24A: Venture Concept No. 1

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Opportunity. As you know, the University of Florida has one of the most involved student body’s on campus. Because of this, students follow a strict routine and participate in extracurricular activities and on-campus events, meetings, and seminars. Other students utilize campus to meet with friends or study at the library. But while having this set routine, this can change due to the issue of parking. And we all know that parking is not the greatest thing on campus. Especially around the times of 5:00pm-7:00pm, where many events or organization meetings happen simultaneously in the central part of campus, near the library buildings of Marston and Library West. Around those areas, there are 5 big parking areas students will use in the afternoon time to come to campus and continue their activities. But because there is a rush of students coming to campus in that time frame, plus rush-hour for faculty leaving campus, there is a buildup of traffic in those parking areas, causing students to spend an extra 15-20 minutes searching for parking.

Overall, we can conclude the following from this opportunity:

  • The forces creating this opportunity are the growing student population versus the supply of parking
  • This market is for college students who drive/park on campus
  • Customers are not satisfying this issue
  • The opportunity is big
  • I’m not entirely sure how long this window of opportunity will be open, but I can assume that the complaints of parking on campus increases every year

Innovation. My product will be an app that will allow students to track parking availability in real-time on campus. Essentially, students would open up the app, enter their desired location, and the app will search for open parking spots around the location you are trying to get to, making the app user-friendly. Once getting to the desired parking area, students will have to log their car into the app, showing that there is one less parking spot in the area for other users to see. Typically, this app would be paid for through the University, where they pay for their students to use the app as a free service. I’m not entirely sure how much this would cost though.

Venture Concept. As this app will be the first of its kind, I think the demand will be high because people will want to ease the stress of finding parking. The business would start as a startup, with a handful of employees that will focus on marketing, programming, financing, and designing the app.

The Three Minor Elements. The secret sauce would be my adaptability to change. Similarly to what I said in assignment 23A, my venture’s unfair advantage would be my skill to being flexible and open to change. This opportunity would allow me to think outside the box in many aspects of my venture. 

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