Week 8 Reading Reflection

1) Definitely what stood out from this reading is the problem of financing and raising capitol to start a business. It is common knowledge that it takes money to make money, however it is a complicated process to achive that money without having starting capital. The process of getting business loans and investments is hard and takes alot of perseverance.

2) I was confused during the section on equity financing. Im not really sure if it was explained well, or at least i do not understand what i read. I'm assuming that it means whatever someone invests into my company will but them a share of its equity or a share of some initial profits depending on the contract.

3) My question to the author would be for him to delve a little further into the process that goes behind equity financing and also how to negociate a successful deal.

4) Nothing in the reading i believe the author was particularly wrong about. Again, i would just like further information on the process of equity financing and achieving the most effective deal when seeking investment into my company

Halfway Reflection

Tenacity is a great thing. Both a fansastic word to say, and also a great skill to have. Tenacity is definitely a requirement for success in anything but especially entrepreneurship. But although tenacity may be important i believe that there are many other factors needed to succeed this course and in the process ofentrepreneurship. The most important, behind creativity and tenacity, is the attention to detail. Especially for this course which is very meticulous and detail oriented. In this course there isn't what you would call hard assignments, however they are incredibly frequent which can prove very challeging. Keeping up with the intense amount of assignments can be very challenging but you can do it very easily if you are detail oriented and constantly tracking the assignments. Finding time to do the tasks is key, which i also believe is key for entrepreneurship. When i think about moments in which i felt like giving up i look the the countless restless nights i have studying for classes like Chemistry and Biology or writing an essay (which is something that is particularly challenging to me) for class. The trick is to just keep going and not to make excuses for why you should stop. If your tired, keep going, be tenaceous, and push through. for the following semester i have three tips.

1) Never be afraid to try - attempting a new challenge is always the first step to fiding new experiences and opportunities
2) Always work hard - success will never come by taking the easy way out
3) Never never quit - dont give up just because it is hard or you fail, it is always the right choice to keep trying!

Week 7 reading reflection

1) I was very interested in his angel investors. I'm interested into how somebody will just throw a bunch of money into a project just because they believe it can do good. It's strange to think that people do that.
2) the reading was fairly straight forward and I was not really confused by any of it.
3) I would ask him if advertising new technology now is easier than advertising technology then? I feel like as people we are now far more well versed in technology so it would be a lot easier to show them to learn.
4) I did not disagree with anything the author said this week.

Free Money

Giving away money was actually kind of fun. To be honest there was no real strategy other than directly approaching them and handing them money. When they asked me why I was giving away money I usually made up a funny reason like "me and this dollar are having a fight and I just can't see it anymore". I tried to give money to people who I actually thought needed it though and two of my dollars were given to homeless people but out of respect for them I did not film those two. Out of the two that I did film my strategy was just to find pretty girls in all honesty lol. Here are the videos! Out of this experience is that people can be very hostile even when somebody is doing a nice thing and that it feels very good to give money to those who really need it.

Interviewing Customers No. 3

     For my interviews i decided to get feedback on multiple age groups to see how they would take my app differently. For the most part they liked it, and there was some constructive criticism to go along with it which was nice. The only thing is that people dont really understand the idea too well and it took alot of extra explaining for them to understand just how exatly it works. That is something im going to have to work on in order to make my idea popular, hopefully with a better demonstration/ prototype. Basically people dont understand why they would need something on their phone that holds receipts when their already getting paper and throwing it away. The idea of this app is to completely eliminate the paper used in retailers and making the receipt process 100% digital. This way you can reject receiving a receipt and still save the paper because the receipt is not being printed gratuitously.

Week 6 Reading Reflection

1) I was very interested in how he merged family and business together. Family is a very important thing in my life and i believe that with their support anything is possible.
2) Nothing about the reading, this week, was confusing to me
3) I would ask the author what made him specifically find his 5 forces? I would want to know what experiences led him to make that decision and whether or not he believes there could be more.
4) I believe the author was wrong about the amount of factors in his model. Social Media and other forms of internet advertising are very important to the modern business and i believe should be included in the authors factors.

Idea Napkin No.1

1) My name is Nahel Abugattas, I am a chemistry major. Some things about me include: having a major that has nothing to do with my business concept, the fact that I don't really want to be an entrepreneur because I want to be a doctor, and also I have long hair. As far as talents go, I have an uncanny ability to maintain low self esteem despite my charisma and charming demeanor. Also I'm pretty smart hard working and very detail oriented. But more importantly sometimes I think that I'm funny, but many times it's evident that I'm not. If this business actually takes off and becomes part of my life I would imagine it would probably be my future. If I were to begin acting upon my ideas and begin my business then I foresee many obstacles but also many rewards down the line. I would definitely need to learn a lot more and become far more experienced before taking upon this take and doing it well.

2) I will be offering an application that will be able to scan receipts directly from a computer or register monitor that I would also need to provide. This scan would save 1 copy of the receipt onto a cloud based storage on the customers account and would be able to be accessed via the app or online on a separate website. The scanned receipt would serve as proof of purchase like any normal receipt but will be a purely digital copy thereby using no paper.

3) My product will be offered to anybody with a smartphone who purchases things regularly. The more target market would be individuals from the ages of 18 - 60 who regularly purchase things, are independent, and do most of their own shopping. 

4) Anybody who is remotely interested in helping the environment would be interested in my product. Also the convenience of digital accessibility while never needing to take up memory on a persons phone would ease the process of organizing receipts for tax purposes and return purposes. Online the receipts could be categorized for easy locating making it far more convenient. Also corporations can see a huge return on their investment in the machines used to scan the receipts. Millions of dollars spent annually on paper rolls for receipts would be saved and the retailers can keep all their promotions and special anything that they usually keep on their receipts.

5) As far what sets me apart. I am not aware of any company that is currently doing  anything similar. There are certain register companies like Square who can email receipts to you, but nothing that uses an app to have an easily accessible digital receipt. And an email of a receipt is very inconvenient to keep organized.

I think my business has a few key weaknesses. The first being that for it to have any real impact it would need to be implemented in large nation or worldwide retailers. There wouldn't be much of an impact only being used by a few local companies although it would be convenient and money saving for them. Also it would have to work in tandem with people downloading the app. If millions of people have an app but only a few places to use it then people wouldn't keep using the app. The product would first need to be implemented at large retailers and advertised there in order for it to be truly convenient. Then people would begin downloading the app in large quantities and much power will be saved.

Customer Interview No. 2

For my product I had to adjust my idea slightly from last time in that my storage for the receipts on the app had to be moved from a phone based storage to a cloud based storage wich allows for more to be saved onto the app and it wouldnt clog up the memory of the users phone. Other than that there is nothing really i needed to change about the app and all the questions remained relatively the same. Everyone i interviewed was still very on board for the project. People very much liked it. For the next ENT class i would reccoment students cater their product to the customers need rather than what you want to make.

Week 5 Reading Reflection

1) I was very surprised at reading just how many entrepreneurs fail because of poor management. This means that there are plenty of fantastic business or product ideas that do not become popular because of poor management. It takes more than an idea to make something work, it takes proper vision and execution in order to make a viable business.
2)I found the portion about lifestyle ventures a bit confusing. I do not think that entrepreneurs have to live the lifestyle of their product or even have a need for it. Rather they need to find something that is necessary and follow that need. In the end i think their main goal should be to profit rather than live a lifestyle.
3) If i had to ask anything to the author i would ask what things I would need to avoid in order to manage my business well and not fail. Also I would ask him how i would effectively patent a product.
4)There isn't anything else i would disagree with other than possibly the bit about lifestyle venturing.

Elevator pitch No. 1

Hello! This is my video about my company "Paperless Solutions Inc.". My goal is to completely eliminate paper waste from receipts. My plan is to create an app that will scan a digital receipt onto the customers smart phone and store it on a digital cloud which would serve as proof of purchase and easily organize the receipts.