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.