28 a exit strategy

Since I have pitched the idea to a large company in return for a percentage of profit share, after a few years of gaining income from the product, if it wasn’t as lucrative as I thought then I would probably go ahead and sell out to General Mills for a lump sum of money. If I was getting large amounts of money from the company every month then I would probably hold out on selling out unless General Mills offered a very large amount of money to give up my rights to the product. Hopefully by the time I have sold these rights out I will be able to retire and never have to work another day again.

I chose this strategy because I would just be trying to make a large amount of money with this product and don’t have any emotional connections to it that I feel as binding so if I could get rid of it for a lot more than what I have in it then I would definitely sell out my rights.

I think it has influenced the rest of the venture because it was solely just to make money off of the product. During the course of the venture I didn’t really put many emotions into the whole concept of the product because it wasn’t something that I wanted or needed. I just felt that it could satisfy needs of many other people and could be very profitable.

26 a failure

In the past semester, I have failed quite a few times the biggest one I suppose is almost missing my test for my management class. The first test that I took was in an engineering building. The second time it was in a different building, if I remember correctly the “new physics building.” I didn’t even read the test location assignment list, assuming that this list was the same as the first list. I made my way to the engineering building and opened the same room that I had before just 15 minutes before the test began, and there sat no one. I was a little confused as the last time I took a test there were close to 100 people in this very room. Upon figuring out I was in the wrong location, I pulled out my phone and began to try to figure out where I needed to head. NPB is what the class assignment read. Being this is my first semester at UF I had no clue what that meant, so I had to google it. Once I finally figured out where it was I had 10 minutes to spare and google maps said that it was an 11-minute walk. I struck out and jogged all the way there, walking in as scantrons were being passed out. I barely made it on time, was hot, sweaty, and breathing hard. Needless to say, I will definitely check myself multiple times before making a mistake like this again.

I learned that things change. You can’t just assume things and expect to be right. If there is some kind of list or assignment you need to make absolutely sure that you check it to make sure you are doing the correct thing.

I think failure is one of life’s greatest accomplishments. When you fail and mess up, you have the chance to learn from the experience, as long as you don’t make the same mistake twice then you can’t be so hateful of the failure. Bad experiences lead to being able to make the best out of good experiences. If you are dedicated to making something happen and failures don’t deter you from trying harder then you will always succeed in the end by learning from your failures.

25a

In the venture concept assignment, I put that I wanted to try and develop a yogurt product that is sugar free, vegan, and tasty for general mills since there yogurt sales trends are slumping also.

I interviewed 2 people with diabetes, one from my mom’s work, and one person from my high school that I messaged on Facebook. After describing my product both of them stated “more flavors.” The third person I interviewed was a single mom of 3 kids who is generally pressed for time, and likes to eat healthy when possible, and she said that I also needed to develop more flavors. I guess developing more, new flavors are the way to go. I think if they knew what I did, with slumping yogurt sells then they may want to change their answers a bit. But more flavors definitely wouldn’t be a bad idea, and since they are fruit flavors I could mix 2 or more together also.

My new market are people like me, that don’t have a real preference to eating healthy from a small country town, etc. So, I interviewed 3 people sitting in a local parking lot that I am friends with I explained a little bit about my idea and asked what they think would be next for me to do along these lines. My 3 answers were interesting to say the least. The three people I interviewed are actually very uneducated and barely graduated high school. The first answer was “well, if it tastes anything like mini wheats I won’t eat it,” which is valid, many people only like certain types and textures of cereals. So, if the cereal was similar to wheat, make another branch similar to corn flakes, etc. The second and third answers seemed to be just a branch off the others. They both encompassed advertising slogans, gimmicks, etc. and they tried to think of clever things I could say in ads, and on the box.

I think the new market is honestly not a bad idea to interview because they have some of the purest ideas since they don’t shop a lot for similar products. They can still have valid points and ideas even if the market isn’t as educated or health conscious as others. In my personal opinion, this market doesn’t have the profit margin as the other even with advertising.

I assumed the answers I got would all be terrible and just plain stupid and I would end up interviewing 7 people to get a decent few that kind of knew what the heck they were saying.

I don’t think profit wise this market is attractive at all. I think that in turn some would buy the product and not think much of it because if it tastes close to the same, what’s the difference, and why try to change the product they are loyal too. Many people I talked to have this obsession with honey nut cheerios, or cinnamon toast crunch which is very odd to me as I find both of these way to sugary to wake up in the morning and eat… poor rural Americans will literally eat anything at any time of the day.