Sunday, July 10, 2016

Idea Napkin No. 2

1. I’m studying to become an athletic trainer, not much business in there other than taking preventive care of elite athletes. Throughout college, I had a break where I stopped going and started working at a small business as a manager. For 3 years, I focused everything on this job position and every year brought new experiences and I helped increase the yearly revenue for the business before heading back to school. Throughout the 3 years, I devoted my energy towards customer satisfaction more than anything else; I believe this is a key point for any entrepreneur and my experiences in customer service will give me the edge on other businesses.
2. RoomieRev.com is a website where anyone can find their perfect roommate. Through some simple questions and previous reviews if you have used this website already, we can pair you up with the right roommate. We’ll avoid the guessing game of selecting random roommates and do the work for you to relieve the stress of finding roommates that you can build lasting relationships with. They say that the friends you make in college are the ones that stay with you through the rest of your life.
3. My main target demographic will focus on college students nationwide. Every year, there are new students rolling in for their college careers and few have many friends to pair up with and live in apartments and houses. My goal is to have those students use the website to help them find roommates from all over the university; but not just any roommate, roommates that will share the same interest to build strong friendships by answering a very intuitive questionnaire about their interests. These students could also use this website to rate previous roommates on cleanliness and other aspects of their living situations so other students can see and determine whether they want to room with them or not. This website can also help with individuals that want to live with roommates well outside of their college careers. Places like New York and Los Angeles can benefit from this since their housing market is usually expensive for most individuals.
4. I believe most people who aren’t married and individuals that are still in college or going through grad programs and medical school will constantly see their fair share of new roommates. Their lives can already be stressful enough, by paying a small fee for a month of membership, we can help them find the best roommate fairly quick and avoid all the stress.
5. I am a strong believer with regards to everyone being different and bringing something unique to the table. Through some exploration years before enrolling in college again, I gained some crucial experience by operating a small business. Many students now, don’t get that kind of experience until they get their first internship and graduate college. There are plenty of big companies and small business that want at least 2 years of experience before applying for entry level positions. I believe I have an advantage with this specific topic.

I believe these elements fit together because my business idea needs customer satisfaction at it’s peak in order to succeed well throughout the market. I’ve had first hand experience when it comes down to customer experience so I feel comfortable when presented with a situation.

Feedback memo:
·      Rely on my previous experiences and hard work
·      Keep focus on customer satisfaction
·      Focus on eliminating the “surprises” one can get when rooming together
·      Focus on making these roommate connections real so they can last past college
·      Create a very intuitive questionnaire for the matching process


I’ve placed the feedback in the appropriate places in my idea napkin. Focusing on the five points listed, I can center my attention on the key points on my idea napkin.

3 comments:

  1. This is an amazing idea! I can't believe nobody has thought about this idea before. Basically your business would be like Angie's List, Yelp, and any dating site, but instead of finding a business or a date., you're finding a roommate. It's awesome that you have so much experience already as a college student so that will definitely go far. I understand that your target market is college students which is genius, but I think you could extend that market by targeting an age range rather than just college students because I have so many friends who aren't in college but run into the same issue as your company would be battling. Only problem I could find would be that there's a lot of legal matters to consider as well so that you could do extensive background checks on the people who sign up to make sure nobody is lying about anything.

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  2. Sergio, great post! I think this is a great idea and would be beneficial to many students. I personally have had a horror story roommate and it took me three months of crying and whining to my apartment complex to let me move apartments. Previously I have worked for an apartment complex and we didn't do much "roommate matching". All we did was make sure their surveys were kind of similar and we didn't match anyone up that didn't have a dog with someone who did. Being able to personlize and better match people to roommates is something I believe would be utilized very much in college towns such as Gainesville!

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  3. You did a great job with your post Sergio! You have an excellent idea that will surely be very successful. You did a great job of recognizing you feedback and changing what needed to be changed. I have friends that have told me crazy stories of their roommates. This website will help people find the right roommate. Hopefully these people will be ok with background checks.

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