Friday, December 7, 2018

Venture Concept for Gainesville Parking House #2

1.

Opportunity
The different students that regularly drive scooters across the University of Florida campus have expressed their complaints towards the difficulty of finding parking spaces near the more popular locations. Students are spending up to hours looking for spots and are looking for a solution to the struggle of going on campus with a scooter at all. As construction in the city of Gainesville increases, open plots of land around the town are becoming less and less common which leads to this great opportunity. There is a relatively large, single plot of land across one of the most popular locations on campus that will not be available for very long. This provides a space for off-campus parking in a location that could great benefit students and whoever starts it up. Demographically, this location is perfect for targeting students and encouraging a fast, stress-free opportunity to park and get on to campus.

Innovation
The creation will be the Gaineville Parking House (GPH). This will be a 3-4 story parking garage that will provide approximately 20 car parking spaces and 100 scooter parking spaces. This land will be purchased for approximately $200,000. We will gain this money back by selling $5 parking per hour, $25 per day, $150 per week, $500 per month, and then an annual parking pass for $1,000. It will take a bit of time to gain profit but within five years it should be all profit. Once the cost of buying and building the land and building has been regained, the remaining money will be profit that can go into maintaining the building and potentially expanding in the future. Most of the money gained  would go into maintaining a clean parking garage and providing a designated personally parking space in one of the best locations near the University of Florida.

Venture Concept
Currently one of the only parking options on or near the University of Florida is the on-campus parking that most students find frustrating. The few spaces offered on campus are, for the most part, the only competitors close enough for students to consider parking in to get on to campus.  For this reason, I believe it will be a quick purchase for many students and will require minimal convincing in doing so. This is due to the idea that many students often find themselves late to class or even just missing out on events due to not having the option of a quick and easily-accessible parking space. This strong focus on academics and on-campus involvement in Gainesville will encourage a lot of individuals to partake in GPH regardless of the cost. The prices are relatively high, however, the location and ease of access provided seems to make the price adequate. The costs would come down to 3 to 4 different security guards that would rotate shifts in manning the entrance booth, and 4 to 5 janitors that would rotate in keeping the building in a clean state.


The location of the GPH is the most notable advantage the parking garage has over all other competitors. This resource is what will convince individuals to park there simply because of how easy it would make it to get onto campus. With close to no other options of land to build a parking garage on anywhere near as close to campus, it will be nearly impossible for competitors to have a similar situation.

The next venture I'd like to tackle is a different parking garage on the more popular parts of the opposite side of the campus and then potentially moving on to other schools with similar situations.

In the next five years, I hope to have several more successful parking garages across the state in locations where they are needed. In ten years, however, I hope to have successful parking garages across the world in locations where I believe they will thrive, while having enough money to be able to take risks in where I start opening them.

(2-3).
In the feedback students basically expressed how some of the calculated numbers might be misleading and inaccurate. I did some more research and revised the numbers I had previously. The numbers added are much more realistic and provide a better understanding of the goals I plan to achieve. The comments helped me realize how important it is to pay attention to smaller details. 


Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Final Reflection

After looking through all of the blog posts I have submitted the one experience that really stood out to me was the assignment in which I had to go and meet up with a professional in the field my venture was in. This was very unique to me because it was the hands on experience that I had been waiting for a class to provide me with. I felt uncomfortable at first when going to meet with them but it assured me of actual progress towards being an entrepreneur after I came out of the interview.

After experiences such as this one,I truly do see myself as an entrepreneur or at least having more of a mindset like one. I feel as though I have a better understanding towards what it takes to be an entrepreneur including the risks and rewards it entails. The books I read also really helped open my eyes to the point of views of other renowned entrepreneur and influenced my mentality in a very positive way.

If I could give advice to a future student joining this class I would tell them to tackle each assignment with a commitment to learn and apply the concepts learned towards the vision they have of themselves professionally. I found it very motivating to learn something new and to think of ways it could be applied to my intended future endeavors.For success in the class I would strongly encourage staying on schedule with assignments and always watching lectures as soon as they are released in the case they aren't going in person.