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.
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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.