11 A - Idea Napkin

1.     Who you are. What your talents are. What your skills and experiences are. Also: what are your aspirations? Specifically regarding your business concept, how do you see this business (if you were to start it) playing a role in your life?

-       I am a Telecommunications Production major with a minor in Innovation. I recently changed to this major from Animal Science when I realized that it really wasn’t for me. I have volunteered with a lot of environmental based opportunities back home like “Proyecto Limpiar Nuestras Playas” which translates to “Project Cleaning Our Beaches”. Volunteering with organizations like that helped me realize how much trash ends up in different habitats and how they can negatively affect the environment and the organisms that live on it. That’s why launching this idea means a lot to me because coming from a place that has a lot of  rain forests and beaches, it really hurts me whenever I see how contaminated they are.

2.     What are you offering to customers? Describe the product or service (in other words, how you'll solve customers' unmet needs). 

-       I am offering an environmentally friendly product that is used basically every single day by millions of people. It is an every-day product that won’t be harmful to the environment when it’s being disposed of. A lot of people try to be more environmentally friendly by using re-usable cups, which is great but that is something that you can easily forget. That’s why I believe that this will solve their need of having a product that won’t harm the environment without trying to remember to bring their cups everywhere they go.

3.              Who are you offering it to? Describe, in as much detail as possible, the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your customers. Think especially of this question: what do your customers all have in common? 

-       This product would mainly be offered to restaurants that are located inside university campuses starting with the University of Florida. College students live a really hectic life trying to manage school, work, and extracurriculars, so they eat a lot of fast food because its quick and easy to acquire. That means that there are a lot of cups that are being bought and disposed of. That’s why having an environmentally friendly cup would really help students not feel bad about throwing away their cups and it will also be better for the environment.

4.              Why do they care? Your solution is only valuable insofar as customers believe its valuable to them. Here, explain why customers will actually pay you money to use your product or service. 

-       I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, a place where there are so many different habitats including, beaches, caves, rain forests, and even deserts. I always liked going and exploring all of them but as I was getting older I was seeing how contamination would increase every year. I think that customers will pay money to use my product because there is a lot of people that have been noticing how plastic products are negatively affecting us and most of that population is made of college students so providing a product like that in an university campus would have a lot of attention.

5.              What are your core competencies? What sets you apart from everyone else? Also: what do you have that nobody else has?  

-       I think that everyone always focus on straws and how they affect the environment but they don’t realize that there is a lot more into contamination than plastic straws. Because, whet is the point of having a compostable straw, when you’re throwing it away with a plastic cup and a plastic lid. I get that we have to start from somewhere but I think that it’s time to keep advancing and including more products.

6.              In addition to these five elements, please spend a paragraph evaluating whether you believe these elements fit together or whether there are aspects of your business concept that are weaker / out-of-joint with the others.  

-       I think that that the elements that I present in my idea fit well together because it is just adding more products to something that already exists. The weakest aspect of this concept is actually getting the product into the stores because it would require them to completely change from their normal products into something new. But I still believe that they would be open to It because of the good impact that it would have.