Venture Concept No. 1

There I was, laying in my bed just a day before I needed to turn in my opportunity for ENT3003. I looked up and realized that I was never going to be able to do it and I would fail the class miserably. Then all of the sudden, the sun shined through the window and illuminated my textbooks. It made perfect sense. There was such an opportunity to be had with textbooks. College students hate having to buy them for many reasons and I realized there has to be a better way. At the beginning of each semester, the average students deals with extremely high costs, textbooks that get mailed late, and textbooks that are in horrible condition. This need for an easier way became quite obvious to me as I thought about the opportunity. Students were going to want a cheaper, easier, and faster way of getting textbooks. The vast majority of the people in this market are college-aged students located around these college towns. Most of these students currently get their textbooks from Amazon, Chegg, or the school bookstore. Students can’t be very loyal to any of these suppliers because they force an extremely high credit card bill. I think this is a pretty big opportunity with a potentially short window of opportunity. Textbooks are such a huge issue that there needs to be some large change and I believe that change could come soon as students are getting fed up with the process as it exists today.

After noting all of this information, I came up with an app that could fix this broken system for a lot of people. The app would operate by connecting college students on the same campus together. Students would create a profile and list all of the textbooks they’re in need of and those that they’re selling. The app would connect students with matching interests and allow them to exchange their textbooks at designated locations on campus. The app would be profitable primarily through advertisements that I could charge companies a monthly fee for (not sure on an exact number). I’m also thinking of charging a small amount of money to use the app.

This innovation would address the opportunity at hand because it would make the textbook process much easier and cheaper for students. The average student might only end up paying 40 or 50 dollars for a textbook compared to the 200 for a brand new copy. I think customers would be willing to pay a small fee for this app because it would cost significantly less than the cost of buying new textbooks. I think there would also be lots of companies who would want to advertise on my app primarily because they would be advertising to college students who are always on their phones. If they saw ads for local restaurants or bars, they would probably visit at some point. I don’t think it would be difficult to get customers to abandon Amazon or the school bookstores mainly just because of how much cheaper it would be. The cost of these competitors would be their main weakness. Also the fact that their service takes a lot longer is another weakness. I don’t think distribution will be a real issue, as I’m not selling a physical product. The only thing I need would be people researching to determine what campuses are most in need of the app and where to market the app. I would probably start out with a small team of employees. To start I would need at least three people. There would be one person to code the app, one person to develop how the app looks, and then me to continue developing the actual idea. After that, I would just develop several small teams of people who can come up with ideas, people who take care of the finances, and people who engineer the app.

I believe my secret sauce is my success at meeting new people. According to different strength tests, this is my best strength. I think I can make a good impression on people and hopefully add them to my team if need be. This would be a really important resource when it comes to hiring experts in the field.

I think the next direction that my company is headed is online textbooks. I want to create a system where people can get online textbooks through my app. I think this is good because so many classes are abandoning physical textbooks today. I would also want to have homework help, study guides, and tutors involved with this aspect of the website.

I assume within five years after this app started, I would either sell it or continue to be the CEO. This would depend on how much time I have in my life and how successful the app is. I would hope that I continue to be an entrepreneur and look for new opportunities or continue with TextSwap. I think this first experience will be a springboard to more opportunities as an entrepreneur.