Venture Concept No. 2

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). 

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 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 them 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 my app 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. When it comes to the Facebook Textbook Exchange page, I think I have the upper hand here as well. When I ask customers and friends about the Facebook page, I get mixed responses. Some people find it easy while others find they have to spend a lot of time looking for textbooks and sometimes don't even find it. If you want to find a specific textbook, you could be scrolling for forever. With my app, all you have to do is look up the ISBM and any matches would instantly pop up. This makes it overall faster and easier. 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 probably try to sell the app to somebody else. This would primarily depend on how successful the app is. I would hope that I continue to be an entrepreneur and look for new opportunities beyond TextSwap. I think this first experience will be a springboard to more opportunities as an entrepreneur. 

I got some really good constructive feedback from my first venture concept. The most important thing people mentioned was differentiating myself from my competitors, specifically the Facebook Exchange page. I made sure to include that in this revised venture concept. I also took the advice of eliminating the download fee for the app since the Facebook page is already free. I think this will level the playing field even more. Other than though, I got some really positive feedback as well. People were commenting that I went into a lot of detail and agreed that there is a definite opportunity to be had here. Some of them even said they would use the app themselves which is great to hear.