Final Reflection

As i went back over my previous assignments, I remembered many of the emotions that went into creating each post. My favorite assignments were the customer avatar and the bug list. These were more about identifying opportunities which is a vital skill for entrepreneurs. My least favorite assignments were all of the elevator pitches. Even though they were helpful in the long run, I did not look forward to having to get dressed and go video myself and upload it to youtube.

The experience from this class that I will most likely remember for years to come is the bug list. It is the first thing we did and it is the foundation for coming up with an idea for a business. I am not actually going to follow through on my business idea from this class, it was more of a practice run. So in the future i may have to complete a bug list to come up with a business idea. My most joyous and proud accomplishment was the first venture concept assignment. That was the moment I thought "Wow, I actually created a fleshed out idea for a business and it seems somewhat feasible".

I feel I have developed my entrepreneurial mindset throughout this class. I now know all of the steps necessary to fleshing out a business idea and I have practiced finding markets and creating innovative ideas. I am definitely better off as an entrepreneur than i was at the beginning of this class.

My best advice to future students is to focus really hard in the beginning to come up with a business plan that you actually want to do. I think many students see that they have to pick an idea in the next 24 hours and they come up with something that interests them but isn't realistic or something they want to do for the rest of their lives. The more time you spend crafting a business idea, the more helpful this class will be.

Venture Concept No. 2

Opportunity


Many highschools and colleges fail to offer courses about investing. This leads students to be uncomfortable with the idea of investing in the stock market. This is a problem because investing money at a young age can have tremendous benefits. The highschools and colleges have a need to provide their students with more a more practical curriculum. If the students knew more about investing, it would benefit the students and the school. The students would be more comfortable with investing, which would make them more successful. This increased financial success would lead to more alumni donations to the school.

• The forces that have created this opportunity are economic forces. The potential upside of investing has made investing a very useful skill for all people.
• This market exists across the United States in high schools and colleges of all sorts.
• Customers (schools) are currently neglecting this need in favor of a more historical curriculum.
• This opportunity is very big because the majority of schools do not teach their students about investing.
• This window of opportunity will be open until schools begin teaching their students about investing, which will likely take decades.

Innovation

My plan to solve this issue is to create a curriculum that can be sold to both highschools and colleges. This curriculum would teach young adults how to invest their money through two different teaching methods. The first method is through an e-textbook. I would put together a panel of experienced investors and equity professors to create an up to date textbook outlining topics such as:

• What age you should be when you start investing
• How much capital you need to start investing
• What different applications and websites you can use to start investing
• How to find indicators for each stock
• What indicators you should take into account the most when choosing a stock to trade
• How risky you should be when making a portfolio
• How to determine the risk of a stock
• When to sell a stock

The second part of my curriculum would be the use of a paper trading platform. Paper trading is a method of using fake money in the real stock market. This would allow students to get real experience with investing without taking on any of the potential risks. I will make money by charging high schools and colleges $2,000 for each semester they use my curriculum. This would give their students access to the e-textbook and paper trading platform. If I got 100 schools to adopt my curriculum for 5 years, that would result in $2,000,000 in revenue.

Venture Concept

My business plan will directly address the problem at hand. If highschools buy my curriculum, students will learn how to invest at a young age. This will give them a very valuable skill heading into adulthood. If they know how to invest they will have a much higher chance of being financially stable. In addition to this, having financially stable students/alumni will benefit the schools because it will result in more donations. Highschools and colleges will want to buy this curriculum because they care about their students and they want them to be successful. It may be difficult to get schools to switch because they have taught many of the same courses for decades. However, there are no major competitors for my business it is mostly untapped. I will not have to worry much about packaging or customer service but my price point will be important. It needs to be the perfect price so that schools will buy it and I will make a profit. The only employees i would need for my business would be those I hire to create the e-textbook. I would personally go to schools and try to sell them on the curriculum.

My biggest resource is my passion about this topic. Many others are more knowledgable than me about investing but they haven't cared enough about young adults to penetrate this market. I think I am unique in this aspect and it shows in the lack of schools that teach investing to their students.

The next project for my venture would be to create an intermediate investor course that individuals could buy online. After school's adopt my curriculum there will be a drastic increase in intermediate investors. This new course would allow them to continue their journey to becoming an advanced investor.

Assuming this plan goes well, I would continue my mission to teach others about investing through a variety of methods. I would create more courses, further develop my website, and possibly make a youtube channel. This first project would give me a reputation in the industry and would give me a good basis of knowledge on how to sell.

Feedback

The feedback I received after last assignment was mostly positive. Many people have agreed that investing is a practical skill and it would be beneficial to teach students about it. The one constructive piece of feedback I got was that it would be hard to replace other subjects such as english and science, so I should consider selling directly to consumers.

I did not change much about my venture concept because the feedback was so positive. In regards to the suggestion to sell my curriculum directly to consumers, I do not agree with that path. This would be difficult because online investing courses are a very saturated market and it would be difficult for me to have success without a solid reputation.

I changed a couple little details, but the overall gist of my venture concept is the same.