Week 15 Reflection

Boosting capitalism is something that this chapter really focuses on. The pyramid companies have to deal with was a main section of this chapter. Learning how to build a solid infrastructure inside your company is something that helps build a successful one. Making sure your approach is oriented torwards making money and profiting is what I took away from this chapter. How can I go about hiring goal and money driven people? What do I need to do to get rid of existing workers who don't have that mindset.

Final Reflection

What I have learned from entrepreneurship is that it is important to be prompt with what you are doing. From turning assignments in at 9 pm to making sure you have all of your priorities lined up up when venturing into the business world. I have learned that is important to take peer advice into your progress.

I hope to take this class and what I have learned into my own career path. I am going to need to be diligent and efficient in my work.

Elevator pitch 2

Venture Concept No. 2

Well after learning from what other have had to say about my concept I have made some adjustments. What I have learned is that I need to make my application as user friendly as possible. I need to ensure that my application does a good job providing insight to those who want to go out to bars and would be willing to use my application on a regular basis.

I didn't completely change my venture concept I just managed to twerk it. I think being an entrepreneur means learning to make adjustments not completely retooling what I have done to this point because I have been successful.

Week 14 Summary

Being social as an entrepreneur is something is very vital. When starting a business or even a corporate business it is important to be creative in what you do. You must think of tactics and techniques that help separate yourself from others in the field. Chapters 3 and 4 are what really helped me learn this. I would like to ask the author what types of social media can help a business? what strives in that aspect should I be making? When and how is a good time to reach potential customers over social media?

Google Gold

1) A discussion of your general approach and strategy to search engine optimiation (SEO). What were some of the activities you did for each blog post to pursue SEO? 

I think that being aggressive in your ability to strategize as an entrepreneur is key and I did that in pursuing my SEO.

2) What were your keywords. How did you select those keywords? Did you change or refine your keywords through the semester?

Keywords are something that attracts the audience. How did you differ yourself? What words make you accessible on google. Simple yet effective. 

3) How did you use social media to enhance your SEO efforts? What your your surprises or general impression of using social media to improve your blog's profile? Was social media generally receptive of your blog, or did it get ignored?

My social media is strong. I use solid hashtags to reach people I wanted to. I think twitter was a huge part of my growth and I received good feedback in response to my tweets. 

4) What was your most "viral" post? In other words, which post obtained the most traffic? Why do you think?

I had a few tweets go viral. We had advertisements on twitter and promotions that leaked out and became successful on social media. 

5) Finally, did you make it to the first page of Google results for your keywords? If not, what page of results did you make it to?

I have not, I think I can continue to strive for that however. Using more tags can get me from page 4 to page 1 in no time. 

Very Short Interview 2

Phone interview:

What I learned from Baxter Bramblett the founder of Reel it Up is that it takes guts to become and entrepreneur but it is something we must be willing to accept. We must take the risk knowing that our product may not be successful. We must have full confidence in ourselves from the get go. Baxter did that and is a very successful man in the industry.

From the first interview until now I am starting to see myself more and more in him. I am gaining the confidence in my product and want to keep working towards my goal to become more like him.

13 Reading Reflection

In chapter 14 I learned right off the bat that each individual business is different and needs to be handled and analyzed in a special manner. If you are running a large business there isn't a need to compare or analyze what you are doing with smaller ones and vice versa. I learned how small businesses and ventures can have a tight reign on their employees because they don't have to deal with larger scale issues big businesses do.

Also finding out what it takes to begin your venture was a huge part in this weeks reading. Whether it is getting the costs to start your business, or it is gathering information to a target demographic this chapter made sure that entrepreneurs are focused and can bullet point information they need to start a successful business. I can take a lot from this weeks reading away. I now know what it takes and what I'm going to have to do to analyze my venture from the ground up.

Celebrating Failure

There have been a couple times struggling with getting peoples in depth information on if they would actually use this app. Since the application is mainly targeting one group of people I had to find others to help me get the job done and deciding what demographic to approach was difficult.

What I learned is that it is important to have a step by step plan on what you want to ask customers to try and extract from them. Knowing your market as well as your demographic is something that is important when creating a brand.

Failure is something that we need to embrace. We are all going to fall at some points but we need to make a conscious decision on how many times we get. It builds us and makes us stronger in any endeavor that we choose to participate in.

Exit Strategy

My exit strategy is going to be based on the success that I have. If my business does well in the first few years I will be selling it for a profit.

This is my strategy because I want to move on to new ventures and I will have an unlimited amount of funds to do so.

It hasn't effected my strategy and hasn't effected how motivated I am to make this a successful venture. 

The Next Step

Old Market: The old market is the top three videos and I can tell you that these college students are excited about the application. They want something simple and easy to use since they are college kids. They also want the application to have promotions to get them to use it more.

New Market: The bottom three video are a mix of younger and highschool kids. They are excited because they will want the app next year when they are legal to go to the bar. They want it to be instructional so they know what bars to go to. They are excited about the opportunity to use this new app next year.

What's next: I think promotional placement is what's next. Having bars and bartenders relays specials and deals to us while we are editing the app is huge. It will get more people to the bars and using the app when they know the deals. It will also keep bars on there toes wanting us to promote then. 

Week 12 Reflection

Finding economic growth comes from particular strategy. The better you plan the faster you will see economic growth with your company. Chapter 13 talks about how preparation can benefit you in all aspects on entrepreneurship. It is hard to blindly go into something no matter what you are doing entrepreneurship or now. Having a gameplan is the best way to have success. The stages of success are something that this chapter really keys in on as well. The focus of economic growth alongside growth stage is what I took away from the most from this chapter. The things that I want to know are more specifics on planning strategies. Why is growth stage so vital and if that fails how can we bounce back?

Venture Concept No. 1

Venture capitalism, where opportunity meets innovation. In this piece I will be describing what we have done so far, what we are taking advantage of in the business world, and where we will be moving forward as we progress in the development of our application. Lets first talk about opportunity. Opportunity is defined as a group of customers with unmet or under-met needs. Well our customers had previously been living a life without the opportunity to receive what we are now trying to give them. There had been no application yet out on the market like bar cam. We are now finding opportunity where many people had yet to look and that’s what makes our venture so great. So who has the need? People in Gainesville, Florida are looking for an outlet to find out what is going on at the bar scene. The nature of the need is inspired by the fear of people wasting their time before going out on the town and discovering what is to come and how they are going to spend their nights. The forces in this environment that will be driving my success is the driving will of people in Gainesville to want to be out in the night scene in midtown and downtown areas of Gainesville. The market is defined and specifically different because of the age demographic of people who are going to want to use the app. Ages 18-22 is the average age of college students. This is the age of people who are going to be going out as well as the age of people are going to want to use our application. The thing that is so fantastic about bar cam is that the customers are not being able to fill their need currently. There is no application anywhere near the same as ours. We take cameras and put them outside of bars to see if there are crowds and people in the area can see if they want to go get food and or drinks at different bars of choice in the area. I think this application is going to bring s loyal following, because college students have a loyal following to bar scenes. When people using our application find out that they can help themselves, they will become and stay loyal to bar cam as we continue to grow and improve our app. Our opportunity is big, and has the potential to grow to major cities if we can get bars and restaurants on board with our application. The window of opportunity needs to be hit during the prime seasonal time and most impactful time for the bars at the beginning of the year right around new years. What better way to kick off the bar application than to have people using it to see if they are wasting their time waiting in line on a busy new years. It can be a great way to showcase the application.

Our innovation is great, we have combined social aspects of life with technology in a great venture of entrepreneurship. We will be asking bars for a fee to put a camera in their bar, in return we provide advertising to them allowing people to see what deal specials are for each bar. They are getting a return investment while advertising and bars are able to pay us for our services. Our venture concept is in tact because we do not have a real competitor. We are a one of a kind application who can continue to grow as long as we keep pushing, Our app will be successful because this is something that the people want from us.

Week 11 Reading Reflection

So do I need an innovation strategy? I believe that this article states we need to plan ahead before we can have success. I was very surprised at how they conveyed that we can not be so cut and dry when it comes to being innovative.

I think that's what makes entrepreneurship so interesting, there are so many ways to be successful. I don't necessarily disagree with the author, it just took me sometime to realize what is going on. Things that companies that may be successful like google, apple, kodak may work for them. They may not always work for me so I have to find my niche and what entrepreneurship details and what I should be paying attention to.

Amazon Whisperer

So what's next for bar cam? We have already started a successful business in Gainesville, Florida showing people the images of the bars they want to access on the app. It is time to expand, we want to move to different cities and see how we can continue to grow our application. We will use mistakes that we have made along the way to help us grow in nearby cities such as Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Tallahassee.

The revenue drivers with our product is produced by a vicious cycle. First we need interest from bars to want to use our camera. Once we get advertising an acceptance from bars we can turn to the users to increase interest in night life at the various cities we choose to operate at. The cycle for us is positive when we can get more bars and people on board. Bars will start to pay us more when we bring more people out.

The next thing we will be adding with be the "specials section" where we meet with bars to give exclusive deals for food and drinks when they use our app. This will increase user demand therefore helping us in the cycle to make money with the bars.

Users have liked what we are doing and will be grateful that we now provide a deal option. The app will be simple and easy to use which is one of the best parts of this.

My Unfair Advantage

My Unfair Advantage Resources:
-Demographic
My app is designed to target college students. Luckily for us we are in a market with loads of people in that age group.
-Access
Normally rare. The amount of bars that I am looking to place my product is helpful thanks to a great bar scene in the city.
-Involvement
Plenty of students have already reached out to me wanting to help. It is abundant
-Funds
Advertisements paid by bars is slim but prevalent in Gainesville.
-Employees
Until we begin to expand we do not need an abundant amount of workers for the app.
-Social Capital
It certain areas this is large and concentrated like it would be in Gainesville.
-Capabilities
For me and my app it is simple to place cameras and get bars on board.
-Culture
We are changing the way people look at the bar scene. Items like this on the app store are limited.
-Location
Starting the app in Gainesville, FL looking to expand to cities such as Tallahassee and Orlando is a great breaking point.
-Human Capital
It will help me that i need limited amounts of employees.

My most valuable resource is my demographic and location. People around this area have been wanting something like this. It can be a springboard for my company.

What's your secret sauce

As you can tell from my friends I have a pretty motivated sauce. I am going to continue to work hard at what I am doing in order to make sure I pursue my goal as an entrepreneur. I am going to take the feedback from my friends as well as the comments in this class.

Napkin post

What I am offering to my consumers is the app idea to ensure that they know what bars look like in different cities before they actually go out to the selected location. It's a product that would be funded by the bars and advertisements. It brings good advertising to the bars and will help them in that aspect. 

Concerns: some people were concerned with privacy issues. 

Solutions: the camera quality isn't to the level that you can see exact faces and it would be hard to make out exactly who is at the bar more just tell the population of the bar.

Feedback:

They want the app to be easy and accessible and cheap.

Users want to have their concerns addressed above.

The feedback has been positive 

Many people said they would use the app on a regular basis

They want it to be simple

Week 8 reflection

We look at this chapter 8 reading reflection and I finally can feel like I know where the money is coming from. I learned about the source of capital. We can see that different sources of income and locations of money flow in this chapter whether it is from stocks private or public, finance companies, or even commercial banks. Venture capitalists and venture capitalism is something that I didn't know took so much time into investing and getting a lot of return or hoping that you get a lot of return back. I had no idea that venture capitalists had so much risk in what they are doing. They can be very successful if what they pick pays off but they also take a lot of risk knowing that if they aren't meticulous in what they do they're investments can crash and burn. I want to learn more about what it takes to be a venture capitalist and if it is a good idea to limit investments at the beginning of investing especially for small businesses.

Did you enjoy this chapter and the efforts to see venture capitalism in your life?

What can you expect to gain as a venture capitalist?

What more do you want from the author regarding this chapter?

Half-way reflection

Half way through this class I have realized that I do have creative juices I just need to find a way to get them going. The skills I have learned include aggression, creativity, passion and many more. I have learned that being an entrepreneur takes tenacity and many other types of skills. While developing my passion for this application I have faced many bumps and differences in opinions along the way. I have had to test myself in order to be successful in my endeavors and in this class. My app to create camera in bars in different towns is a dream that many people wish could happen and I am going to need tenacity to make it happen.

Week 9 Reading Reflection

So we go ahead and break this chapter down by doing market research. They say in the chapter that you can do market research in four different parts which takes up a lot of this section. First you need to research. Much like anything you do, you need to have background information to gather what you need to know. Secondly you must bring in your main source of data. Having numbers when doing research is vital. Not only taking the Data that you have but making sure you can analyze it is important. The chapter says that not only must you be able to find the numbers but you need to break them down. Most people have trouble and don't follow through with this step. Companies will use data to break down price points and make sure that what they are providing has come from proven date.

Dollar Giveaway

Interviewing customers #3

https://youtu.be/xeU9b8fTEUk

https://youtu.be/SbMPm-3EV_w

https://youtu.be/3UkeDvTyeyo

https://youtu.be/Y8p_3dqRqAM

https://youtu.be/LjSQkuBCOnA

Idea Napkin

My name is Ben Murphy and I am an entrepreneur with the ideas of creating an app called "Bar Cam". What I am offering is a service and application to help people see what the bar seen is like at cities across the country. I am starting this application in the college town of Gainesville, Fl. My app is free and will be paid by advertisements. The part that is great is that people can view what bars they decide are worth going to. 

Ben Murphy elevator pitch

https://youtu.be/uvXccOZnuIk

Classmate interviews

My idea is to create an app called "Bar Cam". This will install bars in every bar in multiple cities. People can look at bars to find out if they're crowded or worth going to. I asked my target audience if they were going to use the app.

5 Issues With the World

1. Global Warming
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/ways-to-combat-global-warming.html?_r=0

2. ISIS
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article34098027.html

3. Tuition Issues
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/06/the-tuition-is-too-damn-high-part-x-so-how-do-we-fix-it/

4. Local Terrorism
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-harlan-k-ullman/countering-domestic-terrorism_b_6631196.html

5. Propoganda
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/08/29/when-propaganda-displaces-democracy/tEUkYQFEWj9gPFUav0bkTM/story.html

Entrepreneurship Interview Week 3

Interview with Baxter Bramblett (CEO Founder of Reel it Up)

What motivates you to be an entrepreneur?

Baxter: Well growing up it was always something I wanted to do. I just finally lit a fire under myself and did it.

What can I learn from an entrepreneurship class?

Baxter: How to go about creating and pursuing dreams in the correct manner. It is good to know what and how to do it before you do it.

Do you have any regrets?

Baxter: I have no regrets and am glad I pursued this field and have had much success.

Bug List Week 3

1) McDonald's refuses to have their ice cream machine open in Gainesville later that 10 p.m.
2) People on the golf course who think it is okay to play a round in 5 hours.
3) I get frustrated when people talk about sports but have no idea what they are talking about.
4) It bugs me when peers of mine at rival colleges in the state think they are superior to me.
5) Archer traffic after 3 p.m. may be one of the more frustrating things in the world.
6) Ben Hill Griffin Stadium struggles to fill the student section on gamedays.
7) I don't enjoy seeing people wear the strap on shoes or sandals around campus.
8) Waiting in line for bars on a friday night.
9) homework assignments that are due on a friday night.
10) Parking on campus for less than 10 minutes only to find a ticket on your car.
11) Not being able to drive my scooter on campus until after 4 pm.
12) Students who study and put less effort than me but still get better grades.
13) Chipotle not staying open until the late hours of the night
14) Parking in the midtown area needs to improve.
15) Chic fila is closed on sundays, the day I crave it the most
16) People who drive slow in the left lane.
17) Police officers who pull you over for going 5 mph over the speed limit.
18) Gale lemerand road needs to increase its speed limit to at least 30 mph.
19) I get bugged by people who take up the whole hallway in buildings.
20) I get bugged by the fact that the University of Florida can't find a quarterback or a kicker!

Introduction

My name is Ben Murphy I am a Junior Telecommunications major at the University of Florida. I am on the sports broadcasting track where I hope to become a sports anchor locally and then hopefully on a national level. I currently am a correspondent for ESPNU where I produce on air and online content for their channel. I am a WUFT Sports anchor and an ESPN Radio host for ESPN Gainesville 95.3.

My Entrepreneur Story Week 2

In the fifth grade I sold lemonade. Sounds like a simple story but it actually motivated me as a young child to become motivated and be successful in school so that one day I could attend the University of Florida and create a good life for myself.

Ben Murphy Entrepreneur Mantra Week 2

Test Post Ben Murphy

This is a test post for Ben Murphy's Blog.