Venture Concept No. 1

Opportunity:

Recent years have seen the rise of platforms dedicated to selling personal items or services. Craigslist is one of these platforms, allowing any person to make a post in their area of residence in with the intent of selling an item, finding someone to complete a job for them, or even offer their services with a related task. Specific applications, such as the sale of used items, have resulted in the widespread use of Facebook pages as a means of connecting a vendor with a seller. These platforms are both inefficient and hard to maintain as there is lack of built-int organization and accountability.

Users of the previously mentioned platforms are mainly young, with many users being college students. With respect to Facebook, the beginning of every semester provides a large increase in the posts created on “used & for sale” pages as college students try to gather school supplies in an affordable manner. Craigslist and other potentially anonymous boards, such as Yik Yak, are often used by college students to find other individuals willing to help with specific tasks such as painting a wall, moving furniture, putting up a painting, and other tasks.

This opportunity is available due to the fact that existing resale and small job platforms are specific in their scope. While there exist online services to buy and sell used textbook, most students must rely on word of mouth or Facebook pages in order to sell used items. The same can be said of job posting platforms, many of which have little credibility and lack friendly user interfaces. While Craigslist offers a site for users to post jobs they need help with, most of the site’s users are not college students and the site itself has no real way of ensuring it’s users have good intentions at heart. In other words, a level of personal safety is not guaranteed.

The “window of opportunity” for this opportunity is estimated to last for at least two school years, or 6 semesters. A small number of platforms have risen to meet the needs of college students and while most students continue to use traditional platforms (Facebook, Craigslist, job posting boards, etc.) the number of apps in the market are sure to rise. 

Innovation:

The opportunity described above exists because existing connection platforms fail to be inclusive enough in their scope of application. In other cases, new uses for pre-existing social media sites are developed as students with limited time create pages other users can use for free. 

To address these issues, a platform must be created that can not only be applied to a variety of use cases, but also appeals to the average college student. Such an application would focus on reliably connecting students with compatible needs through listings sorted by categories, geographical areas, prices, and other fields. In addition, all payment and contact would be done through the app itself, ensuring financial and personal security. Users would be forced to create accounts on the app in order to make proper use of the platform and as such would have any of their actions directly attributed to their account. 

In this case there is no physical product or service that is being sold to create revenue. Instead the platform itself would be the revenue-creating product. At first users would be able to use the proposed platform for free, with the only money being spent or earned coming from the users themselves. As the user base increases and more students use the platform to sell items or get help with specific tasks, a percentage based fee would be implemented into the system. For instance, if John, a UF student, is looking to sell a piece of furniture for $20 and Liz, another student, agrees to buy this furniture for the listed price, the business would receive $1 and John would receive $19. 

Venture Concept:

I propose a phone/web app called OddJob. This app would provide all the innovation that a student-services connection platform offers while making the process convenient and safe through the phone app’s design. 

Customers will want to use OddJob and stop using existing service platforms due to its ease of use, guarantee of financial safety, and social appeal. Customers will be able to create their account on OddJob through Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, making the registration process as simple as possible. The use of third-party payment services, such as Stripe, will also allow payments made through OddJob to be as secure as possible, with payments not reaching their destination until 2 to 3 business days after in order to guarantee payment intent. Other platforms such as Craigslist and Facebook simply allow users to easily communicate with each other. OddJob instead focuses on the communication aspect of the connection process, alongside the payment process and platform appeal. As such, most users will find OddJob to be a more convenient alternative and will have no problem switching over.

Some users will be wary of the idea of meeting other individuals in person without having a real-life connection beforehand. This is a problem inherent in current sale and services platforms, meaning that most users will have no problem continuing to meet with strangers. However, safety will be throughly reinforced as users will have to will have to enter their personal information to make an account in the app and safety information will be provided throughout the app and supporting website.

As previously mentioned, there currently exists only one competitor at the University of Florida for this market. The start-up, called Qwerk, also focuses on students and enables users to provide services for stated rates as well as list items for sale. Qwerk is currently only available as an iPhone app, meaning that Android and users without smartphones will not be able to use the platform in its current state. The start-up is also relatively new, having only released their app and made press coverage in February of this year. As such they will have the benefit of being the first business to tap into this market but will not have this benefit for long as OddJob’s development begins. 

At first the business behind OddJob would be supported by myself and my business partner who has a background in Finance. As development continues and a more accurate business plan is created, other developers would join the business in an effort to streamline the development process. While I have experience with creating web apps, I would need help in creating a proper user experience as well with creating a native iOS or Android app later in time. 

Additional Thoughts:

My most important resource in the creation of this business venture will be my experience as a Computer Scientists and programmer. Having obtained programming experience from classes and personal projects, I will not have to fully rely on someone else to create OddJob for me. 

Assuming OddJob is widely adopted and becomes a success, in five-years I see myself continuing development with the phone app. While OddJob would first become available for students at UF, other colleges in the United States also provide a user base that could be tapped into. As an entrepreneur, by dream is to create a well-designed product that will enable me to work on my own terms and focus on the areas of app development that I find most interesting.