23A – Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

• Generate a list of all of the resources in your venture (produce a list of at least 10 resources that you already possess). This can include your human capital, social capital, financial capital, and capabilities. You may also discuss the organizational culture you intend to create (but, obviously, it's not a resource that you have, now.) 
• Conduct a "VRIN" analysis for each resource. That is, describe, for each resource, how it is valuable, rare, inimitable (how hard it is to copy by others), and non-substitutable (are there other resources that can provide the same benefits?). 
• Remember, not ALL resources will measure up well. That's OK. You just need one. 
• After conducting the VRIN analysis, determine what your top resource is. Explain why it's more important to your venture than all of the other resources.

1) My first resource is my programming talent.  I have not done VR before but I could learn more quickly than most other people.  

-This is a valuable resource since pretty much everything involves computers now

-It is not that rare especially at a University

-It is very imitable, anyone can start learning with some googling

-The key to this resource is building the VR engine which will be unsubstituable and inimitable (hopefully).

2) A project as big as this VR would not be possible without a whole team of engineers behind it. So a resource is many of the computer science students I am friends with. Many CS students are extremely entrepreneurial and dream of being the next Jobs or Gates. I could probably get a team together around a good idea.

-This is a valuable resource, cheap engineers aren't that easy to come by

- It is actually pretty rare. The fact that we are at a University means there are plenty of programmers I could recruit. In another town that may not be the case.

- It is imitable, obviously anyone can assemble a team, it might be harder and more expensive else where however

- There is no other resource that can replace a team of engineers

3) I am familiar with start up organization. Many start ups especially tech ones use the Agile framework as a way to organize there business. I have worked at businesses with this framework before and would implement it in mine to maximize efficiency.

-This is an extremely valuable resource. Many people have a great idea but don't know the business side.

-If you have worked with tech startups you have likely seen this, or you can read about it. Therefor it is common.

-Anyone can read about an imitate this.

-You could use other frameworks but this is a tried and trued method.

4) I have connections in the tech startup world. I know members of various venture firms who once I developed an alpha product I could approach. Venture firms fund companies the large amount of money it often takes to develop software. In exchange they receive a percentage of the company and usually board seats as well.

-This is a valuable resource, many companies die simply because they can not be funded

-It is pretty rare, especially for someone my age.

-It is not imitable.

-VC firms are actively looking for investment opportunities. So if your idea is good you can hopefully get in the door without to much trouble.

5) My next big resource is the University. There is a gator VR club I can use to learn more about VR. There are also opportunities to get funding from the University if I wanted.

-This Is a valuable resource, having someone teach me will significantly speed up the time I can learn to build VR apps in.

-This is a kinda rare kinda common resource. It might be common for college students but rare for most people.

-You could hire someone to help you.

-You could use online resource as a substitute but I believe it is best to be in person.

6) Another resource is the time. Im early on this idea its not possible yet. I will be ready when the time is right though.

-It is a valuable resource, 10 years ago it would be impossible to VR, 10 years from now it may be to late. It should become possible within the next 5 years I believe.

-Everyone has this resource

7) Another resource I have is the competitiveness of the VR device market. There are currently only a couple companies all vying for power. This makes the possibilities of getting deals with various manufacturers easier since they are all looking to out do their competition.

-This is a valuable resource, some markets are harder to enter than others.

-It is not a rare resource

-Much of the tech market shares the trait of having a low barrier to entry if you have the skills to create what you want.

-There really isn't a substitute. If you have a great product but enter a saturated established market it will be much harder to break in.

8) I am familiar with start up organization. Many start ups especially tech ones use the Agile framework as a way to organize there business. I have worked at businesses with this framework before and would implement it in mine to maximize efficiency.

-This is an extremely valuable resource. Many people have a great idea but don't know the business side.

-If you have worked with tech startups you have likely seen this, or you can read about it. Therefor it is common.

-Anyone can read about an imitate this.

-You could use other frameworks but this is a tried and trued method.

9) My third resource is distribution, I only have to target certain historic sites when having people use it as a supplement when visiting a site. If people want a completely virtual experience I would distribute it through an online store such as steam or a company website.

-This is valuable since it is much easier to get into an online store and distribution is not an issue.

-It is common among software companies

-No it is not imitable

-The substitute is having a physical product that requires distribution and contracts with stores

10) My final resource is the cheapness it takes to enter the first stages of a tech startup. Above I mentioned the cost and how it was expensive often requiring funding. It is expensive to reach a final product but to begin development is extremely cheap. Often the only cost to begin is the time you spend.

-This is a valuable resource because it means minimal investment is needed to get started

-It is common among software startups

-It is not imitable

-There is no substitute

The real resource and the only one that would matter for this company to exist is the tech to make realistic renderings of VR anchored to points in a video stream. This is what we would have to develop.

21A – Reading Reflection No. 2

1. The general theme of this book was that you cannot have a one dimensional approach to entrpeneurship.

2. This connected with the class because this class encourages you to think differently and look at problems and opportunities from different angles.

3. My exercise is to look at your current business idea. Point out problems with your solution and other possible solutions. How are you gonna beat those other solutions.

4.

20A – Growing Your Social Capital

Quick rant first before I write my interviews. Asking us to interview these people is excessive. If someone is a "market expert" they are probably a very busy person who does not have time to be interviewed for a class like this. I tried to meetup with many people only to be declined/ignored/have a meeting scheduled for after this assignment was due.
1. The first social contact I made is with Micah. Micah is the CEO of a tech incubator. They assist tech startups in by giving them a place to work and providing them with advice and connections. I am counting him as a domain expert, even though he does not know much about VR he is familiar with the tech startup scene. I know Micah because my dad is a part owner of the groundswell, and I have facilitated contact between himself and computer science club leaders at UF. I contacted him over email and then we talked on the phone. This person did not do a favor for me but rather I did a favor for them. I assisted in organizing a large group of UF students to attend a conference he is hosting. Including this person in my network is very valuable since they have lots of experience and connections in the tech startup area.

2. The second social contract I made was. Finding a market expert was extremely difficult and I didn't know where to start. I was not able to schedule a meeting with any VR tourism companies so I ended up settling for a hotel manager. Denny manages a large number of hotels across the US. This is not exactly my market but it is tourism so I will pursue it. I contacted Denny by getting his email address from his son who is a longtime friend of mine. I asked him about appealing to tourists, what are they looking for. Along with the process of having a hotel advertise your service to the guests for you and various other marketing tactics. I hope that I can transition Dennys knowledge of the US tourism market to the European one.

3. The third social contract I made was Owen. Owen is a tech recruiter who specializes in helping smaller companies find talent for highly technical projects. I am saying this person is my supplier since they can supply a team of talented individuals to build this product. A better supplier would be someone who actually builds VR devices but that is all done by major companies where I could not secure a meeting. I found Owen because I had heard his name mentioned before so I asked a person I knew had been recruited by him for his email. In our exchange I introduced myself and asked him to walk me through the steps he takes to discover and recruit talent. The favor he did me was taking the time to explain this process. Including this person in my social contract will help me take advantage of an opportunity because I will need programmers to assist in developing my project.

Reflect - First please refer to my starting rant if any instructor actually reads these posts. Honestly I do not see this experience changing the way I behave at net working events at all.

19A – Idea Napkin No. 2

1. I am a Computer Science student at the University of Florida, I grew up in Melbourne which has the highest concentration of engineers in the country outside of Silicon Valley. My father was an engineer turned attorney turned venture capitalist. Due to this I have been around tech startups my entire life and have always imagined myself working for one.

2. Historic sites in Europe are in a state of ruin after hundreds or thousands of years of existence. It is often difficult to imagine how the site originally looked all those years ago. Augmented Reality meets this problem by allowing people to actually see how the site looked.

3. I am focusing on augmenting travel rather than just simulating it. This means that I am mostly focusing on upper middle to upper class customers since they have enough money to travel to these sites. I see the main use of my product at historic sites so it would mostly be used by those with some interest in history. An entire customer profile could be found in the previous blog post.

4. Customers will believe this experience is valuable to them because its cool and interesting. No one else is currently offering this experience so we would be the customers only option.

5. As I said in the previous post my core competencies are my technical and programming knowledge. An issue many engineers face is communication problems. I believe I have much better communication skills than the average engineer that puts me at a huge advantage.

I believe all the elements of my idea napkin fit together. The biggest problem I face is the technology behind the Augmented Reality. It would take a lengthy and probably expensive development process to develop it.

The feedback exercises in this class are kind of ridiculous I believe. The feedback you receive and give generally is not very useful I believe and does not help in doing the 2nd version of the project. That being said The first point I took away was I had to be clearer that I want to do Augmented Reality not Virtual Reality. This is a distinction that many people do not understand. The second point  I got was people agreed that making it look realistic enough would be very difficult.

18A – Create a Customer Avatar

My customer is an American or Western European tourist. Probably between the ages of 20-60. If they are on the upper end of this range, they don't feel old. If you asked them they'd say their a "cool old person". Since they can afford to be traveling I believe they are at least middle class. For Americans probably upper middle class since going to Europe is expensive. They are technically friendly, meaning they don't get intimidated by technology, the younger someones age the better for this often.

They enjoy reading and enjoy reading history and historical fiction. They may or may not have children. If they do have children they are not young but rather teenagers or adults. Since they are interested in history enough to pay for an enhanced view of these sites they must have an interest in history. Its a very intellectual experience your paying for so I believe that the person would probably be well educated. They are probably socially liberal, do to a willingness to try new things.

I believe I am very similar to my customer avatar and for good reason. I thought about using VR and AR to enhance travel while I was standing in the colosseum. I was standing there thinking of how cool it would be to see it in its former glory. In that moment I absolutely would have purchased a VR or AR headset so I could get a better feeling of the place.

I feel that this might not actually be my most ideal customer in reality. Maybe the asian tourist market would be more friendly to the idea. However this is impossible to know without proper market research.

17A – Elevator Pitch No. 2

I had two comments of feedback on my first elevator pitch. Both were positive and did not offer any specific suggestions of things to change. I think expecting us to get and receive feedback from our classmates is kind of ridiculous. We are all at the same point so we will probably all be making the same mistakes meaning no one will point out those mistakes in there feedback. Also people generally will be very nice in their feedback, even if it is not the truth, to avoid hurting others feelings.

The closest thing to criticism i received was one person voicing concern about how people would feel about it since its not "the real thing". My idea would be used to supplement the experience of going to see the real thing not replace it. There will be technology that is completely virtual tourism, going to sites without ever leaving your living room through VR. However while it is not "the real thing" it is meant to be an alternative for those who cannot afford travel, not as a replacement for those who can.

13A – Reading Reflection No. 1

1)

• I was not aware of Elon Musk's childhood in South Africa and how it affected him to this day.
• The thing I admire most about Elon Musk is his tenacity and innovative spirit. He has succeeded many times and immediately poured that money back into his next venture. He is not afraid to try and fail to make his ideas become reality.
• This thing I admire least about him is his obsession to work. He has no work life balance and is known to be extremely compassionate towards others. This led to his wife leaving him.
• He has faced adversity many times. Growing up in South Africa he was bullied and then he emigrated to the United States, no easy task. He was ousted from Paypal and could have simply retired but he instead turned around and started another company.

2) He achieves the unbelievable and does what many think is impossible. I believe this is because of the dedication to work he demands from all his employees. Above I said it is something I do not admire about him, and i dont. But I believe it is a trait that was necessary his success.

3) Elon Musk himself confuses me. He is a very eccentric man and I often wonder if he often has motivations we do not understand. I dont mean that in a sinister way but it would not surprise me if there were things that he did not tell the general public.

4) I would ask him about his future plans for Tesla and Space Ex. Both are massive companies known across the world but they are not profitable yet. How does he plan to keep them afloat in the long run if they do not become profitable. I would ask him about what other ideas he has that he simply has not shared with the world yet.

5) Elon Musk is well known for his work ethic. He often takes it to extremes sacrificing in other areas like his personal life. He is also known to demand the same from his employees. While I do believe in working hard I also believe in a work life balance. I think Elon Musk takes hard work to an unhealthy extreme.