11A- Idea Napkin No.1

11A- Idea Napkin No. 1

1) You. Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

• My name is Sarah Solomon, I am a Junior at UF, and I am pursing a degree in Finance.  In high school, I was on numerous sports teams, and won All County honors 3 times for basketball.  Being 5'0 feet tall, this was a huge accomplishment for me.  I thrive at public speaking, and commend myself on being great with sales.  My skills come from my experiences.  At my internship this past summer, I learned how to build calcs, gain confidence on cold calls, and become knowledgeable about the financial sector and customer service.  My aspirations are quite simply to be successful.  After college, I want to be reliant on my own income, and be able to support my parents as they grow older so they can retire.  Specifically, regarding my business concept, I think if I really put my mind to it I could get something out of it.  However, my business concept is regarding nutrition, yet I am really interested in the financial sector. If I could intertwine both, I would and will. 

2) What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

• My business concept offers college students and people in general a healthier lifestyle. At college, so many students strive to eat healthy but simply don't have the funds, knowledge, or materials to do so.  I plan on creating a service that meal preps meals for you, suggests healthy affordable meals, and provides detailed instructions on how to make certain recipes.  Life would be so much easier if I had the materials, ingredients, and knowledge to provide myself with the food I actually want to eat. 

3) Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common?

• My main, prototypical customers would be college students.  First, I would start off at the University I attend, of course, the University of Florida.  I would target people who don't know how to cook but want to learn, want to eat better, and are on a "budget."  I also, would like to target girls who are specifically unhappy with their sorority meal plans, or are not in a sorority.  The same goes with boys and greek life.  These people are huge customers and from my interviews are people who want to eat healthy, but just simply don't know how to or do not have the time/funds.  All my customers have the same intent: to eat healthy at an affordable cost. 

4) Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

• Customers would pay for my service in that this does way more good for them, then it does for me.  Of course I would make money, how ever I am providing them with a better and healthier lifestyle which is way more valuable than a couple of dollars.  Also, there are not many affordable services like mine out there.  I know college students budgets, appetites, etc, and would do my best to perfect my service to the best of my ability. 

5) What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has? 

• What sets me apart from everyone else is my first hand experience.  I am a college student, who is in need of this service myself.  I strive so hard to eat healthy, however I simply do not have the materials, funds, or times to make the meals I want to.  If I was provided a service that meal prepped for me, planned out my eating habits, and was affordable, I would be ecstatic.  I am different from everyone else in that I feel so strongly about this.  I want this opportunity for myself, my friends, and all students who feel the way I do. 

In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others. 

• I believe these elements all fit together.  My prototypical customers wants align exactly with what I want my service to provide: affordability, health, and time management.  The great thing about my opportunity is that my prototypical customer range could be huge.  There are so many universities and college students all over the globe, that could benefit from this.  So, if my opportunity takes off at one university, it could really enhance my opportunity of it taking off elsewhere.