24A – Venture Concept No. 1

Easy Seating

Opportunity: My opportunity lies within the libraries on campus and I seek to eliminate the wasted time and energy college students exert while looking for seats to study in. The people who have this need are college students, especially those who study in groups, who need a seat to sit in in the library but don’t want to walk around all of the desks and through all the floors looking for the perfect spot. The nature of this need comes from the desire for convenience and the hatred of wasted time. College students, more than other demographics, hate wasting their time and live for easy solutions, my opportunity will bring convenience to their lives. The forces that create this opportunity is the lack of a system already in place in the library that can tell students where people are sitting. Also, another force is how large Marston and Lib West are, because of their size it is annoying to walk around looking for seats and becomes a huge waste of time really quick, because of their size it gives the perfect opportunity to create this system. This market can be defined as UF students who live in Gainesville, but also tutors and other people who use the library for their own needs. The ages can be around 18-26, depending on the year of the student. Currently, customers don’t really have a satisfying way to deal with this need, they just walk around the library until a spot is found, I don’t think they are loyal to this way of satisfaction. I think this opportunity is really big because this isn’t a problem that will go away overnight, it needs someone to intervene and create a system. This window of opportunity will be open for as long as Marston and Lib West are running.

Innovation: My idea is a system in Marston and Lib West that will make it easier and more convenient to find seating. It will be a system of sensors within the chairs of the library that can register when a seat is occupied, and on a website it can show UF students which seats are occupied or vacant on each floor of the library. The sensors will register weights of 70 lbs and above so as not to mistake backpacks or books as students using the seats. Also, the information for this system will be found on the website in which UF students already use to rent rooms at the libraries so it is not confusing and I’m not adding another element to students’ lives. I would be selling this idea to the students and be getting donations and funds from them in the sake that this idea alleviates some of their wasted time and frustration.

Venture Concept: My innovation will solve and address the opportunity I identified because it will allow UF students to look online and see where they can sit instead of walking around aimlessly. Now they can find the perfect spot just by looking on their phone, saving so much time and wasted energy. Customers will buy my innovation because they hate wasting time. I think customers would use this product because right now there are no alternatives, they need a system. There are no competitors at the moment. The weaknesses and vulnerabilities are the costs. I think customers will help a lot with the fundraising.

I think what will make it hard for my competitors to copy my idea is my prior experience with fundraising and raising money for a long period of time in order to achieve a goal. I worked for 18 months to raise money for women’s shelters across the Tampa area by selling stickers, collecting money, and collecting supplies to donate.

I don’t know what would be my next venture, probably something targeted at the convenience of college students too because I think it is a really good area to exploit and gain opportunities from.

Within five years of my venture, I hope I’d be in other schools by now, not just on UF campus, I feel like this idea can help a lot of schools nationwide, because every school has libraries and students that want fast seating.