23A - Your Venture's Unfair Advantage

a)    List of Resources

Ø  Brand new concept at the University of Florida (potentially other campuses)

Ø  Untapped market potential

Ø  Enticing to businesses around the Gainesville community as it provides access to a large consumer segment

Ø  Identified as a need throughout the concept development process

Ø  Potential contracting/non-compete agreement opportunities with the University so that the market entry options would become very difficult for competitors

Ø  The service makes the consumer’s life easier, which is an advantage that any successful service/product aims to do

Ø  Would not require large financial capital upfront

Ø  Large amount of social capital exists with this idea because the consumer base are college students and the networks/relationships among college students would cause the idea to spread very quickly

Ø  The consumer base will always be large as a new class of college students come in every year as freshmen

Ø  Patents for the idea/service could be applied for to prevent competitors.

Ø  Serving the consumer need first, well, and branding it successfully will result in consumer loyalty towards my product/service

b)    VRIN

Ø  Valuable – The application is valuable because it solves a problem that many college students at the University of Florida face. There is currently no other similar third-party product/service. The consumer base is a solid foundation and the local Gainesville businesses have already proven their willingness to partner with applications through their agreements with Hooked, Pocket Points, etc. Simply, it is useful for multiple different parties.

Ø  Rare – It is rare because no other service like it exists at the current moment. DIBS is the only platform that resembles the type of service that this application would provide and that only applies to study rooms around campus.

Ø  Inimitable – it is hard to copy by others because software development is not an easy thing to do. The potential for non-compete agreements, contracts with the school, and brand loyalty would make it extremely difficult for competing applications to pull from the target consumer base.

Ø  Non-substitutable – currently, there are no substitutions for the service that I have been describing

c)     Top Resource

Ø  I believe that my top resource is the working relationship between the “rare” aspect and the “valuable” aspect. These two work together extremely nicely. The application is one of a kind and that rarity makes it even more valuable to the end consumers. It is unique and useful and I believe that is the strongest thing backing the creation of this service.