9A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2

• Interview #1 - The first person I interviews was a friend from back home. He wishes to travel more but cannot afford to. His main reason for wanting to travel revolves around wanted to surf around the world. Due to this he was uninterested in the idea of VR to travel since it could not recreate that experience accurately enough.
  
• Interview #2 - The second person I interviewed was my grandmothers friend. She loves to travel but does not go as often since her husband died. She was very interested by the idea but said it sounded "much to complicated" for her. She said she wasn't very good at "computer things". This made me realize that the market for VR is reduced because many people dont understand it.
  
• Interview #3 - The third person I interviewed was one of my roomates (not the same one interviewed in 7a). He said almost exactly the same things as the person in interview #1. He travels for experiences and while he would be interested in the VR travel it would never be a solution for him.
  
• Interview #4 - The fourth person I interviewed was a fellow computer science classmate of mine. He absolutely loved the idea of VR travel and had the technical know-how to use VR technology. However his computer was not powerful enough to run VR and the cost to build/buy a computer that could run VR was to high for him. He pointed out he "could just take a trip" for the same cost.
  
• Interview #5 - The final person i interviewed was a fraternity brother of mine. He did not believe that VR could create a realistic enough experience to simulate travel.

The biggest difference between those with this need and those without are "observers vs participaters". Those who wish to travel to observe and learn were very interested in the use of VR technology to simulate travel. Those who wished to interact with their surroundings and environment are less interested in the use of VR for travel.
Even among those who wish to do VR travel there is a split between those more and less technically inclined. An easy to use platform could be built for people who who already are familiar with the concept of VR and have VR devices. These devices also often require special equipment like powerful computers. However to appeal to a larger audience it would be necessary to create a simple to use all in one VR device. I dont believe the technology to do this cheaply exist yet, but once it does this would be a great opportunity to take advantage of.

7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

1. The summer after my senior year of high school my family took a vacation where we traveled through Italy and Greece. It was amazing, but everytime we walked through old ruins I would always think "I wish I could see what it used to look like". I believe that there is a huge market for augmented and virtual reality in the tourism market. Virtual reality means that people could "visit" historic sites they would not be able to get to otherwise. Augmented reality means people could see what ancient areas used to look like in order to get a better understanding of that people and culture.

2. People who wish to travel to various sites but can not physically do there for some reason.
The Who: People who wish to travel but physically can not
The What: Cannot physically visit locations but might be able to using VR
The Why: Travel can be very expensive and time consuming and many people can not afford it.

3. Interviews

• Interview #1 - The first person I interviewed was one of my roomates, he has never traveled outside of the United States. He was very interested in this technology. Having heard of stories about places abroad from friends but not being able to go due to a lack of funds is not a good feeling he said. This could possibly allow him to see all the cool places he's heard about.
  
• Interview #2 - The second person I interviewed was a disabled person who must use a wheelchair. Travel has gotten easier for her over the years especially within the United States and western European countries. However many countries that she would like to visit do not have the accessibility for disabled people that we have here. This makes traveling to those countries a stressful en devour.
  
• Interview #3 - The third person I interviewed is my cousin, a senior in highschool. He has traveled with his family growing up but as he begins to reach financial independence worries he will no longer be able to afford travel. He was interested but said it would never compare to the real thing. "There is no way to simulate the majesty of watching a herd of zebras run", according to him. This has reinforced my idea it is best to focus on places and not events for our VR travel.
  
• Interview #4 - The fourth person i interviewed was my grandfather. As he is getting older he is not as mobile as before, making travel much harder for him. He was interested in the VR aspect and really wanted a chance to try that out. However he was less interested in the travel aspect saying "its not real". He did point out the opportunities in education for this product.
  
• Interview #5 - The final person I interviewed was my aunt who used to be a teacher at a Montessori school. Montessori schools are known for their non traditional approach to learning and trying to make it "fun" for kids. She said this technology would be perfect for their schools. It would be like taking the students on a field trip to anywhere in the world.

What I learned from my interviews is there is interest in using VR to simulate travel. However due to many people not having computers with the ability to run VR using older video game technology would allow a wider market to be reached. Also people who wish to visit historic sites in their "travel" like the idea because they want to see something. People who travel for experiences (going to the beach etc) like the idea less because even VR cannot simulate many experiences. The education market could potentially be huge.

8A – Solving The Problem

The problem I identified was that many people would like to travel but can not due to cost, time, distance, etc. Travel is considered an activity of the wealthy but with Virtual Reality it does not have to be that way. Using virtual reality of video game engine technology and 3d scans of historic sites it should be possible to create realistic representations that people can visit right from their computers.

My solution has several steps and would be costly and timely to implement. However I believe there is a large opportunity here so the effort put in could potentially be worth it. First I need to do more research on Virtual Reality technology to see if we have reached the point it would be possible to reconstruct historic sites in it. There is a product called Realities that is already meant to do this but receives negative reviews due to its clumsiness, lack of sites, and bad graphics. I believe it would be better to give up on VR and instead use a traditional video game engine if there are to many technical restraints. Video game engine technology is very advanced and I am confident in its ability to create an extremely realistic render.

Then by scanning structures it should be possible to create extremely accurate 3d models that could be imported into the game. People who wished to visit these sites would be able to walk around the exact replica of the place on their home computers.

6A – Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

Economic Trends

1. The cost to being luggage on you with you when flying on a plane has been increasing for many years and shows no signs of stopping. I personally have noticed this trend and then just found a Times article about the trend. According to statistics published by the Bureau of Transportation  15 largest airlines collected baggage fees totaling $3.5 billion and $2.6 billion worth of ticket change fees. The opportunity I see is for a way to ship customers luggage from their departure point to their destination, door to door, without use of the airlines. Shipping customers luggage could easily be done for a much cheaper fee than airlines charge though it could take several days. The potential customer would be people who were traveling and did not want to pay the high airline luggage fee. This would be a medium difficult opportunity to take advantage of, I feel it would not be very hard to develop a shipping system. The hardest part would be spreading knowledge about the service and convincing customers to be willing to possibly have to ship luggage a day or two in advance.

I believe I saw this opportunity because my family travels a lot and iv seen how luggage fees can add up very quickly. Especially if a person traveling has multiple bags they would have to pay for this service could save them a lot of money.

2. A recent trend is the use of artificial intelligence to replace human workers. In this example we will look specifically at using them to pick and choose stocks replacing a job formerly done by humans. I found out about this trend in a fortune finance article about Black Rock one of the worlds leading money management companies firing 40 employees in favor of trading algorithms. This trend is predicted to continue with up to 10% of the finance work force expected to be replaced by computers. The opportunity here is these systems to replace workers must be built, updated, and maintained so that they can be used by the large finance companies. The customer for this product would be large financial institutions. This would be a very difficult opportunity to take advantage of. Creating the software would be alot of work followed by having to sell it to a huge company. However difficult this opportunity might be to take of advantage of it could also be very profitable.

I noticed this opportunity because computer science is my major so I am automatically drawn to anything related to computers. I have also worked with computer scientists who have worked in finance before and found it to be very profitable.

Regulatory Changes

1. In the United States of America if you meet certain conditions such as being under a certain yearly salary, if you work for more than 40 hours a week you qualify for overtime pay. Overtime pay is 1.5x whatever normal pay is for that worker. This can be very expensive for companies who need employees to put in extra hours. Before 2017 the maximum yearly salary to qualify was $23,660 but it has now doubled to $47,476. This is great news if you are an employee in that range who will now receive extra pay but bad news for businesses that will now experience a higher cost of labor. This leaves opportunity for a company that connects temp workers with businesses. Obviously temp agencies already exist but this agency could specifically focus on providing skilled workers to do projects that would otherwise have existing employees working overtime. There are two customers in this scenario, one the temp worker who uses our service to find work. The second is the business which uses the service so it does not have to pay employees 1.5x there normal salary. I do not believe this would be a very difficult opportunity to take advantage of. However, it would require looking into the rules and regulations surrounding temp work.

I was googling for various new regulations to get ideas for a business. I cam across this change and it occurred to me how this could affect small business owners that are already on a small profit margin. I remember hearing some small - medium size business owners complain when Obama care was implemented because there profit margin was not high enough to take on that expense. When I saw this change I was reminded of that and thought of the negative consequences this might have.

2. President Trump has voiced his desire to repeal the Dodd-Frank act which was passed in 2010, in the wake of the financial collapse, to reduce risks taken by financial institutions and predatory loaning practices. Without this law in place financial institutions could revert to many of the same practices that led to the crash of the financial markets a decade ago. This made me think of a business who protects individuals from being taken advantage of. To often people blindly trust there bank, or money management institution and even if they get an explanation of where there money is going they don't understand. This business would help people understand where there money is going when they give it to financial institutions and be able to talk to the institutions on behalf of the individual and actually understand what they are saying. Then they would go back to the individual and explain to them in simple terms where there money is going and if the institution is following safe practices. The customer would be individuals dealing with financial institutions. This would be a difficult opportunity, firstly because I know very little about finance. But also because you have to convince people to trust you over large well known names. It would also be difficult because it goes against the wishes of the financial institutions which have massive amounts of money and power.

I thought of this opportunity because I watched the Big Short last night, it is about the financial collapse and the irresponsible practices of financial institutions. These companies require regulation because they don't care about the individual they only care about profit margin. If there will not be regulation to watch and make sure they act in the customers best interest perhaps customers will be willing to pay someone else to watch them.

4A – Forming An Opportunity Belief

Anti-drone security could potentially become a large issue in the upcoming years. As you are probably aware drones are flown remotely and can contain cameras, sensors, or any one of many different types of equipment. Recently at DEFCON, the largest hacking convention in the world, a drone was shown to do flyby hacking. That is by simply flying by an office building to hack vulnerable computers. In a domestic setting that affects the average person a man was arrested for shooting a drone over his property and as he claimed violating his privacy. Another example of drones being used for nefarious purposes happened this summer. An inmate at a South Carolina prison escaped using tools flown in by a drone. There is currently no good solution for stopping drones.

The unmet need that I have identified is the need for a drone defense system for government facilities, office buildings, and individual residences. Anybody who wishes to maintain the privacy and security of some building has a need for this defense. I believe that the defense of office buildings containing sensitive data and of government complexes to be a much more realistic business than that of defending private residences.

The need for drone defense is extremely new. Only in recent years have they become very cheap and accessible to the general public. People are working on solving the problem but every solution so far can be beaten. You can shoot them with a net, but enough lift and a cage around the propellers will keep the drone in the air. You can use another drone to take it out of the sky but what if there drone is faster? Shooting them works the best but you cant do that in a crowded setting. The situation is so bad that one solution being used is trained falcons which is obviously very expensive, and bringing nature to a science fight.

In percentage terms I think it varies across which customer base we focus on. For domestic residence defense i think the opportunity is fairly low, around 20%. I believe the opportunity for defense of large office structures that may contain sensative data much higher, around 80%. Finally i believe the market for defense of government institutions to be the highest opportunity at 90%, the major problem with that is having to deal with the government in business.

I attempted to contact several companies that own large office buildings buildings across America such as Brookfield Properties. Unfortunately I was not able to secure an interview with anyone who would be involved in this level of decision making. So I decided to focus on the individual residence market.

Interview 1 -
What is the exact nature of the need?
A way to protect the privacy and security of their home from drones.
When do they become aware of the need?
It crosses their mind occasionally when they see a drone flying around or see something on the news about the issue. However in their daily lives they never think about it.
When did they first become aware of their need?
They first became aware of the issue of drones invading peoples privacy from the South Park episode 'The Magic Bush' which features drones being used to invade the privacy of home owners.
How are they currently addressing their need?
They are currently doing nothing to address their need.

Interview 2 -
What is the exact nature of the need?
A cheap and easy way to either ground a drone preferably without to much destruction. Alternatively a way to make sure it does not fly above or near their house.
When do they become aware of the need?
Whenever the neighbor flies their drone over the house.
When did they first become aware of their need?
They had been aware of the need from hearing about issues on the news. Then the neighbors got a drone and the issue became personal. This person had heard about the Kentucky man being arrested for shooting the drone and said they felt helpless against the issue.
How are they currently addressing their need?
They are currently trying to figure out an inexpensive way to stop the drones but have not found anything yet.

Interview 3 -
What is the exact nature of the need?
According to the customer they have no need. I believed they would have a need for a way to protect their privacy at home from drones.
When do they become aware of the need?
Never, now since I told them about it perhaps when they see something about drones on the news they will think about it.
When did they first become aware of their need?
They were not aware of the need until i mentioned it to them. Once I told them about the issue they were not to worried about the issues with privacy saying 'nothing is private these days anyways'.
How are they currently addressing their need?
They are not doing anything to address the need and have no expectation to address the need.

After my interviews with home owners I feel the market for defense of individual residences is very low, perhaps around 5%. The average person does not like the idea of drones above their home but it is not an issue they worry about regularly. They would probably not go out of there way to find or implement a solution to the problem. I believe this is a much more accurate view of the market than the one I had when I started.

Entrepreneurs should adjust based on feedback from consumers, based on this feedback I would not pursue a drone defense business in the residential sector. However, I still believe that a market exists centered around office buildings and government installations. If I had more time and resources to be able to contact these potential customers I believe they would be very interested in a solution to this problem.

5A – Identifying Local Opportunities

1. Before Paying Collections Debts, Check Your Credit Reports
The story - As debt is bought and sold mistakes are sometimes made by debt collectors leading them to pursue you for money you may not know. The scary thing is it is very difficult to check if you actually do have debt. You must check a credit report and even that may not be accurate because not all creditors report to agencies.
The problem - There is no one place that keeps track of all your debt. This means that debt collectors can request and pursue you for debt you dont actually owe. It is very difficult to prove you do not owe the debt since there is no central database.
The who - Any person in the United States of America being pursued by debt collector for a debt they may not owe.

2. How to Handle Credit Card Bills During an Emergency
The story - When an emergency strikes, like the upcoming hurricane for example paying for a credit card is often not on peoples minds. Or they might not even be able to pay the bills due to a power outage. Not paying credit card bills in a timely manner can create large fines making a bad situation even worse. It also hurts your credit in a time when you may need it most.
The problem - While people deal with an emergency, they may not be able to pay bills resulting in large fines. This makes there already bad situation worse. It also hurts your credit in a time when you may need it most.
The who - Anyone with bills who may be subject to an emergency situation

3. Couple arrested after child found in hot car
The story - Two parents were arrested after leaving there child in a hot car at Butler plaza. The child was asleep and they forgot it was in the back. Now the parents are being charged with child abuse.
The problem - Maybe these two are bad parents or maybe they actually did simply forget the child. I have heard stories of tired parents forgetting there child before, at school or around the house. Perhaps these two made an honest mistake. There should be a product to prevent children from being forgotten, something that sent an alert to your phone on some trigger for example.
The who - Parents of young children.

4. Opioid abuse, treatment on agenda at HealthStreet
The Story - An organization called Health Street is holding a meeting to bridge the gap between health care system and health research on the opioid epidemic in the United States. Treatment is not widely understood on what has quickly become a very serious issue. Theres a gap between the number of people who us opioids in the U.S. and the number of health care providers who can treat the issue.
The problem - Opioid use has become a large issue and not many health care providers can provide treatment.
The who - Health care providers and people suffering opioid addication.

5. UF study finds not all popular diets supported by clinical trials
The story -  Researchers at UF have found little scientific evidence that many popular diets actually work. Researchers found high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets "are the most advantageous". However, even among diets thats worked it was mostly short term weight loss of about 5%.
The problem - Many popular diets are not actually supported by clinical trials. People may be spending money on a diet that does not actually work. Further they may actually be eating an unhealthy diet that they believe is healthy.
The who - People Trying to diet.