24A: Venture Concept No. 1

Venture Concept:

Opportunity:

My opportunity or group of customers with an unmet need revolves entirely around those looking for a cheap and convenient form of transportation. I'm looking to offer a cheap, conveniently located, and application based BikeShare system to not only the city of Gainesville, but students on the University of Florida Campus in particular. This need comes about for university students specifically in many ways. Common methods of transportation for students on campus consist of cars, scooters, bikes, the RTS Bus System, Walking, or Ubers. So many problems arise when it comes to each of these transportation forms, and that is why there is an unmet need for a transportation service that is inexpensive, in locations convenient for students on campus, and is easy to use (application based). Students who drive cars around campus can't always find parking and there is the issue of parking tickets, scooters break down easily and tend to be expensive, bikes get stolen all the time and tend to need repairs, the bus system doesn't always run when you need it, walking doesn't always get you where you need to go in time, and lastly, sure, Ubers are extremely convenient and awesome, they actually relate to my venture a lot, but they tend to be expensive and add up overtime. Overall, I think my venture would be very successful and meet a strong unmet need on this campus, but I also think this venture could be successful in so many other locations. Coming from someone who experienced the success of BikeShare systems at Arizona State University first hand, Bike Share systems can be beneficial to almost every university around the country! I truly believe my venture has great future success, as long as I can beat others to the game in this area. 

Innovation: 

My innovation that I'm bringing to the market is ultimately a service, and the service is a BikeShare system within the city of Gainesville. BikeShare stations would be place all around the city of Gainesville, mainly in convenient locations on the University of Florida Campus. BikeShare is a system of "rent-able" bikes that could be taken from one station to another, and you would be charged based on the amount of time you spent on the bike. The service would be gauged within the following process: a person would walk to and arrive at a bikeshare station, in order to rent the bike, they would scan a bar code on the back of the bike with a bike share phone application, the person could then ride the bike wherever they please and would be charged based on the amount of time they spent on the bike, they would then park the pike and the station closest to their desired location, and as soon as it was parked, the application would be made aware and the person's time would be up. A BikeShare service is ultimately a cheap and convenient transportation service that could replace many common transportation issues on campuses. Money will be generated via each ride and payment will take place over an application, similar to Uber. 

Venture Concept:

Overall, the implementation of a BikeShare service on the University of Florida campus would cover the need for convenient and cheap transportation on campus. This would solve issues such as parking tickets, lack of parking, stolen bikes, broken scooters, inconvenient bus routes, and expensive ubers. I think a lot of customers would switch to a service like this, because not only would it save them so much money in the long term, but it would make their lives so much easier! 

Possible competitors could be the other sources of transportation, if people didn't believe my product was valuable enough to switch to, or other bikeshare services if they happened to infiltrate gainesville overtime. 

When it comes to organization of business, the service basically takes care of itself and doesn't need a human element once it's put onto a campus or into a city, but I would need a production team to make bikes, help set up stations, possible a maintenance crew to watch over the bike stations, and maybe a small office with staff to cover any customer issues or run the application. 

Three Minor Elements:

"Secret Sauce": I think my opportunities secret sauce is it's ability to almost be like the Uber of Bikes within Gainesville. It would be just as convenient, and application-based, but it would be way cheaper!

Next Steps: If I were able to implement BikeShare services within Gainesville and it were to be a major success, I'd consider implementing some type of rent-able scooter service as well. I have also seen this grow at Arizona State, and think it could be beneficial here as well. 

Future: Assuming my product launches, I would hope it grew to be extremely successful in Gainesville, to the point it became such a well known and successful BikeShare company, I'm able to spread to other universities and campuses!