HOT SEAT LESSONS CARCHANGE UPDATE!!!!!!

As a result of sitting on the hot seat a couple days ago there are many logistics I need to figure out. One of the most important ideas was to figure out my pricing logistics. This includes how much my company will make on each transaction, will the renter or our company set the price for the cars, and if there should be a fee to list your car on our website or app. These are all significant decisions which will determine whether or not customers are attracted to my company. Other topics I learned about from the hot seat was to find a way to convince my customers it is safe to rent out their car. I plan on achieving this by guaranteeing every renter full coverage on their car if it is stolen or damaged. Lastly, I need to decide where and how the transaction will occur between two people, this is important because customers should feel safe renting from a stranger. Currently, I am working on finishing my website and there has been significant progress since our last update. We hope to get our website up and running asap and listings/purchases soon!!!

Top 5 Tips for Young Entrepreneurs (Stomfort)

1. Start Small - You should always start small when first beginning a business. Try to find one solid idea and only add bigger and bolder ideas once the business is bigger. Too many ideas at once can be very overwhelming and lead to not getting much done.

2. Research Everything - This is key. A rising entrepreneur should know about the competing goods or services in the market, the input costs of manufacturing, and the needs of the target market.

3. Set Regular Objectives- You need to set objectives in order to keep on track. This will establish a momentum for your business to continually grow and never become stagnant.

4. Choose An Idea That You Are Passionate About - Why would you want to create a good or service that you are interested in? If a person opened a Laundromat when they are more interested in baking cakes, they will not be as successful because they are just not as invested in what they are doing. You need to love what you’re doing, because if you don’t love your good, chances are that no one else really will.

5.) Never Give Up - There are going to be bumps along the way. What if your manufacturer charges more than you can afford in order to make your product? What if you have to slap a patent on your good to prevent others from stealing your idea? You have to believe that it will all be worth it in the end and just keep pushing forward.

Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business

Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business

1. Do not pick an idea you aren't passionate about.

When starting a business, be sure to pick an idea or area that you are passionate about. If you choose something that you are passionate about, rather than focussing too much on the bottom line, the results will follow. When working on your business, you don’t want it to seem like work, and it should always be something that you want to be doing.

2. Do not be afraid to pivot or fail

Especially in the beginning do not become too attached to your idea or product. A large portion of the time, your idea could fail. Take what you learn from this failure, and use it to pivot, or completely drop the idea and try to come up with a new one.  

3. Do not spend too much money when you start a business.

Always start small. Don’t invest too much money into your new business idea first and try to locally expand and promote your idea without a large amount of investment.

4. Don't be overrun by the numbers

Always listen to your customers wants, within reason. Especially if you’re starting small, you need to value every customer and focus on them more than the bottom line. If you treat your customer right, the profits will come.

5. Do not underestimate the amount of time it will take to do things.

Starting a business takes a lot of effort and time and you will not be able to create a business within a day, keep this in mind and do not stop the work until the end. Always overestimate the amount of time it will take to do things.

5 Tips for Starting a Business

Coming to the end of the process, we at EZ-Box realize much more than we did at the beginning of the process. To help out future entrepreneurs, here are 5 tips to starting your own business.

1) Create a business that will improve people's lives
Your business with have to be something that grabs people's attention. So make sure that people will actually want to buy your product or service, not a fad that's designed to break down or only appeal to a very small crowd.

2) Pick a catchy name
People need to remember your name. If people can't remember your name, then the business won't spread or will be completely forgotten, doomed to be confined to your garage or the corner of a decrepit strip mall. Pick a name that resonates with what your business is supplying so avoid names that might sound catchy and fun, but don't actually have anything to do with your business. Klunch might sound nice, but if your business is making pillows, the name doesn't fit.

3) Know your competition
It doesn't have to be a business that sells the same product as you. As long as there is a substitute for your product or service, there is competition. Once you know your competition, it's up to you to figure out ways to make your business better than the alternative. If people would rather choose something else than your product, then figure out a way to make your product more appealing.

4) Get feedback
No business is flawless. You make think that you have all your bases covered but chances are you don't and there are many flaws with your plan. It's hard to see these flaws from the perspective of the person who created the business, so pitch your idea to your friends, or better yet, a stranger and get their feedback.

5) Know your investors
Chances are that you don't have a couple hundred thousand or million dollars just lying around. Neither do I. So you're going to need to find someone who does. Find someone who could potentially be interested in your product, and once you do find out their likes and dislikes. Find out how you need to pitch to them. If your investor is all straight business then telling him a joke might not work, but giving him hard information about your business might. Vice versa, try lightening the mood if you think that your investor might like it. Do your research about them beforehand.

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

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. 

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/

   

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- 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.