Venture Concept No.2

Opportunity. An opportunity may be defined as a group of customers with unmet or under-met needs. When you describe the opportunity you have identified, you need to be sure to describe both (1) who has the need (i.e., who are the potential customers?) and (2) the nature of the need. Other questions you should address in this section:

My venture concept opportunity is a restaurant in midtown Gainesville that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and also turns into a bar at night. I think the major target market is the students at the university, as well as other young people in the city. They have this need because there aren't very many good restaurants in Gainesville that serve food throughout the day, and there aren't very many bars to choose from. This window of opportunity will be open for as long as midtown is a popular place to hang out in Gainesville. 

Innovation. An innovation may be defined as a new or creative service, product, or process that may be applied in the marketplace to address customer needs. The service, product, or process you develop in this class may be radically innovative or it may be incrementally innovative. In this section, I would like to you discuss your innovation in moderate detail. Explain what it is, what it does, and how it works. You should also describe how you will make money – in other words, what, exactly, are you selling and for how much? For instance, if I was starting a business to teach people how to play the piano, I would be selling an hour of my time for $50.

My innovation is only moderately innovative because there are already restaurants in Gainesville, but there are not any that serves all three meals and also turn into a bar. I will make money off of the food and alcohol I sell at the restaurant. Food will range from $5-$20 and alcohol will range from $3-$20. 

Venture Concept. A venture concept may be defined as the application of a specific innovation to address a specific opportunity. In this section, describe how your innovation will solve or address the opportunity you identified. You also want to explain why customers will buy your innovation. In describing the concept, you also want to be sure to cover issues such as:

·      What are the reasons to think customers would switch to this new product?  How hard will it be to get them to switch? 

·      Who are the competitors?  What are their possible weaknesses or vulnerabilities? 

·      What role does packaging, your price points, distribution, customer support, the customer experience or the business location play (if any) in defining your business concept?

·      How would you organize a “business” to support the ongoing production of your new product, service, or process? How many employees? What roles are in the venture? 

My innovation will solve the opportunity by creating a new place in midtown to eat and go out. Customers will definitely buy my food and drinks because from my experience, a new restaurant/bar is highly needed and people would love a new one. I think that as long as I serve good food and have all my products at reasonable and affordable prices, it will be very successful. I don't think it will be hard to get people to come because people like a variety of restaurants to go to anyways. They don't just go to one all the time. 

The three minor elements

I also want you to cover three final elements in your description. Your treatment of these questions can be relatively short. Please focus most of your time on the opportunity, innovation, concept descriptions above.

First, describe what you think your most important resource will be. You might call this your venture’s “secret sauce” or “unfair advantage.” Besides your actual innovative product, service, or process, what will you have that will make it hard for competitors to copy your success?

Second, what’s next for the venture? Describe either the next opportunity you want to tackle with your current innovation, or describe the next new product, service, or process that may be aimed at your existing customers.

Third, what’s next for you? Assuming you launched, where do you want to be in five years with this venture? Where do you want to be, as an entrepreneur, in the next decade, and how does this first venture help you achieve your vision?

I think that my most important resource will be the connections and friends that I have made in Gainesville, because they will help me promote and spread the word about the restaurant. I think the next venture I want to tackle with my existing customers is having Sunday brunches. In five years, I want the restaurant/bar to be thriving, I want to still be the owner, and I want to have kept innovating and listened to the customers' needs. 

Feedback:

I received a lot of helpful feedback on my restaurant/bar idea. All of the students that I interviewed really seemed to love the idea and they all told me that they would come to the restaurant. The only problem that I ran into with students was their concern about prices. When I interviewed families, who were my new target market, they told me that kids menu deals would be a motivator to come to my restaurant, but I still think it will be hard to get families to come eat at midtown because of all the kids that are around. 

I am going to modify my venture concept in order to accommodate this feedback by making sure that having economical prices is one of my priorities for my restaurant, and by making sure that at least one day out of the week, meals are free for kids. This will motivate both of my target markets to come to my restaurant more frequently.