best to think around the obstacles we have been faced with. We sent out our prototype 300 miles away on November 15, 2016. The meal we sent as our prototype was chicken and rice with a side of broccoli. Before we sent the box out, the challenge we were faced with was how we were going to keep the food cold. We foiled and placed the chicken and broccoli in an insulated bad which we then placed next to icepacks inside the box. We found out the next day that our chicken and broccoli were not cold when they arrived in North Carolina. Despite our disappointment, we are lucky that this is a challenge we are faced with in the early stages of our company's development. We have a  Plan B in terms of keeping our food cold for when we send our next prototype so let's keep our fingers crossed that our change in packaging and icepacks will work! Another step we have taken is completing our business plan; which answers the who, what, and why of our company. Completing the Business Plan made us find the answers to some questions that we were unsure of. With the critical feedback we received on the Business Plan we were able to perfect it and Mama's Meals is now ready to tackle the next step to our final pitch. Lauren, Elli, and I are now in the midst of working on our power point slides which we will present on the final pitch day. We are also creating a website to go along with the power point which will hopefully give a better visual as to how Mama's Meals works. Once we complete our website, we will be sure to share the link with our blog readers first and would appreciate any feedback!

Surfit, an all new apparel Company

Introducing Surfit, Surfit an all new apparel company. We are a surfing and apparel company that is designated on designing clothes that deliver beach lifestyle to people across the country. 24.8% of Americans visit the beach every year thus having a very large market to sell to. As of now our design is in progress but we do have a general idea. The basis of the design will be a surfboard. The design within the surfboard will vary depending on the location you buy the shirt at. The designs could be exclusive to each beach, allowing the people who buy them so show support for the beach the attended. Surfit will also give people a sence of pride in the beach that they go to and be able to rep it.

We are currently working on our final business slide and try our best to catch up with all the other business plans in our class that are relatively more complete than ours. We will work on the design and produce a few shirts that we will initially sell in our school store, and from there we will expand.

 Real fas

End of the year update

Hello readers,

I am getting closer and closer to completing my business. ParkMePlease is the only valet service for Dulles airport so competition shouldn't be a problem. I am panning to build an off site parking lot with tons of space for cars/trucks. I am also thinking about expanding into other airports and becoming an international business. For loyal customers, discounts will be available and parking will progressively get cheaper and cheaper. I am thinking about adding a limo for those customers who would rather park themselves at my parking spot and riding in luxury to their final destination.

Stay tuned for my final updates coming soon.

Stumfort Apparel- Approaching The First Finish Line

The future of Stumfort Apparel looks bright as January 5th (the date of our official pitch) approaches. We have just completed a comprehensive business plan that outlines the vision of our company- a vision that encompasses both style and comfort into one single piece of clothing. We are currently creating more prototypes for our first good, the Stumfort Top Package, which will be the combination of a button-down shirt, a tie and a sweater attachment; we aim to create three separate prototype pieces of Stumfort Apparel wear before January 5th so that we can show our potential investors what a Stumfort product really looks like. The main hurdles that we are facing right now when making our product are our barely-proficient sewing abilities and facilitating the ease in which the tie attachment can be put onto the rest of the Stumfort Top Package (in other words, the wearer currently cannot put on the tie attachment in a time-efficient manner). We hope to fix these issues before the pitch date in order to demonstrate how our product works in front of our investors.

The money gained from these investors can hopefully be put to good use by creating magnet attachments for the tie so that the tie can easily be put on.

We are very hard at work, as seen below:

While these challenges may appear as and when we make progress, all members of the Stumfort Apparel team remain resolute and eager to maintain this same rate of achievement in the coming months. 

Ez-Box gets ready for the final pitch

As January 5th approaches, Ez-Box continues to make progress in the development of our application and business. The Ez-Box prototype application is now completed with all base features working flawlessly thanks to team member Harrison Stuart. Meanwhile, Brandon Lessard and Adam Hillman have created a comprehensible business plan for investors to look over. Working towards the final pitch, the team is shifting its focus towards the presentation and feels confident about Ez-Box's chances in the competitive market.

No Kart

     Recently we discovered an app that is exactly the same as the app we are planning to design. The link of the app is posted below. Thus, after considering, our Go Kart idea has been abandoned. Right now, we are still brainstorming ideas that are be totally different.
   

     Also we have lost our enthusiasm about our last idea because first of all, it's very challenging to make in terms of technology. So the idea that we are focusing now should probably be easier to make and interests us.

     

http://aisle411.com/

   

HydrationRight Continues to Develop

Since my last blog post, I have made a lot of progress with my business MVP. I have been working hard on finishing my website (see home page below) and drafting blog posts that I will publish in the next couple of weeks. I have also spend a lot of time reviewing my business and trying to answer all the hard questions I might be asked during my pitch. This next week I'd like to focus on finishing my logo so that I can open my Facebook page to the public. I would also like to work on my marketing strategy and the technology behind my product.

Stumfort Blog Post - Nov 14th

In the past few weeks, Stumfort has made constant progress and we are very close to creating our first prototype. One important step in this journey has been learning how to sew! We are currently cutting up dress shirts and stitching on snap-ons in order to fit on a sweater attachment, thereby creating a typical Stumfort product. In the near future, we are going to follow accounts on Twitter to help grow our profile and spread the word about Stumfort. We have gotten 5 followers so far and are going to tweet about how our prototype is being finalized so that we can get more attention from those who may be interested in our product.  

Mama's Meals Goals

Since Mama'a Meals last blog post we have not accomplished much since then. We did have to write 20 hard questions for our business, then our class asked us some questions about our business and we struggled to answer a few of them. We are in the process of completing our prototype and still need to print our logo. Hopefully, within the next few days we will send the prototype out, but we still have to bring in the food and place the logo on the box. We are also going to try and finish our business plan by the end of this week.

ParkMePlease in effect!

Dear Readers,

ParkMePlease is now on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. We are going to start working on striking a deal with Dulles airport in the near future to better the lives of the airport users. ParkMePlease will be giving discounts to all followers on any of the accounts listed above. Early adapters to ParkMePlease will receive loyalty points which will earn free parking.

Ez-Box opens into new realms

Ez-Box, previously Pack My Lunch, is doing incredibly well. Brandon and Adam traveled down Jermantown road to the Flint Hill lower school to taste test possible lunches with third and fourth grade students. We discovered that most of our healthy lunch box ideas were enjoyable for these children. As prime examples of who the lunches would be created for, they added valuable insight to our business plan. Harrison also worked closer towards a launch of the prototype and should be finished by the end of the week. Ez-Box is on the path towards success! Below is a picture of some food that the lower schoolers taste tested.

Pack My Lunch prepares for another week of work

As we progress further towards the deadline of our pitch, "Pack My Lunch" has moved further towards initiation. As Harrison passionately works towards creating a prototype app (our minimum viable product), Brandon and Adam are advertising the product to possible users. This week, we hope to taste test some of our possible products with lower school students while also spreading the word of our app. With a twitter account, email, and other advertising techniques, "Pack My Lunch" is hoping to become associated with the idea of healthy lunches. Here is a picture of Brandon working furiously and fearlessly.

Midpoint Reflection - Pack my Lunch

Now that we've reached the midpoint of the semester, I can say that the project so far has been going well but it can go better. I have personally met with the director of Flint Hill Middle School who has agreed to allow our business to taste test with the school's kids for our product. This was a huge step forward and these are the types of things I wanted to do. However, this was only a small step and other attempts at talking more about the business haven't worked out so well. I stood outside of the South Lakes Safeway with a "booth" (hastily put together sign) promoting Pack My Lunch. I didn't get much interest. However, moving forward I do want to do what I did earlier with the Flint Hill Middle School, promoting and pitching our product while simultaneously getting a chance to get major feedback from kids who might benefit from our product.

Midway

We are now half way through the semester and I have learned so much about what it takes to start a business. My group and I really do work on majority of the work together because we find that we come up with the best ideas and accomplish things better that way. We came up with a potential company name which is "Mama's Meals". We have created two separate survey's, one for college students and one for parents, to gather feedback on how much they would pay for our product and how much interest they have in our product. I have personally sent the surveys to the people I know and have asked them to send it to as many people they know as well. We will continue to gather feedback because we think it is important to hear from our potential buyers. This past week we created sketches for our logo and will continue to work on and perfect them in these next few weeks. I downloaded adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator on to my computer and have begun a few electronic sketches. In the next week, we wish to put together our prototype and send it to a college student so we can see what changes will need to be made to perfect our product. We have to purchase a box to ship, containers to hold the food products, the food itself, and an ice pack if the food needs to be kept refrigerated. We will see what works and what doesn't and adjust things if needed.

Midpoint Reflection- Stumfort

As we reach the halfway point, I believe I have learned a lot about the process of creating a start-up business through my endeavors with Stumfort. Tasks such as the elevator pitch, the business canvas, and the overall level of planning that my group and I have put into the company have all taught me lessons of perseverance and innovation. We have currently created a Twitter, a company gmail account, and a logo; our next steps are going to be marketing our product and getting our MVP (a prototype of a Stumfort product) set up.

I believe that Simon Sinek's Ted talk on creating the "why" of a business is definitely the direction the business needs to head in. We need to figure out why we do what we do. I think that the "what" and "how" are covered (we know what we make, and we know how we're roughly going to do it), but I think that crafting a nice mission or vision statement as to why Stumfort is creating these fashion products is something we as a group need to work on.

We're going to visit a thrift store after school in the next week in order to collect materials to create a prototype. Once the prototype is built, we can consider different avenues of marketing the good.

Midpoint Reflection - Stumfort

The class is halfway done and I feel that Stumfort has made solid progress. We are not where we need to be yet, but we can get there. Our company did not start off too fast due to us switching ideas earlier in the class. However, we have made solid progress. We came up with a logo for our company the other day, as well as a Twitter account. We still have a few things we need to get done as soon as possible. Once we create our prototype, my team and I need to find a student that would be willing to test our product in school. Their feedback and how well it goes can help us grasp what we need to work on or what is already good about the product. The goal for next week is that we make our prototype and find someone to test it. This weekend I will get the snaps from the store that we need to make our product. I will also try to make a website for Stumfort sometime next week.

Midpoint reflections

We are halfway through the class and I feel like we have made major progress. We started off a little slow, however, we had moved very quickly recently. We have developed a twitter, a gmail, a logo, and are very close to making out first prototype. I see a bright future for Stumfort and we will be very successful very soon.

Small Business Midpoint Reflection

It is now officially the half-way point in the semester and I am very happy about the progress I've made with developing my business. I've not only learned so much about starting a business, but about myself. Before the year started if you had told me that I'd come up with a product idea that I would actually enjoy working on and other people would consider buying I would not believe you. In the last couple of weeks I've come up with HydrationSmart as a tentative name for my business and have come up with an idea on how to make the technology of the SmartBottle work. I've also started designing my minimal viable product (MVP), which is a website and blog. The website will present information about all the HydrationSmart products as well as allow people to subscribe to an email list, so they can keep up to date with the SmartBottle's progress. This next week I'd like to continue developing my website and contact the alumni office at Flint Hill as well as my mother's alma mater and the school I attended for my first two years of high school, Emma Willard to get into contact with some engineers. Since I have an idea for how I'd like the SmartBottle to track individuals water intake, I'd like to see if my idea is feasible and cost efficient. In a perfect world I'd also love to come up with a basic 3D printed version of the SmartBottle before our final pitch.  

Personal Reflection ---- Sean Zhou

    Currently we are halfway through the class, and I personally have achieved a lot form our attempt to start a business. After watching many successful examples of entrepreneurs, I learned so much more about business. I am currently trying to figure out what our purpose of creating Go Kart is, to make a prototype with basically no money, and to put effort into improving our website. Below I have attached the link to the website that I created for our app.
    I do realize that in order to make Go Kart work, we need a small amount of starting fund. I will continue to work on the app, and figure our why I chose this idea to work on and what our belief is about our idea.

http://szhou5.wixsite.com/gokart

Go-Kart Continues to be Developed

Our app, Go-Kart, has come a long way over the first quarter of the school year. Recently, we have worked on our Minimum Value Proposition. For me personally, this was a totally new experience, I had never thought of the value of having a minimum value proposition. Previously, I believed that a business should shoot for the stars from the start, and not hold anything back. After working on our own Minimum Value Proposition, I recognize the value of it. It is important because it minimizes risk, and more importantly cost, when first getting our business out there. Our Minimum Value Proposition would be a design of our app through photos what would detail the way it would work, and design a website. Currently, we have a very basic website that is basically a place holder for the future. Here is a link to our website: http://szhou5.wixsite.com/gokart. The app photos would allow us to help people make sense of how the app would work, so they can potentially give us money so we can hire someone to develop the app. 

Over this quarter, I feel personally I have learned a lot. I now recognize the importance of planning extensively when working on a business. 

First Quarter

Mama's Meals has come very far over the past quarter. The idea of having easy and healthy meals delivered to college students seems to be needed. As a group, we have figured out most of the little details, such as how much we will charge for the first box and our business name. However, we still have much to do. We still have to send our prototype and get feedback. Sending our prototype will give us an idea of what we need to improve on. Our logo is still in the process of being made, and we are deciding between two. Making the Canvas helped our team determine the main problem we were solving for college students is. So far it has been a productive quarter!

Plans for Mama's Meals

The beginning stages of our business have been very successful. We have accomplished many tasks, such as, coming up with a name, Mama's Meals, figuring out our MVP, and have just started coming up with options for our logo. I have drawn out three ideas for our logo and went around asking people which one they thought was the best because we want to choose a logo that stands out to people, so getting their opinions was an important part in choosing the correct one. Hopefully in the next few days we can complete our logo. Once our logo is complete my team and I will be sending out our first prototype box to one of our friends. I have been absent for a few of the classes, so my teammates had to do a few things without me. We hope that this positive trend continues!

Development!

Over these last few weeks, we've continued to hone our plan, identifying markets we want to appeal to the features our app will need to do so (with some intermediate debate over what to name the company. I'm partial to "Klunch" but the rest of the team isn't on board. "Pack my Lunch" is our working title)

Anyways,  my main priority is getting a prototype of the app functioning. It's been awhile since I've programmed in Objective-C (the language used to create iOS apps) and there's a bit of a learning curve to come back to. Using square brackets to call functions? (Actually, 'send messages' is the proper term in this language) Delegation instead of subclassing? Not to mention, programming in an IDE like Xcode is a little strange since I've doing all my recent work (C, C++, Python) in Vim, straight on the command line. While the tools an IDE offer are nice, I'm missing my stance-based text editor, and there's a certain lack of elegance to such a clustered interface. Oh well.

Technical talk aside, progress is coming along nicely. I'm warming up to Objective-C again and have a strong idea of how I'm going to map out this app. Our MVP (that is, minimum viable Product) version will be able to generate a list of five lunches, from which the user will be able to view the recipe/ingredients needed for a specific lunch, and a 'grocery list' detailing everything they'll need to the whole week's lunches. It's not a particularly complicated project, and I'm sure I'll be able to have a functioning product by the mid-point of November. From there, it's just more convenience features (like being able to pick a specific lunch for one day, or browse through a list of lunches instead of having them picked randomly), some nice new design elements (we'll have to pay a graphic designer to make UI elements for us) and we'll be set to launch!

Midway Point

We have reached the midway point in our class, and our group has made a lot of progress. I have really enjoyed working with the team. It has also been very fun to learn about all these different techniques in order to get our product off the ground. Our group is on the verge of creating our MVP for our App GoKart. We are planning on making screenshots of what our app will look like in addition to our website the we are making now. Our goal is to be able to let people get in and out of stores quickly and efficiently even if you are not familiar with the area or have ever been to the store. All in all, I have learned a lot more about working on a business in that team and also how important it is to pull your weight in that team.

At the moment of this blog post, I believe that we are currently in a good position. We have created our Minimum Viable Product, a website that explains who we are and what we do (and soon, why we do it). We have received feedback from a form that we sent out to my Mom's work, and more than half of the participants said that they would use the app or know somebody that would. We were very happy with this feedback as it shows that there is a potential market for an application such as ours. I have created the initial startup screen and store selection (The screenshot that we have included in our blog post before) using my knowledge of photoshop. During our lean-stack start-up canvas activity, many of my ideas or models were used in our final piece which I thought was great. We are on the right track to our final presentation of our product and I look forward to doing so.

"Pack my Lunch" continues to sprout towards success

Now halfway through the process, "Pack my Lunch" has expanded from a basic idea into a a plausible business. Int he past few weeks, I have continued to generate a coherent business plan. From speaking with lower school officials to beginning the process of taste-testing some of our healthy lunch ideas with children, I have worked diligently to progress the business towards launch. While we have not settled on an official name ("Pack my Lunch" may be only temporary), I believe that our mission statement of "making the lives of working parents easier and providing children with nutritious yet healthy lunch ideas" is a truly displays the business's goals. I hope to continue to increase our brand-name, possibly outside of the Flint Hill community, as we continue to march towards initiation and a full-scale business.

 
A possible idea for a lunch

ParkMePlease

I have once again changed my business. This time (hopefully for the last time) I am going to start an airport valet service. Airport parking rates are just too expensive. They cost hundreds of dollars a week. parking at the metro or having a friend pick you up and drop you off is too much work and takes way too much time. With the airport valet service, the rates will be much cheaper and is the most time efficient option. Instead of standing in the cold, rain, snow or even 120 degree heat, enjoy the air conditioning while we retrieve your car for you.

Business Start Up Post 2

October 7, 2016
We had our pitch this week which we thought went really well. I was really proud of my team because we came prepared on the pitch day and all of our time we put into research and brainstorming had finally paid off. Considering that all three of us fear public speaking, we overcame that aspect and nailed the pitch. Although some people may think that the fear of public speaking is a bad thing, it actually helped motivate us to know our company’s plans, ideas, and information front to back. We pitched the idea for our start up company to a panel of faculty members which they then could ask any follow up questions. We explained the overall concept and gave a brief description about how exactly the company would be run. We are still figuring out what our ideal prototype would consist of, our company name, and our company logo.

This week we have a lot on our agenda. We plan to finalize our company name, create a sketch for our logo, receive final feedback on our parent survey, and to start filling out our purchase requests.

- Kristen, Elli, and Lauren

Smart Bottle Week Three

This week I've had some successes and some set backs. I now have the support of over 800 people, but have yet to receive any emails back from my competition. I recently re-emailed the companies who did not have phone numbers online asking for their customer service numbers so that I could reach them that way, but have not heard back. This week I'm hoping to call the numbers I do have as well as order another one of the competitors bottles so that I can show it to my future customers and start researching how much it would cost to make one of my smart bottles. I am also still trying to come up with a name and a logo, so I'd like to make progress on that. Below is the link to another one of my competitors, comment what you like and dislike about it.

https://www.h2opal.com/products/h2o-pal

Week 2 Successes

The previous week we have focused and refined our pitches, working more on how we are going to present Pack My Lunch to the public. The initial pitch on Tuesday to some of the faculty of Flint Hill School went very well and it has helped us work on trimming it down. We have also designed a canvas on Leanstack, which is essentially a layout of what our product does, who we are selling to, and how we will gain revenue. Moving forward, we will focus on getting the programming for the app done and we will move to survey our idea at local grocery stores.

Stumfort Week 2- Pitching The Idea

So after mulling things over, mentally designing potential products, and arguing over how we would market our goods, we finally had an idea ready to pitch to the class. We thought our idea was perfect- it would "cheat" the dress code while still appearing stylish and being comfortable.

However, what we didn't know was that our idea was going to be pitched to our class...and Mr. Reed and Mr. Thomas, the principal and headmaster of our school, respectively.

This would have made most people afraid since they're basically speaking out against school policies. However, I am proud of myself and my group for keeping poise under pressure as we presented our idea. Despite some members of the audience questioning the feasibility, look and feel of our products, we were not swayed and ultimately were able to convince the group as a whole that our idea would work out. Mr. Reed even gave us an idea that we had not considered: the possibility of reaching out to the school store in order to market our good.

I believe that in this week, we learned a valuable lesson about being levelheaded while pressure mounts. I think that this quality is very useful not only in conducting business, but in life itself. As a great man once said, "Pressure does two things: breaks pipes or makes diamonds. You want to be the diamond, not the pipe." In this way, my group was able to clearly and effectively detail how our company and product would work without being surprised or fazed by what was going on around us.

Go Kart Week Two Reflection

      The second week of our new business plan has ended. In this week, we successfully completed our first pitch in front of a group of teacher judges. We also worked on our business canvas, which is a thorough business plan for successfully starting up a business. 

      However, we are still facing the trouble of developing the app prototype and contact some stores to get them connected with our app. We also need to receive feedbacks from the surveys that we delivered to a lot of people.

      We will keep working on our business idea and try our best to prepared for the first official pitch, which is significant if we want to further develop our idea.

      Here is a link that lists out five of the best grocery store apps out there. We will analyze them and try to develop a more convenient app based on the comments on these five apps.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/grocery-shopping-apps-save-time-money/story?id=19715447

Parking made easy

Dear Readers,

I have now emailed park mobile. Hopefully they will get back to me soon so that I can learn more about their situation. I envision a city with parking spaces completely linked. Making the lives of you and your loved ones really easy. I would love to install a reserving system for those users who are in a real rush and a penalizing system to penalize the parking space takers.

The Smart Bottle Week Two

This week has been very successful in the development of my business idea. I've emailed all of the competition I know of and have heard from two, but am still waiting to hear their responses. Unfortunately the two companies that responded didn't quite give me the answers I was looking for. The first company told me they could not give me any information and the second one emailed me back to tell me to email someone else (waste of an email if you ask me). But on the bright side I've received the support of nearly 150 people and my goal for next week is to have the support of 100 more. I would also like to come up with an idea for a company name and a product name, but for the mean time I'll continue to refer to it as the Smart Bottle. Below is a picture of two of my competition's bottles, comment what you like and dislike about them and I'll try to change/add those things to my product!

Stumfort- Inexpensive But Stylish

It’s official: LAVR, the labor-exchange business idea, is dead. However, there is no need to worry- my group and I have come up with a brand-new idea that we believe is going to revolutionize what students attending schools with strict dress-codes choose to wear.

This concept is pretty simple and yet simultaneously solves a problem faced by many students who need to abide by a school dress-code. As students of Flint Hill, we are primed to start this business as we understand the dress-code issues faced by the Flint Hill student community at large. Flint Hill’s dress code asks students to buy polo shirts (to be tucked into pants) and button-down shirts complete with ties and belts. This is not only very expensive in total, especially for growing adolescent students who need to buy new clothes every year, but can also get very uncomfortable. So how can we solve this problem of discomfort and high costs?

With our business idea, tentatively named Stumfort (because we pride ourselves on providing inexpensive clothing that shows off style and that is comfortable), we will be able to make clothing that is much easier to buy and wear. We’re thinking of making products such as a slip-on polo shirt that can be made to look as though they are tucked in, therefore giving a respectable look and yet a comfortable wear. We are currently working on an elevator pitch and some more ideas to make this company’s vision a reality.

Completed Goals

This week we completed drafting our business name and getting 25 college students to fill out our survey. We researched other competitors and we believe our idea is original. Some of the smaller details of our business have been address and will we continue working to get them done! So far we have not run into any obstacles, and we hope this pattern will continue!!

~Lauren, Kristen, and Elli

Business Progress

After a week of working on our project, we have made significant progress. We have a much greater idea of our business. We have started to develop our name, and what we want the app to look and function like. We decided that we will offer a free app, which will have ads, and a paid app, which will not have ads. Our goal for the weekend, and next week, is to continue to gauge our potential market. To do this, we will be sending out a form to potential consumers. Below is a screenshot of our first app idea/mockup.
.

Pack My Lunch continues to work

The new startup intended to provide healthy lunch ideas and the designated products needed, Pack My Lunch, has continued to work towards launch. This week, we developed an initial pitch and continued to generate a market for our business. We have discovered a sizable interest in our business idea and found that there are no trademarks currently under our business name. Pack My Lunch has also created a twitter account to try and generate more interest in our application. We are optimistic that our elevator pitch will go smoothly and hope that we can begin taste testing healthy lunch ideas soon to find what kids like. The future looks bright for Pack My Lunch. Below is a picture of our logo.
 

I continue with the same idea as the post before. The parking app. I would love to install parking boxes on each street that has parking available to link all parking spots. It would alert police when someone steals your spot as well. I would also like to add a 15 minute reserve time option.

I've also talked to people about if they would use this app, and most people said absolutely. I've researched possible partners for this and am working on my elevator pitch.

The Beginnings of a Smart Bottle

This week I started the research process for my business idea, a smart bottle that will track your water intake throughout the day. Since there are already a couple of companies selling these kinds of bottles my main goal is to make something more affordable and appealing. But before I do that I'll have to research the competitors businesses, such as manufacturing costs and profits. I'm currently struggling to find this information, but I'm not giving up yet!

Labor Exchange-Introduction

Our business is exhanging labor favors for people in your area for free, instead of having to pay someone to do work for you. We are optimistic but we are having some issues, such as insurance. What will happen if someone gets hurt? We will talk a lawyer to discuss how to avoid being liable in for an injury. Another issue we ran into is financial, we will have to raise money to advertise. For us, advertisement is everything for our business. In the beginning steps; we want to get the word out fast, so it spreads and people choose us to take care of their needs for labor. We are currently brainstorming names for the business and will develop one soon.

Different idea

Dear readers,

I have switched my idea. I am now going to create a parking app that allows you to book a parking space when you need one. You can even book a parking space months in advance!  This app gives you the exact coordinates/address of your parking space. This app takes care of everything. You will never be ticketed for an expired parking meter again! This app makes sure that the fee is taken care of  until you leave! Its the cheapest and easiest parking option out there.

Grocery Store

We have now established our group and created our idea. We are all very excited about the idea of an all store (Costco, Target Etc.) map app. It would help shoppers who want to get in and out of stores fast and efficiently by providing a map that has the items on your shopping list listed. A problem that we could possibly face is within our group, none of us know how to design or start an app. Our goal is to create a survey to ask people if they would use the product. We have a concept logo below.
Would you use this?
Matt, Griffin, Sean, Chris

What's for Lunch prepares for launch

What's for Lunch, an app dedicated to providing healthy lunch box ideas, has begun the initial planning stages. With Harrison working on the prototype iPhone application and other business type duties, Brandon and Adam have researched nutritional options to high-fat and unhealthy snacks. We plan to advertise our business in elementary schools; either at the Flint Hill lower school or other surrounding public ones. By handing out flyers and pamphlets that describe the purpose of our business, we hope to generate publicity and clientele. Eventually, if we are able to grow large enough, we want to take our app to a supermarket and pair our healthy meals with specific products that can be purchased. We are working diligently to achieve our goal, as can be seen in this picture of Brandon researching low-fat snacks.

What do you plan to do?

Currently, our class has only been in class for about 3-4 weeks. During those weeks we have worked on how to create ideas for products that people would need and not want. We created a padlet of multiple business ideas and eventually "shaved" it down to about 16 ideas that we believed could really take off in the business world. We will soon be choosing teams on who we would like to work with. Ideally the people who we work with will have similar ideas to ours and they would be people that we believe could bring different perspectives to make an idea grow.

Pet Service

Dear readers,

I plan to build my own pet service company. I would love to build a building with three stories. one story has an open grass field in which dogs play with either their owners, or trainers, one floor is a body of water, and another floor is for pet service such as cleaning, hair cutting, nail cutting, surgery if necessary, etc.

Deciding on a Business Idea

After brain storming for several weeks, I have narrowed down my business ideas to two possibilities. The classroom environment, and being able to confer with others about ideas, really helped during this process. Still, even after I have narrowed down potential ideas that I’m interested in working on, many questions remain. One idea is centered around a mobile app. I have no background and previous learning in this area, so I would need to contact someone who does. Although my idea is slightly different from others, how will my idea stand out from the rest of the bunch? My other idea poses a simple question: would enough people buy it?

Idea #1

For my business, I plan on perfecting and creating the first water balloon cannon prototype. I feel like it will not be such a challenging thing to prototype. This might be a risk however because there are other things out there that are close to this so it could be a challenge. I plan on mass producing these cannons, and being able to sell them for lower prices, as supposed to selling them for a high price and low amounts. A goal for this business is to make a successful prototype and be able to have a good startup and appeal to many customers.

Business Blog - Michael Brown

My group and I are still in the process of choosing our business. We have not yet decided on a definite idea that we are completely set on. Two of the ideas that we are thinking about doing are the water balloon cannon and the camera that detects movement. I believe both of these ideas have potential, but we are not yet completely set on either of them. I am still going to consider other ideas and try to think of one that we are for sure about. We do not have any failures or success yet, but we will once we decide on an idea.

Starting A Business: Making Ideas Into A Reality

Hi! My name is Pranav Ravikumar and I am a senior at Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia. I have been taking a small business start-up course for the past few weeks, and am excited to start my own business soon. So far, we have come up with a lot of ideas that could potentially be viable businesses. I believe that when starting my own business, I should look to work in a team because I think that one of the fundamentals of running a business is working with other people. 

Recently, I came up with this idea of a business based around a “labor exchange” platform. I like this "labor exchange" idea because not only is it my own idea, but I think it is a viable project for one semester. In this day and age, a lot of people are not equipped with a lot of skills and therefore end up paying professionals hundreds or even thousands of dollars to provide services. I believe that through this business platform, people can enhance their own skills by offering themselves as forms of “labor” in exchange for a service. This is will be very cost-effective for participants. Revenue will be created when people pay for the service; essentially, it’s Match.com but for people that want to work in exchange for work. This is not illegal; in other words, no illegal forms of labor will be allowed. I'll have to research this idea and see if it already exists- if not, I may have stumbled on something really cool!

Note: There are already programs that dub themselves as a "labor exchange" as seen below, however, I actually don't think too many people have envisioned what I'm thinking of. 

As seen above, there exists a "National Labor Exchange"; however, this is a jobs platform, not a services network.

My second choice would be a tutoring business because I like to teach (especially subjects such as English, Spanish and History). This would be more centered around students at Flint Hill and their academic needs. Revenue would be at a rate per hour, depending on the subject. Who knows, I could branch out to YouTube and be like CrashCourse!

Regardless, I am excited to start a business and can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Everyday is a Challenge in the World of Business

Over the last three weeks the biggest thing I have learned is starting a business is not easy. It takes creativity, passion, hard work, and dedication. Going into this class I was convinced that I'd be able to find an idea that I loved and really wanted to turn into a business I could keep up once the class was over. But after spending weeks going over the challenges of starting a business and countless ideas I am far less confident in my ability to start a successful business and my ability to come up with an idea. That being said I have definitely learned a lot being in this class and am still hopeful and excited for what is to come.  

Risk

In the short amount of time I have been in this class there have not been many opportunities to put my ideas out there. None the less, there was one risk that I had to take when I wrote down my ideas not knowing if they would be successful or not. It was possible my ideas could already have been created or that there would not be a large enough group of people that would buy it. In the future, I think there are going to be many situations where in order to be successful taking a chance will be necessary.

The struggles of choosing a business idea

      This class was a lot harder than I thought I would be. In our daily life, we will always encounter something troublesome or inconvenient, and we might come up with ideas like "Wouldn't it be great if there is something that helps you do this..."; however, having an idea is entirely different from actually making it happen in real life due to various difficulties such as technological incapability and repeating ideas... It is kind of frustrating when you come up with an idea that you personally are confident with, and this idea turned out to be impractical or impossible to design.

      I believe that our next step is to narrow down and come up with several practical and achievable ideas, and progressively increase the possibility to make them happen.

http://www.executivefranchises.com/blog/great-business-ideas/#.V-HcdZMrKqA

Sean Zhou

Business Start Up

My group and I are in the midst of finalizing our idea. Our current business idea is to create a subscription for college students that offers them a box of a variety of snacks and meals. We have not started the research process just yet but once we do, we will have more of an idea of how our business will be run. As long as this business is not already in existence and if all research goes well, we think this idea could be a success. We see the potential in this idea because we have family members and close friends in college who would benefit from a product like this.

Harrison Stuart - Introductory Blog Post

My name is Harrison Stuart - I'm a senior at Flint Hill school. At the moment, I'm not entirely sure where I'm going in taking this Small Business Startup class. So far, we've gone through various activities, thinking of business ideas, encouraging us to think creatively, and come up with ideas as a class, which have been added to a padlet. (A number of joking ideas, like "skateboarding grandpa" and "uber for clowns" were added, and then removed) That said, out of the ideas we've currently come up with, none draw me in heavily. I'm very interested in english and computer science, and I want to try and find a way I can tie one or both of those into my startup. Having some familiarity programming, I feel like that could also be a hugely useful tool in this affair. Although I currently don't have a set direction, I'm openminded and still producing new ideas, in hopes that I can find something that engages my interests so I can get excited and produce a quality product. I'm excited for what the year might hold!

Failed Idea

At the beginning of this class, I did not imagine it would be this difficult to come up with an idea that has never been created before.  A failure that I have encountered in the short weeks of this class is coming up with ideas that have not been created and that would be popular to others. I learned that coming up with a possible business idea takes a lot of research to make sure it would be in high demand. Researching to make sure my groups business is not already a business will be the next step for us.

Start-up Brandon Lessard

For the first blog post of the start-up business class, I want to talk about what my goals are. For the most part I don't have any raging fear that my business will fail or any uncontrollable emotions about building a start up. I feel confident enough that (my team and) I will be able to work out all the problems that our business runs into. What I'm really looking for during this process is to expand my outlook on things. I am not just talking about business ideas though. Today in class we listened to a podcast interview of Sara Blakely, the owner and founder of Spanx. What struck me about what she talked about is that she went from manufacturer to manufacturer in order to push her product. She made in-person business trips and was hands on during the entire initial phases. She figured everything out herself: the how, the where, the who, and the what, she didn't ask for a step-by-step guide to starting up your own business. That is what I want to figure out for myself through this process. I don't want to confine myself to thinking that a process has to be done in a particular way. I want to explore how I can get the job done by myself.



http://tinyurl.com/johfwck

Optimistic Ambitions

As a 17 year old senior in high school, creating a start-up business is no simple task. Even though I have no previous experience, I firmly believe that I will achieve successful results. More specifically, I want to learn the stressful and arduous intricacies of creating my own business. While I am unsure if  entrepreneurship is in my future, I hope that this experience can provide insight to the processes that occur everyday in the American capitalist economy.

 As seen in the graph above, most startups fail due to lack of a market. My overarching and primary goal, at the moment, is to create a business that has a solid and sufficient clientele. With a large consumer population, there is a higher chance of a business succeeding.

Image: Griffiths, Erin. Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail. Digital image. Fortune. Time Inc., 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Sept. 2016. 

Business Idea

Right now, I am at the very beginning phases in developing a business. I have ideas but my group and  I are having trouble determining if we could actually do the ideas. For example, we have an idea that involves developing an app which I do not have knowledge in. In order to get this idea going, we would have to contact multiple app developers to try to get it going. Another idea we have is a fridge for a car, but the technology would be tough to keep in cold. What would it plug into? Would the car have to be running in order for it to work? These are a few of the many questions and potential problems we are facing, but we will work these issues out in order to find the right idea and make a business out of it.

Third Time's a Charm

Welcome to the third iteration of Small Business Startup.  I am thrilled to be teaching this class again with a new batch of students--some of whom dream of being entrepreneurs and some who only took the class to fill an elective space in their schedule.  No matter--we will all embark on this "journey" into entrepreneurship with enthusiasm, curiosity, and fearlessness.  Since this is my third time teaching the class, I have a more refined sense of what we can accomplish in a semester.  I have a different sense of where we will end in mid-January.  This year students may NOT propose and start school-based businesses.  They WILL spend most of their time selecting, vetting, refining, and pivoting their ideas. This year, for the first time, my students will pitch real-world business ideas at a real incubator:  Bunker Labs in Old Town, Alexandria.  I am thrilled about this partnership and grateful to Harry Alford for welcoming my students and to Emily McMahan for opening the door in the first place.

Please read along as this new set of students venture into entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation.

Almost...

The time we have had in this class has been a rollercoaster of emotions. Peter and I were stuck at one point, and we thought we would be failures, but you know what, we proved ourselves wrong. In a sense, we failed to create a very successful business. We were given a budget for our idea of $250 from the school in hopes that we would make all of the money back. We spent $227.10 in grand total on the domain for our website, the website provider, and our first order of shirts. We made back only $140 of the nearly $170 that we spent on ordering the actual t-shirts, which was slightly a let down because we had the capability to earn $360 in total from our first order. It was not that there was a lack of interest, we just had problems distributing the t-shirts to our customers, and that is what really hurt us. The fact that we created a business with an actual interesting product though is quite exciting. From starting our own business, we have learned what it really takes to be successful in this clothing industry, and that can success in this field can be summed down to basically time, money, and a good idea that will sell. We failed to meet some of those things, which ultimately lead to us being not as successful as we planned to be. My advice to future entrepreneurs is to never give up on your idea. We gave up on our original idea, which was to create a clothing company, but we decided to put in the time and effort, and we made one. Successful entrepreneurs are ones who know their idea is good and will never give up on it until they are successful in doing so. Through this class, I as well as Peter have learned that concept of determination in the field of business, and we will use what we have learned in whatever we decide to do with our future careers. We are very grateful that this school has given us the opportunity to open our eyes to what it is really like being an entrepreneur. It has been a great run.

-Duncan and Peter of The Northern Virginia Clothing Company

www.novaclothingcompany.com

Closing Time

This is the last week in Small Business Start Up and we have learned a lot about how to begin our own businesses. Even though we had no customers throughout our venture, we learned that passion and motivation are two important traits to have. We only received our initial $60 grant from the school, but spent no money on operations and as stated earlier, had no customers. Our advice for future entrepreneurs is to make sure to create a business that all of your group members are genuinely invested in and want to see succeed. One of the pitfalls we would recommend new start ups avoiding is having bad chemistry within their team and a lack of cooperation. This was a great experience that taught us a lot about how difficult it is to begin your own business and gave me a lot to consider in my future professional endeavors.

The End of Candy Express

As this semester comes to an end, so does our business. We asked for $100 to start up. With that we used less than half to cover the cost of production, meaning buying the candy and packaging. However, we only received four orders. Our policy is that no one receives delivery until either my partner or I have received payment and we ask that they find us from 7-8 Am the day they would like it delivered. No one paid us even after we did deliver within the same week. Since then, we've received no orders and no money.

The most important thing we've learned through attempting to start a business is in order to have customers you have to create excitement and interest for the product or service. While our idea was a good one, we lacked in customer interest. Also, we needed to find a better way for people to pay us and follow through before we deliver.
Well, we tried. Say goodbye to Candy Express.

Approaching the end

As we near the end of the semester, we realize that we have learned quite a few lessons on the process of pitching managing, and operating a business. As far as managing a business, the skills of time management and communication are universally important. For example, properly managing our time to be able to sell as a team was at first difficult, but as we progressed, we made sure that everyone’s schedule was planned accordingly. Pitching, however, was the most enjoyable and difficult part of our process. Coming up with a proper pitch, along with balancing our budget was a very fun and challenging process. Pitching itself (to faculty administration etc.) was a very nerve racking experience, however simulated (very well) a real life situation.We were able to sell all three shipments of stress balls. Because we sold some at bulk prices, our total profit totaled $7... We did it!   

Us (the yellow one) ----->  

Hungry Huskies comes to an end

In the beginning, Hungry Huskies was launched with $150 we received from our funders, the Flint Hill administration. We bought all inventory for $128 at Costco. Over the three times we sold, we earned about $150 dollars. We learned that when you are running a business within the restrictions of a bigger organization it is hard to operate as you please. As a business we had to make a lot of sacrifices to conform to the rules and restrictions of our school. We had to operate around the schedule of Flint Hill, which drastically limited our operations. It also made our business inconsistent because of surprise town and class meetings. From this, our team learned that in order to be truly successful in the business world you must be independent. If a business is independent they are not limited by another organization's rules and schedule. Another problem we ran into was when trying to launch a service where students could order snacks ahead of time to be delivered to them. We were faced with space restrictions and the logistics of money being left in boxes unattended. Because of this, that part of the business was never able to launch. The best advice we have for future entrepreneurs is to be flexible and not to limit themselves to running in one defined area. The best businesses are those that solve a problem. Our advice is to find a problem that is faced by many because a limited market could limits your business's success. We also would advise future entrepreneurs to be passionate about the message and purpose of their business. If you are passionate about your business you are more likely to work hard for its success. In conclusion, Hungry Huskies is happy with our ending and hopes that future entrepreneurs are able to learn from our failures and success to thrive in the field of business! 

Hungry Huskies hopes that all the future entrepreneurs CHANGE THE WORLD!!!!