5A - Identifying Local Opportunities

Powerful Caribbean earthquake shakes buildings in Jamaica, Cuba — even downtown Miami

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article239725568.html

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake occurred north of Jamaica and its effects were felt in Cuba and all the way to Miami. The problem is that people are fearful of earthquakes and are becoming concerned about an earthquake so strong that it spans that wide. There is concern also linked to tsunamis and other natural disasters that put people’s lives at risk. The people who have the problem are the residences of these places.

Here’s when you can expect Uber, Lyft price surging in Miami during Super Bowl week

https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/nfl/super-bowl/article239751988.html

This article is advising people on when to use ride sharing services during Super Bowl week. The Super Bowl is going to bring a lot of tourists and there will be a lot of traffic. People want to limit how much money they will spend. The problem is for the people who will be trying to get to and around the Super Bowl with ride sharing services. They do not want to lose so much money doing this.

30 students, 3 teachers in South Florida tested for coronavirus after Yale conference

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article239789388.html

South Florida students and teachers may have been in contact with a sick student from China at a conference at Yale. This problem is just a piece of the larger problem that is the coronavirus epidemic. In this case, the problem is for the students and teachers that are being tested for the virus. This is a health issue that nobody wants to be a part of for obvious reasons. The coronavirus has killed a significant amount of people in China.

A crash has shut down a stretch of the Palmetto Expressway during rush hour

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/traffic/article239788933.html

A car crash is blocking the Palmetto Expressway during Thursday morning rush hour. It will cause long delays. The problem is for the people involved in the car accident and for those who are stuck on the expressway or use the expressway to get to work or school. This traffic will inconvenience them and most likely cause them to be late. 

They were there to dispute a Miami doctor’s medical bill. Then someone called the cops

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article239566083.html

A couple went to their neurosurgeon’s office to attend a legal mediation hearing over a lawsuit about medical bills. People called the cops on the male in the couple for loitering and holding a bag outside. Being involved in a tiresome and long legal battle is their problem. This is a problem for the three people involved in the story, but more so for other people who also have incurred medical bills that they were unaware of. There are many complex healthcare issues in this country right now involving insurance and the ability to pay for medical procedures.

4A - Forming An Opportunity Belief

I believe an opportunity exists to minimize the electrical cost of heat in places where it is cold in the winter. Heating is one of the most costly electrical expenses. I just moved to a cold place, and I am constantly having to be aware of turning the radiators on and off every time I leave the room and leave the house. In my apartment, there are five radiators that I am consistently having to adjust depending on when I am using the room. Right now, this is what most people have to do to stay warm and save money in their homes. The solution to this would be to create smart, highly sensitive motion detecting radiators that turn on and off based on the rooms occupancy. This need is not new. People need to turn their heaters on in the winter, and most just suck it up and allot the money needed to pay for their electrical bills each winter month. This system would ensure that people are not overpaying for heat they didn't actually enjoy. The prototypical customer is anyone who lives in a cold place and must use heat in the winter months.

20-year-old female living in Madrid, Spain with roommates

This person said her parents pay for her rent and utilities. She noticed that she really needs to keep an eye out for turning the heat off the first time her parents saw her December electrical bill. They were very upset and scolded her for spending so much money on heat. She said she is bothered by having to turn off the heat every time she leaves. This is a small annoyance for her, but it is constant. She addresses the need to save money by only turning on the heat when she absolutely needs to. She said she tries to layer when she is inside and she always wears pants. She said she could really benefit long term from having a motion sensor radiator.

Reflection: I am 75% sure that this need exists. Because this is the beginning stages of the idea, it is hard to be more sure than that. However, this interview has showed me that people are experiencing the same problem and it should be addressed.

48-year-old female living in Brooklyn, New York with family

This woman said her electric bill is absolutely ridiculous in the winter months. She lives in a mid-sized home with young children who do not have the awareness or responsibility level to turn the radiators on and off when they are in the different rooms of the house. For that reason, her family leaves all of the radiators on for the entirety of the time anyone is home. She said that they see this hefty electric bill coming when winter rolls around, so they save up and put money aside to be able to afford the heat. She said there is no way they could go without using the heat as much as they do, and a radiator with a sensor could be very useful for the family.

Reflection: I learned here that this product could be of use to more people than I thought. I had not considered that some families who need heat have babies or small children that need to be kept warm and will not adjust the radiators themselves. I think I have a large market size here.

27-year-old man living in Asheville, North Carolina

This man is living in a small cottage with his girlfriend that does have a couple radiators, but does not require much heating. He said that the electric bill is significantly more in the winter months and it's just an extra pain for the couple. He said that he might be interested in this product depending on how much it would cost and how quickly he would be saving money. He noted that North Carolina does not get nearly as cold and does not stay as cold for as long as it does in some other places.

Reflection: This interview reconfirms my belief that there is a solid customer base for this product. The unmet need is there and this product could help people save money. However, it might be difficult to convince people to invest in such a large product.

Summary: I think that there is most definitely a need for this product. Electric bills and cost of heat is another living expense that does not go away for people who live through long winters. The original opportunity is still there and would make sense to a lot of people. This product could be useful to so many people far and wide, and the interviews confirm this. The new opportunity involves more of the details here. I think price would be a big determinant for whether people buy this product. It also might be a different circumstance depending on how long someone plans to stay in a living space and whether they rent or own. These things would have to be determined through customer feedback. I think it's very important to rely on customer feedback as an entrepreneur because if customers don't respond well to the opportunity there is no way it is going to succeed. After all, the point is to make profit from customers and also better their lives.

3A - Your Entrepreneurship Story

My earliest memory of being an entrepreneur was in Ms. Lehman's class in fourth grade. I decided to open a school supply business with my friends Robbie and Alex. We called it RAM, which stood for Robbie, Alex and Molly. Super original.

RAM started when my mom told me she was about to throw away an old carton of school supplies and asked if I wanted anything from it. I got an idea to bring the carton into school and start a business. Because we were in fourth grade, we didn't sell the supplies for money, but we made trades.

Every day during recess we opened up RAM for business. I distinctly remember being very excited when another student wanted to trade in his erasable pen. This was a rare item. We received numerous inquires for a fourth partner, but RAM was an extremely elite group and a complex operation. We deliberated almost every transaction until we reached a unanimous decision on the deal. When one of us was absent from school, business would be closed for the day.

We also collected the broken tips of pencil graphite until we had a giant Ziploc bag full of them. I don't know what that was all about.

I enrolled in ENT because entrepreneurial skills are transferrable to almost all fields. To be a successful entrepreneur, one must have good communication, organizational and critical thinking skills. I hope to gain insight into the business world and use that to my advantage as I move forward with my life and into my career. ENT can give me the knowledge and training to keep up in a world of innovation and technological advancement.

Below is a photo of Alex (left) and Robbie (right) posing with my dad (middle). We have remained friends to this day.

2A - Bug List

BUG LIST

1. When my towel is still wet from yesterday's shower
WHY it exists: I do not have a dryer in my apartment, so I need to let my towels air dry. Some days there is not enough time between my showers for the towel to get completely dry again.

2. When my cat scratches me suddenly after we've been playing
WHY it exists: Cats are known to have short tempers and decide very quickly that they are fed up of being touched even though they seem to like it.

3. No windows in classroom
WHY it exists: Some classrooms are in central places that have no way of putting a window in them that faces the outside. Other rooms are simply built without windows.

4. Poor connection when I'm trying to FaceTime my family
WHY it exists: Either of the two parties on the call may be somewhere where the WiFi is not strong or data is not working at maximum capacity.

5. When people start talking about dinner plans while eating lunch
WHY it exists: Some people are food obsessed and like to plan things too far in advance.

6. Running out of computer disk space on my 5-year old Mac
WHY it exists: When people have a lot of work and assignments, they save it to their computers. Eventually after owning the computer for a while, the disk space runs out and nothing more can be saved.

7. Having to walk up 5 flights of stairs to my apartment
WHY it exists: There is no elevator in this building. This could be because the building is very small and tall. It's in a busy city.

8. Socks with holes in them
WHY it exists: I tend to keep socks for a long time and they get holes in them after years of wear and tear. Most of the time I am too lazy to throw them out, so I suffer through the pain.

9. Not being able to drink from the tap in Mexico
WHY it exists: Some places have bad pipes and poor water quality that makes the water undrinkable and you need to buy bottled water.

10. Overstuffed sock drawers
WHY it exists: The drawers aren't big enough and I have too much stuff that needs to fit somewhere and not just lie out.

11. When someone repeats the last word of every sentence you say
WHY it exists: This may just be a nervous tick or that person may be trying to impress and be relatable.

12. The feeling in my mouth from eating acidic foods like lemon
WHY it exists: Some people react more strongly than others to acidic foods. I like how the foods taste, but I get a pain specifically on my tongue.

13. Foot traffic when I'm walking to class
WHY it exists: There are a lot of people on campus in between the periods when people are switching. It is easy to get caught in a big crowd in campus' central areas.

14. When a nail breaks in the middle of the day while I am writing
WHY it exists: I do not like to cut my nails very often, so they will eventually break when I am doing something like writing and they have grown too long and weak.

15. Consistently being asked for the homework answers in my sociology classes
WHY it exists: Some people are lazy and never want to do the homework. They also have no shame so they feel comfortable asking others for answers.

16. Being told my nose ring is unprofessional by adults and extended family
WHY it exists: People have a mental image of other people who have nose rings as being wild, rambunctious and unintelligent. Some employers are predisposed against people with nose rings.

17. When my contacts break when I rub my eyes
WHY it exists: Some contacts are very flimsy and will break easily if they are tampered with. This is especially true of weekly contacts and others that have the opportunity to be worn in.

18. Eggshells breaking into the batter
WHY it exists: This happens when the egg is not broken with the proper form and too much force causes a mess that ends with eggshell in the bowl where it should not be.

19. Getting advertisements right after I talked about something
WHY it exists: Cookies and other web algorithms have gotten consistently better at very specifically targeting their advertisements on social media.

20. Having a test postponed that you just studied hours for
WHY it exists: Things get in the way of other things in life and sometimes tests, meetings, plans etc. are postponed for various reasons.


Reflection:

This assignment was difficult for the most parts until I got into the right frame of mind. I actually felt myself get more and more annoyed as I continued writing this assignment. At first, I couldn't think of a lot of things that annoy me because they vary so much. I am annoyed by small things and big things and I couldn't put my finger on any of them. Then, I simply began to look around the room and focus on the items I saw. They triggered little annoyances that I realized I experience frequently. Overall, I am glad I am not constantly recognizing the things that bug me. I would be bugged a lot of the time if I paid as much attention to them as I had to for this assignment.

Testing

Testing... 123 testing....

Is this thing on?