Entprentice Reflection Blog

Conception, Strategy, Implementation
In conceiving the idea for our venture, my team stressed the desire to create something that wouldn't require us to be on our feet at all times. Our brainstorming led to the idea for a web-based venture that relied on the needs of two parties and assigned our role to simply act as middlemen. We would later discover that this reliance on both third party buyers and sellers would not lead to much revenue for us. As the one assigned to create the website and thus deal with most of the functionality for the venture, I initially felt that the distribution of work was inequitable. To combat this issue, I avoided creating the website from scratch and instead found a platform, Moonfruit, that allowed for simplicity and easy usage. I was glad that teaching my team members the usage of Moonfruit was not complex and facilitated their contributions to running the website. Despite this, I still felt that the group dynamic weighed heavily on my part. I had connected our email account to Thunderbird, a desktop application that activated pop-ups whenever new emails came through the servers. This allowed me to immediately check and update our website whenever we received submissions from buyers or sellers. Judging from my mentions of certain emails at group meetings and through group emails, it seemed that a few team members seldomly checked the email or helped update our site with information from the email. It seemed that our strategy consisted of only a few steps- creating the website, heavy marketing and then waiting for submissions to come in. For a longer-term project, this simplicity would have worked well, since the legwork was not a significant time-consumer. Unfortunately, this worked against us in the context of the short-term. In hindsight, a more detailed business plan and multiple steps for different situations would have served us well.

Challenges in Implementation
Our main challenge in implementing our venture was simply the number of transactions and our low revenue margins. Taking 5% off of low ticket item products (majority of items were under $50) generated less than a dollar per transaction, and it did not help that we already struggled to increase the number of transactions. I believe that my team should have pivoted during the second challenge, but that we had fallen prey to the sunk cost fallacy (myself included). We had spent all of our start-up capital on upgrading our free website to one with more space as well as our Facebook ad campaign, and it seemed that we were generating a fair amount of buzz. However, we failed to realize that buzz would not translate into a significant increase in transactions, and were excited by (somewhat) useless metrics. We were excited by responses to our quickMVP, a survey that I now believe asked the wrong question. We should not have asked if customers would use our service, but rather how often, since our core issue was the low usage of our service.
To increase the number of transactions, we decided to advertise heavily to our friends and encourage them to submit and purchase items from our venture. This was effective in a sense - half of the group members heavily sourced their friends' help and resulted in quite a few purchases, including high-ticket items that contributed significantly to our retained earnings. Other members did not generate any revenue, and it was unclear if they had put effort into doing so.
We also tried to combat the lack of transactions with a product innovation- providing a negotiations feature on the website. Although we did have negotiations, it seems that the purchases were still mostly spurred by the pressure that team members put on their friends to buy rather than the feature's appeal itself. Looking back at this issue, I believe that we should have brainstormed some kind of incentive for people to use our service. I think that the "unmet need" we attempted to resolve was not nearly serious enough that we would profit off without further incentives, as students in the middle of the semester do not "need" to sell their products at all.

Hypothetical Do-Over
If we were to do over this exercise, I believe that we would have chosen another venture entirely. The timing of our venture did not mesh well with the needs of students - their concerns centered on midterms and studying, and there was no real need to sell their items in the middle of the semester. I believe that a stress-reduction or food-related venture would have performed better, as needs of customers for those two areas are always present at Penn. While we did think that our venture served as a useful resource for students, it was the wrong time and not the correct business for significant short-term profits.
Another aspect that I would have instituted in a do-over may have been a performance tracker. I use a spreadsheet in a club that I run to make sure executive and club members are active, one that measures their activity through a variety of categories. Something similar would have been helpful in this group experience, since I found that several members did significantly less in helping the effort but did not have solid metrics to prove it. Perhaps setting goals such as "5 successful sales" per group member would have put more pressure on every group member to contribute more, or at least for them to gauge their performance compared to others'.

Lessons in Entrepreneurship
At the conclusion of this venture, I have come away with new insights as well as a mixed bag of feelings. I learned that people have to be held accountable, and there should be an established leader of the group. We did not email our presentation in one of the challenges because everyone in the group thought someone else was doing it. We did not spend nearly enough time re-evaluating the potential success of our venture after our launch and the subpar reception. We did not set well-defined goals in regards to overall retained earnings, which would have alerted us to how poorly we were performing throughout the challenge.
As for personal reflections throughout the challenge, I believe that I did not take hold of the reins tightly enough. I think that I should have stepped up to be the leader of the group, since I was already the one in charge of the money, Venmo account, website creation, and Facebook ad creation and campaign manager. My hesitancy to establish authority resulted in disorganization of the group's responsibilities and less efficiency than there would have been under one individual's direction. I enjoy having control, and this quality was demonstrated throughout my hold on essential facets of the venture throughout the challenge. However, I am rather lacking in patience and thus skimmed over the planning aspect of the challenge. If I had emphasized more of a structured plan and timeline for our venture, we could have jumped to implement a different strategy at earlier points in the challenge. I think that I am enthusiastic and ready to do the legwork for future developments, but sometimes I require a push from other team members and hard deadlines to be set first. I also believe that I felt afraid to criticize certain group members because my authority was not clearly defined enough. I hope that my next venture will involve team members that are all passionate enough to put in significant effort.

Idea Analysis Blog 4

In this entry, I will look at homeowner-personalized decor as addressed by my competitors and as well as by my own venture. decorateITonline uses a questionnaire, styleFinder, to get photos of the room and the customer's thoughts and ideas, then uses their style experts to create a custom decorating plan. RoomDesignOnline offers a more structured system, with 10 preset styles ranging from 'beach cottage' to 'tuscan villa' as well as the option for a custom style. Clicking any of the presets allows the customer to choose colors from a palette and therefore provide a method of customization without having to make every decision. RoomDesignOnline then proceeds to the questionnaire and photos aspect that decorateITonline also has, and concludes with a phone consultation. For my venture, I will include the questionnaire and photos as a given. As for color and palette options, my venture will feature the complete palette customization option and around 10 preset styles, PLUS an extra template varying on the individual expert (perhaps one of their past designs that is particularly favored). This way, buyers will be able to select extra styles that depend on a particular home decor expert, and experts may be able to charge a premium if they have a particular template that is desirable. I will limit the extra template to one so that not every expert will copy a successful expert's template to gain more customers. After the palette, questionnaire, and photo uploads, there will be an optional phone or video chat consultation. Some customers may need extra assurances about every detail, while others may just want their proposed plan drawn up as quickly as possible. I believe decorateITonline does not give enough freedom with only a small survey of the customers' inputs, while RoomDesignOnline's methods may be too in depth for those who have less time on their hands. By falling in the middle with an optional phone/video consultation, I believe my venture will provide more flexibility to accommodate a larger customer base.

Another aspect of the venture I would like to set up is that of providing physical consultations. The customer and home decor expert will both provide their addresses on their profiles and can choose to feature them publicly. If both are within the same region and have featured their areas, they may be eligible for a physical consultation. Customers will be able to filter agents by geographic region and perhaps gain more insights with a face-to-face meeting if they so desire.

Idea Analysis Blog 3

After searching for competitors, I have ruled out freelance websites such as Elance and oDesk as competition due to their lack of emphasis on home decor. I have worked as a freelancer on both platforms and the majority of the job requests are coding, data entry, administrative and design related, all of which do not encompass home decor. TaskRabbit also is not focused on home decor, serving more as a facilitated way to accomplish everyday tasks (groceries, laundry). 

Most substitutes for online decor help are rather informal, with many decoration forums where laypersons suggest and ask each other for advice. The flaws in these systems are that the advice is really not reputable, simply the experiences of the posters. There are also a lot of decor experts that have their own website and blogs, but these websites are either not personalized or expensive for a custom request. 

The most formidable challengers in e-decorating I have found are decorateITonline and RoomDesignOnline. decorateITonline draws customers in with a free initial consultation, then delivers a 3D room plan based on a survey of the users' specific style once they purchase the plan. RoomDesignOnline offers a similar plan customized on the users' style and palette. They also have two options, one is a physical portfolio (purchasing the actual items for your home), or a virtual portfolio that is simply a decoration plan. Both sites also ask for a budget estimate before beginning the decoration process to ensure it is cost-effective. Both also estimate 2-3 weeks for completion of the plan, based on if the package requires physical delivery of items or not. decorateITonline charges $45 per room decoration question, and reduces it to $191 for five questions (15% savings). Their design plans start at $367 and go up based on furniture and accessories. RoomDesignOnline does not charge for questions, but you must purchase a plan first ($575-$975). 

Jason's House provides an interesting bidding system for real estate brokers to gain customers, one that I may model my venture on. The buyer does not pay anything to the website, and instead revenue is generated from a service fee from the agent. I believe incorporating this system into my venture will be profitable, since any buyer will use my site free of charge, and agents will be happy to pay a fee to gain new customers. I believe the bidding system will result in lower prices for customers due to the competitive nature. Thus, this competitive advantage should draw customers to my site away from the two competitors listed above. Jason's House sets a time limit of 14 days on bids, and I believe that is a mechanism I will also use in my venture to get things moving for agents. Similar to Jason's House, I will require agents to be certified to ensure professionalism. There will also be individual rates on room decoration questions specific to each agent, so that a buyer may select an agent to answer their question based on their budget. This combats the pricey $45 charged by decorateITonline for simple questions. Another draw for my venture is the flexibility of agents to start helping buyers in any stage of the decoration process (similar to Jason's House), as opposed to RoomDesignOnline requiring an expensive purchase of an entire room plan. 

Idea Analysis Blog 2

To refine my venture idea to that of a narrower value proposition, I have decided to focus on the community help of home decor experts aspect from my first blog. In order to be profitable, the venture will function as a way to connect those who need help to those with expertise through a bidding system. The customer will put up their price and those interested in helping will contribute and receive a cut of the price. The company will also receive a percentage from the transaction. This is a name-your-own-price system as seen on sites such as Priceline (travel), WhatsYourPrice Dating, and Progressive (car insurance).
This venture fulfills a need in that there are presently no similar services that fall within the niche of home decor. Currently home decor experts or 'consultants' are employed through freelance or direct sales opportunities. Income for freelance consultants comes from working with furniture showrooms, charging between the wholesale and retail prices for items purchased, as well as hourly consultation fees. Direct sales consultants work with home decor companies and are paid either a commission or the difference between cost and retail. Both of these revenue streams depend on a customer base, and thus direct sales and home decor consultants must work hard to gain and retain customers. This is often achieved through constant networking, referrals from clients, and hosting of parties. My venture provides an attractive option to these consultants as their customers will be right at their fingertips, and they will not have to spend as much time sourcing customers as they would through direct sales or freelance methods. The consultants would simply have to submit a 'threshold' of what they would be willing to accept for their services, and receive customers if the bids submitted were above the threshold. Of course, consultants could continue employment with home furniture showrooms or vendors, but this venture would supplement their income and perhaps even lead to professional relationships that could incorporate their existing company connections.

Idea Analysis Blog 1

My proposed venture is a social home decoration website and mobile application. There are currently many home decor blogs and Pinterest boards on the web, but no social platform for enthusiasts to help the more design-challenged. This venture seeks to have users submit photos or design plans for their current or future home and receive tips or even serve as inspiration to other users.
The value proposition of this venture is that there is no current interactive home decoration lookbook that people can flock to, and thus the appeal will stem from the simplicity of searching for related looks on the website as well as the free advice from other users. For example, a housewife that may otherwise spend hours looking through different home decor sites and blogs will now be able to articulate her ideal vision of her home and receive advice from other users. She will also be able to search tags and categories that link to other users' finished home decor lookbooks for inspiration.
The target customers for this venture will be anyone looking to spice up their room's look (perhaps more females) or new homeowners that need to start from scratch. A DIY section will be included to appeal to males that may have interest in woodworking or building furniture, as well as anyone searching for advice on repairs. The specific nature of the website still holds an appeal far and wide due to the fact that many people own a home and will eventually have to spruce it up.
This venture will receive revenue from advertising done on products that are related to home decor. Brands can choose to create their own user accounts and offer advice using their products to market them. Celebrities can also create their own accounts and share their decor and endorse brands. There will be opportunities for decor gurus from television shows to webcast series on the site and promotional contests to win a visit from a decor team.