Assignment 30A: Final Reflection

After reviewing all my posts, I realized that the most formative experience for me was probably learning how to problem solve and come up with solutions (“opportunity”). I would never have thought in a million years to come up with a product which was based on fixing an issue. The best thing was that we had to do research and we were able to learn as we finished assignments more about the product. This experience will be something I will remember for years later. Had we had the opportunity to create any product we wished, I would have come up with something that I liked, rather than a solution to the problem. I really liked having a challenge and a new perspective.

I was most proud of everything I have accomplished with my product, not just one thing. I have seen myself and my ideas grow, which makes me so happy and kind of sad that this class is over. After this course, I see myself as an entrepreneur. Although I have dreams and aspirations of my own, becoming an entrepreneur would be something I would commit to when the opportunity arises for me. I think I would learn more on how to become motivated and not afraid to take risks.

One recommendation for me would be to always branch out and always listen to the advice of others, even better, professionals. It doesn’t take one person to create a successful business, so I advise to learn as much as you can and be open to criticism, because that gives you room to grow.

For a student, I would recommend them to stay on top of their work, keep their ideas focused, and to choose something they love to do well in this course.

Assignment 29A: Venture Concept No.2

Opportunity

Any driver who have insurance policies have the potential to become affected by rate increases. In addition, since there are more drivers on the road now, there is also a higher chance driver and all people will get into an accident. Ultimately, this product affects every single individual who enter a car, because they run into a risk of collision. However, drivers who own insurance and who are actively paying their premiums run into this issue the most. All in all, this product will benefit anyone who enters a vehicle. People need to realize that their driving habits will obviously increase insurance rates for an area.... since it is “riskier” to insurance, because insurance companies are also a business, they don't want to constantly lose money, otherwise they would be bankrupt. 

Innovation

This company will focus on insurance education. There are two ways to receive this product. One, it will be available online, and will be mandatory for new drivers who are obtaining their license to take prior to becoming licensed. Also, drivers who are convicted of a DUI will be forced to retake this course as a refresher.

The next way to receive this product and service would be through schools. All schools would be required for high school seniors to be involved in a half day “boot camp”, where our teachers and insurance professionals would go teach them about insurance. Students are required to go online that same day and pass the exam with 80% or higher on one attempt. Students who have already taken this course when they get their license will still have to attend the boot camp and pass this exam, which will be a beneficial for them regardless because it would be a “refresher”. This information will be sent over to the state’s DMV.  

Students that are over 18 years old that do not have their license can “test out” of the exam and not have to go through the class when trying to obtain a license if they have attended and passed the boot camp in their school.

Venture Concept

Educating people on how their driving habits affect insurance rates and how insurance companies responds to claims ultimately results in people wanting to become better drivers. People are unaware that their driving habits, or their claims are affecting the area’s statistics (risk increase). Although there are thousands of people in one city that are accident free and violation free, this does not mean that they are safe from rate increase. This fact is a myth, that the better the driver, and the older the driver, the lower the rates. There are still thousands of other people who are driving insanely. Insurance companies rate areas based on risk factors, and the riskier the area, the higher the rates. Also, inflation comes into play as well, but this cannot be changed.

Consumers may not be satisfying this need but believe that educating young drivers and drivers who have been convicted of DUI should be taught. This would eventually lead to better drivers since everyone will eventually have this knowledge in the future as generations obtain licenses. This product will become mandatory, therefore, will become a necessity for all potential drivers who will be getting their license.

Since this product will be mandatory, consumers won’t be able to switch products and will have to take the course. In addition, there won’t be any competitors since it will become a federal required step in order to obtain your license.

Although we are providing this course for new drivers and drivers who are convicted of DUI, the material would be different as new drivers would be taught different materials. For drivers that are convicted with a DUI, their course would be a “refresher”, but for new drivers, it would focus more on educating and teaching new information. Foreigners with current drivers license who wants a US license would have to take the new driver course.

Three Elements

Having resources such as networking with people in the industry, having a product that will make a difference, and having an educational product itself is very important for success. There are competitors out there who have these courses as regular “classes” that students would have to pay for just to learn. Their objective is not really to make a difference on road safety, or help people minimize rate increases by minimizing claims. The vision of my product are three of those elements, which consumers will end up realizing that having this knowledge is important, therefore, my product will become a necessity rather than just a “choice”.

With my innovation, I would want to tackle and create a course that will teach drivers about insurance in general. You would be surprised that most people do not know what coverages they have on their policies and what kind of liability limits mean. I would want to start a program for new drivers to learn that to be able to become educated and hopefully choose insurance coverages wisely, as well as decrease the rates of uninsured drivers.  

Feedback

Based on feedback from my peers, from my previous venture concept, Julia recommended to me that instead of focusing on all drivers, I should focus on a certain group of drivers. Which gave me an idea that I should focus on just new drivers and ones that are convicted of DUI. Most importantly, I realized that since they have completely different experiences with driving, I am going to make the two course materials different. I decided to keep those two groups because DUI drivers may not be new drivers, and they may never have learned the material, therefore, it is necessary to teach them that information to promote roadside safety. David mentioned about foreigners who come to the US, they would have to take a “new driver” course since they are new to the insurance industry in the United States, I really appreciated him mentioning that because I never thought about that!

Assignment 28A: Your Exit Strategy

1)     Identify the exit strategy you plan to make. Do you intend to sell your business in the next 5 years for a large return? Do you intend to stay with the business for several decades and retire? Do you intend to protect the venture as a family business, and pass it down to your children?

I don’t think I will want to sell the business. I intend to stay in the business, grow it to become a big company. Even though it is a large company, I intend for it to become a family business and probably will pass it down to my children. Ultimately, it will be my children’s decision whether they want to run it. If they do not want to run the business, I would probably just sell the business or expand it to have shareholders and stockholders, but that would not be my first choice.

2)     Why have you selected this particular exit strategy?

The reason for choosing this exit strategy because I want my business to keep growing, while allowing my family to be involved in this business and journey.

3)     How do you think your exit strategy has influenced the other decisions you've made in your concept? For instance, has it influenced how you have identified an opportunity? Has it influenced your growth intentions or how you plan to acquire and use resources?

I don’t think my exit strategy influenced the other decisions that I’ve made. I just wanted my company to grow and expand, as well as become more beneficial for consumers. The biggest thing I want to achieve is the ability to make a difference. Regardless of my exit strategy, I would want the same hopes and goals for my business.

Assignment 27A: Reading Reflection No.3

The book I chose for this assignment is The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, Guy Kawasaki. I chose this book because the title seemed very interesting because it directly applies to how our society is today, everything is based on social media, so I wanted to see what the power tips were. Right off the bat, this book’s theme is of course inspiring and motivational.

This book title is self-explanatory, it is a guide on how to strategize social media and build a platform to benefit your business. This book goes into dept when it comes to advice, such as speaking about how to build your foundation, optimizing your profile, how to attract more followers, and even how to become effective in communicating with your social media. This book directly relates to this course because this knowledge is important to know in order to have a successful business in today’s society. Based on this book, an exercise I would create would be to “create” a social media profile for your product. This wouldn’t have to be an actual website, it could just be a layout or design of a profile to see what the student’s page would look like. There wasn’t much of a “aha” moment, but the entire book taught me more than I expected. I thought I knew a lot about social media since our generation is so social media based but learning how to attract consumers from a business point of view really interested me.

Assignment 26A: Celebrating Failure

A time I failed in this past semester was actually one of my elevator pitches. It sounds like a lame and dumb excuse, but I never posted the first two assignments because I felt like they were so flawed, and it could never get it perfect. Additionally, I also felt somewhat embarrassed that my elevator pitch was so bad and awkward that I never posted them. This resulted in me losing points because I never submitted the assignment, therefore, I couldn’t comment on another peer’s assignment. I finally was able to submit the final elevator pitch, and although I can’t even watch it without feeling totally embarrassed and feeling like a joke, I learned that I can’t be perfect, and these assignments are meant to help me improve. There should be no shame in posting them because this assignment was designed for our peers to comment and make suggestions in order for us to improve. In the future, I will make sure to submit my assignments or do anything in better confidence and approach it as a learning opportunity.

Assignment 25A: What's Next?

Existing Market

The next thing for my products and services for my venture that would be in my existing market that was mentioned in my previous post: insurance coverage education. This would be different than my current product, which teaches you how your claims can affect claims and risk statistics. But this course will educate new drivers on insurance coverages and what they are. This will minimize the rate of uninsured drivers and educate people on what coverages work best for them. This will also make it less overwhelming for drivers when they speak about insurance agents about coverages because they will know what each coverage means.

Based on my three customers, the feedback I received was awesome! Some of the interviewees don’t know much about their coverages and rely on their agents to choose things for them since they don’t know what they are. They all know what “full coverage” is, but truly does not know what defines “full coverage”. They all think it’s a wonderful idea and would love to learn themselves. One of the interviewees is one of my good friends who is an insurance agent, and she stated around 80% of her customers do not know what each coverage means.

Based on the feedback, by the time I would want to execute this plan, my company would already have established a good relationship with the DMV and school counties, and our product and service would already be available to all drivers and students. I would want to introduce to the DMV this course, which will essentially become necessary for drivers to take and pass prior to obtaining their license.

New Market

For a new market, I would want to introduce the same concept: educating people insurance coverages. However, I would want to introduce this as a book that would sell for the public. This would not be mandatory to purchase and will be available in any book store or as an eBook. My target goal would be to sell to places likes Amazon, Apple Books, etc. For any reason, if both of my “existing market” and my “new market” products are available at the same time, potential drivers can choose to “test out” of the required course when trying to obtain a driver’s license since they already learned it. This product is great because drivers can save time and learn the subject prior to getting their license to save time.

Based on my interviews, my interviewees thought this was a great option and think that it would become successful. Sometimes young drivers are eager to get everything done ahead of time so they can get their license early, therefore, this product will be in high demand. Also, this product is also available for anyone who wants to just learn about policy coverages.

What I learned about this new market is that, there will be a lot more opportunities for growth. However, since I am entering retail, there will be a lot of competitors. However, if I can make this product special by being DMV pre-approved, there will be more reasons for people to purchase it.

Assignment 24A: Venture Concept No.1

Opportunity

Any driver who have insurance policies have the potential to become affected by rate increases. In addition, since there are more drivers on the road now, there is also a higher chance driver and all people will get into an accident. Ultimately, this product affects every single individual who enter a car, because they run into a risk of collision. However, drivers who own insurance and who are actively paying their premiums run into this issue the most. All in all, this product will benefit anyone who enters a vehicle. People need to realize that their driving habits will obviously increase insurance rates for an area.... since it is more "risky" to insurance, because insurance companies are also a business, they don't want to constantly lose money, otherwise they would be bankrupt. 

Innovation

This company will focus on insurance education. There are two ways to receive this product. One, it will be available online, and will be mandatory for new drivers who are obtaining their license to take prior to becoming licensed. Also, drivers who are convicted of a DUI will be forced to retake this course as a refresher.

The next way to receive this product and service would be through schools. All schools would be required for high school seniors to be involved in a half day “boot camp”, where our teachers and insurance professionals would go teach them about insurance. Students are required to go online that same day and pass the exam with 80% or higher on one attempt. Students who have already taken this course when they get their license will still have to attend the boot camp and pass this exam, which will be a beneficial for them regardless because it would be a “refresher”. This information will be sent over to the state’s DMV.  

Students that are over 18 years old that do not have their license can “test out” of the exam and not have to go through the class when trying to obtain a license if they have attended and passed the boot camp in their school.

Venture Concept

Educating people on how their driving habits affect insurance rates and how insurance companies responds to claims ultimately results in people wanting to become better drivers. People are unaware that their driving habits, or their claims are affecting the area’s statistics (risk increase). Although there are thousands of people in one city that are accident free and violation free, this does not mean that they are safe from rate increase. This fact is a myth, that the better the driver, and the older the driver, the lower the rates. There are still thousands of other people who are driving insanely. Insurance companies rate areas based on risk factors, and the riskier the area, the higher the rates. Also, inflation comes into play as well, but this cannot be changed.

Consumers may not be satisfying this need but believe that educating young drivers and drivers who have been convicted of DUI should be taught. This would eventually lead to better drivers since everyone will eventually have this knowledge in the future as generations obtain licenses. This product will become mandatory, therefore, will become a necessity for all potential drivers who will be getting their license.

Since this product will be mandatory, consumers won’t be able to switch products and will have to take the course. In addition, there won’t be any competitors since it will become a federal required step in order to obtain your license.

Three Elements

Having resources such as networking with people in the industry, having a product that will make a difference, and having an educational product itself is very important for success. There are competitors out there who have these courses as regular “classes” that students would have to pay for just to learn. Their objective is not really to make a difference on road safety, or help people minimize rate increases by minimizing claims. The vision of my product are three of those elements, which consumers will end up realizing that having this knowledge is important, therefore, my product will become a necessity rather than just a “choice”.

With my innovation, I would want to tackle and create a course that will teach drivers about insurance in general. You would be surprised that most people do not know what coverages they have on their policies and what kind of liability limits mean. I would want to start a program for new drivers to learn that to be able to become educated and hopefully choose insurance coverages wisely, as well as decrease the rates of uninsured drivers.