10A - Elevator Pitch No. 1

9 A

Interview 1:
I interviewed a girl that I met at the bus stop. I talked to her about my opportunity of providing the service of faster transportation in major cities by the construction of trams. She explained to me that she lives at the last bus stop and that it takes her about thirty minutes to arrive on campus. I asked her if she would not prefer to take a faster tram without traffic and faster speed and she said no. According to her, she enjoys being on a bus for a long time since she uses that time to read the news and start getting information about what she will see in class. I personally thought that she would have the unmet need I was trying to fulfill, but she convinced me that she did not.
Interview 2:
I interviewed my grandfather who lives in a town forty minutes away from Bogota about my opportunity. My grandfather is 75 years old and I assumed that if  I would present him a way of how to avoid traffic and arrive faster to his destination, he would be pleased with the idea. Unfortunately, I was wrong with my assumption. He said that he loved driving his car since it has been always his dream car for his entire life. He would not mind at all being stuck in traffic for hours since he would then listen to his favorite radio and just enjoy being in the car.
Interview 3:
I interviewed my cousin who goes to the University of Los Andes. He wakes up every day at five in the morning in order to get ready and drives for an hour to the university in which he is stuck in traffic for thirty minutes. When I told him about my opportunity, I thought that he would be pleased with the idea but he did not really think much about it. He explained to me that his girlfriend lives on the way to the university. He picks her up every morning and according to him, they talked or listen to music during traffic which he really enjoys.
Interview 4:
I interviewed my roommate which has to be the exact amount of time as me in the bus when going to classes. She even has a car in Gainesville but never uses it to get to the university since there is never parking spots available. When I presented her my opportunity I was not even thinking about if she would like it or not since she always keeps complaining about how cold the buses are and how long they take to arrive. Sadly, she explained to me that she has been in Gainesville for almost three years and has adapted to the bus and parking system. A tram would only change and make everything more complicated. She would have to adapt all over again which she would find extremely annoying.
Interview 5:
I interviewed an old calculus professor of mine. His kids go to a private high school in downtown Orlando and he has to drive there every day twice. One time for bringing them to school and one time for picking them up. When I told him about my opportunity he was begging me not to pursue it. He said that even though traffic might get lighter over time, during the construction phase, the traffic would become worse than ever and he definitely would not want to lose more time than he already is.

Inside the boundary	Outside the boundary
People who hate being stuck in traffic.	People who enjoy being in traffic, because they can do other activities while being in it.
People who want to arrive as fast as possible to their destinations.	People who like driving cars and do not mind if they have to be a long time in their cars than expected.
People who believe that a tram has a positive influence on the environment since fewer cars would be circulating at the same time in the heart of a big city.	People who think that the tram will cause more damage than benefice.

8A

 First of all, I would like to pursue the opportunity of providing the service of faster transportation in major cities by the construction of trams.
Every major city suffers from traffic which costs a lot of time. Providing a tram in the key spots of any city will decrease the level of traffic. People can get faster to their destinations and they would not have to worry about finding a parking space or getting their cars towed. The constructions of huge parking lots around the city where several and different trams would pass are also essential to the success of the trams. People would just leave their cars in the parking houses and would then take the trams straight to their workplaces. The trams would be extremely innovative with high technology in order to make the ride for its passengers as smooth as possible. A high innovative tram would increase the standard of living of the city itself, and people would be proud of saying that they take the tram to their school or to their offices.

7A

1)
 First of all, I would like to pursue the opportunity of providing the service of faster transportation in major cities by the construction of trams.
2)
The who would be a capital city or another major city, like for example Bogota, Luxembourg City, and Orlando City.
The what would be that all major cities have issues with traffic no matter at what time of the day.
The why would be that most of the important banks and multinational companies have their offices in capitals or larger cities which leads to the issue that people from all around the cities who work in downtown arrive there by the same time and cause traffic.
3)
By testing the who, the following question would appear important, 'Are major cities the only ones who would benefit from the opportunity?'. It appears that not only major cities have the need, but also specific places that are crowded with people would also profit from it like for example airports, big malls, and adventure parks.

By testing the what, 'Is there, not one city that has absolutely no traffic?'  I would say that the initial what would stay correct since it is true that all major cities in the world have issues with traffic. Sadly, there is no major city in any country in the world which has not issued with traffic.

By testing the why 'Are there not any possibilities to avoid traffic?' I would say that even though the initial why is correct, there is an important fact that can be lead to the pushing of the initial why which would be that these days, many companies let their employees work on certain occasions from online from anywhere they want. These people would not have to drive every single day to the office.

4)
For my interview, I chose five particular individuals who graduated years ago and work for important companies that are located in the hearts of a city or in a strategic location.

The first person I interviewed was Claudia Catalina. She works for Oracle in downtown Orlando. When I talked to her about my opportunity, she was delighted with the idea. Claudia was a student at Rollins College which is only a few minutes away from downtown and had to drive every day forty minutes in order to get to school and the traffic stressed her out every single day. She then said something that I had not considered in my opportunity, which was that after getting tired of losing that much money on gas and time, she decided to move to downtown Orlando in order to avoid the daily traffic stress. I personally had not considered into my opportunity that people living inside mayor city would possibly not need my opportunity.

The second person was Oscar Mauricio. He works for Google in Silicon Valley and he explained to me that he wanted to buy a house with his family as close to his workplace as possible but unfortunately he could not afford one in the location he wanted. He ended up buying a house an hour away which cost him over a million dollars which were also extremely expensive. He has the advantage of taking the Google bus which has internet access but according to him, it becomes after while it does get annoying of being stuck in traffic for a long time. A tram that would bring him closer to his home would make his life so much easier since according to him, there is no possible way of moving nearer. He is also a manager of a project which requires him to be every day at his office.

The last three people I interviewed were two students and one professor from the University of Luxembourg. They all lived in different towns that are about twenty minutes away from the University, but all three of them need around forty minutes to arrive to class. When I presented to them my opportunity, the two students instantly agreed that they would love to have a tram if it would get them faster to classes. They hate waking up hours earlier than classes start only to get ready and be for forty minutes on a bus. They also explained to me that if there is an accident on the road, the traffic would get worse as usual and they would take about an hour. The professor on the hand explained that he does not spending that much time on the bus since he can start correcting some papers in it. He also does not care if he comes late or not since he is the professor. Unfortunately, he would be completely against the construction of a tram, since the construction of it would take months and this would only have as consequences more traffic. He also says that the constructions would have a negative impact on the image of Luxembourg since there would be noise and dirt all the time.

5) As far as I am concerned I would say, that my opportunity as an opportunity has a lot of flaws and I realized by the interviews that sometimes people just completely hate my opportunity. The professor made me realize that even though the tram might dissolve traffic and bring people faster to the places they want, some people just do not like change and want to live in the same way they have lived for their entire lives.

6 A

6A
1.    First of all, one of the most recent economic trends that have been around for a while is the history of young rappers. With the recent death of XXX Tentacion and Mac Miller, people have more than ever been involved in their music and in their lifestyle. They start listening to their music just wondering why these people were famous in the first place and then get more involved in their life story.
I believe that there is an opportunity in producing a movie with a full detailed documentary of their lives. After the mysterious murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G, the popular tv channel USA started broadcasting the tv show ‘Unsolved’, which was pretty much a documentary about the murders of Biggie and Tupac, and it was a complete success. They are available on Netflix and on other multiple streaming shows and people absolutely loved it. I am fully aware that getting the right to produce it is extremely difficult to get, but I do believe that the opportunity is very interesting. I watched Unsolved a couple of months ago and I found them one of the most interesting series I have ever seen.
2.    Secondly, due to the upcoming hurricane season, last-minute rooftop insurances and gasoline have become upcoming trends as wells. Over the years, people always wait until the last minute to fill up their tanks and buy important products in case of a hurricane catastrophe. Even though petrol and rooftop insurances are essential, night lamps, water, and canned food are also highly demanded.
I believe that there is an opportunity in purchasing hurricane products weeks before the hurricane season at a normal price and selling them during hurricane season at a higher price since every year, stores ran out of essential hurricane tools. Last year during hurricane Irma, people could not buy water for days before the hurricane, gas station ran out completely of gasoline, and canned food was sold weeks before. I personally had to get as many plastic bottles as I could find and fill them up with water from my fridge since all the water bottles were sold out.
3.    Thirdly, I believe that after the Serena Williams incident in the U.S open will lead to new regulatory changes. Serena got fined after having an outburst during a game and breaks her racket. She calls the chair umpire a thief and states in front the entire audience and the entire world, that male tennis players have had worse reactions during a tennis game and that nothing would have happened to them. According to her, she would have been treated differently, since she is a woman, which has caused not only a scandal towards the entire United States Tennis Association but also in the entire world.
I believe that there is an opportunity for installing more precise and sophisticated technological products and hiring a second chair umpire in order to get a better decision. Soccer always had the problem of corrupt referees since they would treat a team in a different way than another, but since the recent World Cup, referees are using the Var, which allows them to have a better look at unclear goals or fouls.
4.    Finally, medical Marijuana has been legalized in the State of Florida. This regulatory event happened a few months ago which has been up for debate for years. Florida has been one of the most important states who has been against the consumption of marijuana in the entire country.
But I believe that with its legalization, we are able to open newer stores that sell medical marijuana and promote it more than ever. Until this moment, any consumption of marijuana was illegal in Florida which made opening stores related to its consumption illegal as well. But with its changes to regulation, now is the time more than ever to open up different stores related to the consumption of medical marijuana such as marijuana-based treatment facilities, spas, and relaxation centers.

5A The Gainesville Sun 

1.    The title of the article is,’ Hunger in Alachua County is real, but groups work to help’, and the link to the article is, https://www.gainesville.com/news/20180912/hunger-in-alachua-county-is-real-but-groups-work-to-help.

The article is about the hunger issue in Alachua County. There are still a lot of people who do not have anything to eat and sadly, a few of the homeless people are even children. Members of a non-profit organization called, “Bread of the Mighty”, explained in the article, that everyone thinks that there has been over the past months an economic growth that leads to an increase of employment, which is according to them not true. The lines of people waiting for food gets every day bigger and they are impressed by its number of children. Workers who volunteer in the non-profit organization could not believe when they saw the number of people that needed food. The problem with this story is that the organization “Bread of the Mighty”, has not enough resources to give everyone as much food as they need. They are also short on volunteers and would love if more people would join their cause. They also made the reader aware that no matter how little money one would donate, every single dollar would make an important impact on someone’s life. 

2.    The title of this article is, ‘Editorial: Be prepared for the next hurricane’, and its link is, https://www.gainesville.com/opinion/20180912/editorial-be-prepared-for-next-hurricane.

The article is about taking the right precautions of hurricanes. Last year during this time, hurricane Irma had a catastrophic impact towards the entire Floridan State and many residents suffered from important house damages. This year, everyone is afraid of hurricane Florence but luckily, it has not taken any course in our direction. On the other side, hurricane Florence is definitely not the only hurricane who we will have to deal with this year. The problem presented in the story is that we were not rightfully prepared for a hurricane last year. According to the article, we were lucky that Irma was not as powerful when it passed towards Florida which reduced the damages. Although the fact that there were still flooding’s on the streets and loss of power in entire areas, proves that if we would have taken better precautions, damages like those would have never happened. Most importantly, the following problem becomes critical for people who live in low-income areas. Their houses are built with cheaper materials which lead to a higher risk of catastrophes in their houses or in their whole neighborhoods. 

3.    The title of this article is, ‘UF Health doctors emphasize flu shot’s importance’, and its link is https://www.gainesville.com/news/20180913/uf-health-doctors-emphasize-flu-shots-importance. 

The article is about the importance of acquiring the flu shot. According to the article, people have been avoiding taking the shot, because of negative experiences with it. Tonnetta Porter, a person who got interviewed, stated that she has not gotten a flu shot in the past four years. After she got it for the first time, her muscles started to hurt, and she became sick afterward. She does not recommend it to anyone and she is not the person who has had the same reactions. A Health infectious disease physician, Dr. Nicole Iovine explains during her interview, that if someone gets the flu after taking the shot is because the flue was already brewing in the system. The flu is already dead when given as a vaccine and people should stop building a negative mind about it since according to her facts, the number of people dying because of it has increased during the past years. 

4.    The title of this article is, ‘Gainesville food bank solicits help, offers tours’ and its link is, https://www.gainesville.com/news/20180913/gainesville-food-bank-solicits-help-offers-tours. 

This article is about the Bread of the Mighty Food Bank who are celebrating the September Hunger Action month and are inviting and offering tours to their daily life. Their income is based completely on donations and according to them, every single dollar donated to them would provide ten meals people in need of food. They initiate programs with the goal of recruiting as many people as possible since they are in need of volunteers and in food reserves. Even though they have distributed over the past years 7.7 million pounds of food, they are aware that the hunger problem is getting from day to day worse.

5.    The title of the last article is, ‘Explosions outside Boston: ‘You can’t even see the sky’, and its link is https://www.gainesville.com/zz/news/20180913/explosions-outside-boston-you-cant-even-see-sky’. 

This article is about a few explosions that happened in twenty houses across three communities in Boston. The explosions were that bad, that the skies turned completely black due to the severe and toxic black smokes. The police chief has advised to everyone who lives around the area of the explosions to move until the situation has been cleared. The reason for the explosions is still unclear which causes panic in the entire city. However, the Columbia gas company was upgrading gas lines in some of the neighborhood where the explosions happened but they have not confirmed that these upgrades caused the explosions. 

4A - Forming an opportunity Belief

1.     I have a feeling that an opportunity exists of building a tram in major cities who suffer daily of traffic jams. A few European cities have always had the tram as a method of getting a big amount of people form one place to the other. With this public transport people do not have to use their cars every day to get to work and risk getting stuck in traffic. The less amount of people who use their cars also benefits the environment since fewer carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere.

2.     The unmet need is that in major cities, like for example Bogota and even downtown Orlando, every single day during rush hours people find themselves in traffic jams and people get stressed and come late to their different appointments. Everyone who works at an office building for a bank or a company in any city has the same issue. Most of the people who work in downtown do not live there. They live most of the time between twenty and thirty minutes away in a residential house. The prices of houses and apartments in downtown are always more expensive since everyone wants to live right next to the place they work. In other words, everyone who does not live in downtown has to drive every day to their job which are thousands of people who are stuck every day in traffic. The need of getting resolved the problem of traffic jams has existed for decades. Since the industrial revolution, people have been going to major cities for work since in their old hometowns they only could work in the fields for agricultures. These days, people have been waking up for hours earlier and go to work and left the office later than usually required so they would not get stuck in rush hours. People who can afford it, also rent or buy apartments in downtown right next to their offices and go back on weekends to visit their families. Luxembourg, one of the smallest countries in the world, had the same issue with their capital city, Luxembourg City, and decided to build the tram two years ago starting off at the airport and going straight to the middle of the heart of the city until the end of the city. At this point I really believe that in any city that has a problem with traffic, there is an opportunity of building the tram and getting rid of this issue.

3.     I would say that the prototypical consumer would be a person who has a job in downtown but lives a half an hour away. This consumer would have to drive at least three times a day there and he must be familiar with the traffic jam situation.

   

    A) Consumer 1: Roberto Archila

Roberto is the CEO of his architecture company and lives in Winter Park. He lives in a beautiful home and has to drive every single day for about thirty-five minutes to downtown Orlando in order to get to his office. According to him, before he launched his company, he was working for another architecture firm in downtown and he was stuck every day for twenty minutes in traffic before he arrived at his workplace. He explained that the traffic jam was definitely an issue every day but with time he did got used to it. He started making some calls during traffic and even sometimes started doing a conference with his colleagues over the phone until he got to his office. When he quit his job to open his firm, he was thinking of opening his office at a place where there is not as much of traffic, but he realized that most of the important companies have their headquarters in downtown Orlando. The only time that traffic did make a negative impact on him was when he had an important meeting at the beginning of the day. He said that the wait would make him anxious. When I proposed him my solution of building a tram across all the key spots of downtown, he was delighted with the idea. He said that the traffic inside the heart of downtown would probably disappear, but I had to make sure of also creating big parking lots before entering to downtown so people could leave their cars there and take the tram to their destinations.

B)   Consumer 2 : Rachel Reicher

Rachel is a Luxembourgish student who lives in a small town called Oetrange and is only fifteen minutes away from her University which is in Luxembourg City. Since she is six years old she has been taking the bus to her school and sadly has been experiencing the struggle of traffic for her whole life. Most of the schools located in Luxembourg City start at the same time which means that no matter from where students come from, they all have to be at the same time in school which leads to high levels of traffic jam. According to her, even though she lives fifteen minutes away from her school, she sometimes takes around forty-five minutes to get home because the buses cannot move. During winter, sometimes she takes around two hours to get home because the snow. People always have a hard time driving under these conditions and they tend to get more easily into accidents which causes for more traffic. She says that she has lived under these conditions her whole life and that she has gotten used to it, but she must admit that during winter she always gets extremely nervous when she has an exam in the first period. Sometimes she came late and had to redo the exam on another day and at a different time which annoys the professors. When I told her about my solution she told me that Luxembourg was building a tram in order to get rid of the traffic. The named it the LUXTRAM, but she said that an important amount of the population were against it, because it was extremely expensive, and it is paid completely by the Luxembourgish government.

C) Consumer 3: Luis Francisco

Luis Francisco is an accountant and lives in Colombia. He lives in a town called Chia, but his office is in Bogota. His office is forty-five minutes away without traffic. He explained to me that Bogota has always had issues with traffic and they have gotten so bad, that at one point only cars with a pair number plate could be on the streets on for example Monday and on Tuesdays were the cars allowed with an impair plate number. They call it “Pico y Placa”. Sadly, this was not the solution for their problem since everyone decided to buy a second car if they could afford it. The traffic issue in Bogota does stress him out even though he has always lived in the same area. Over the years he had some health issues and decided not to stress anymore out about traffic and goes to work at five o’clock in the morning and is back home at nine pm. When I told him about my solution he said that with time it would solve the traffic problem for a little bit, but he is afraid that during the construction of the tram rails, traffic could get worse. People would get mad about the increase in traffic and they would do anything to shut the project down. It would also not be easy to get all the certifications from the government.

5. The most surprising thing I learned about my opportunity would be that it has a lot of flaws. Nothing is easy in life and the opinions of Rachel made me realize that the construction of the tram would not be cheap at all. Francisco’s argument that the constructions of the rails would make the traffic worse is possibly true if the constructions would happen during the day. I also did not think that we would need big parking lots as Roberto suggested but he was probably right. Where should people park their cars if they want to take the tram.

      7. As far as I am concerned I would say that the main idea of my original opportunity is still there, but my new opportunity is definitely more accurate. I know now that my opportunity needs improvements and if I want to realize it in any place of the world, I need to be aware of major issues like for example money, and the opinion of the public. It is definitely not going to be an easy task to create the opportunity, but I still believe that a tram in any major city get the people faster to their destinations and causes less traffic. I personally think that entrepreneurs should take customer feedback extremely serious since customers are the ones who will be buying the product or service we entrepreneurs create.

            

     

3A - My Entrepreneurship Story

For as long as I can remember, I have been exposed to entrepreneurship. My father is a proud owner of a textile company in Luxembourg, but he is mostly involved in the real estate business and the stock market. Me, on the other hand, I started working as a kid in his textile company and I wanted to be there all the time. I enjoyed being a part of a team and I tried to help out as much as I could. I started helping out with very basic tasks like for example organizing shirts by colors and sizes. With the years, I started to interact with clients and when I became thirteen years old, I started working only on sales. I loved talking to customers and it became my mission to fulfill their desires. When I became older, I started to make some publicity on Facebook and on other social media. For my senior year, a friend of mine, who is an art major, came with an amazing design in an art class and I decided to use it in order to create our senior year sweatshirt design which was a complete success. We even ended up selling regular sweatshirts to the entire school and we made a huge profit which we all spend for our senior year prom. We bought so many fancy appliances, it was really a night we will always remember. After high school, I decided to move to Florida to pursue a Business Administration degree. Even though I was miles away from the company, I still help out advertising through social media and I have kept contact with our most important customers. 

As far as I am concerned, I would say that I enrolled in ENT 3003, because I have always been passionate about entrepreneurship. One of my goals in life is to be able to create a small textile company which can give me a passive income that helps me out in my everyday life. I would not consider this company as my main source of income. I basically just want to create it, because textile has been in my life since I have been a child. I see it more as a passion and as a hobby which in the same time can gives me a positive and important revenue. I hope that this class can give me the essential skills I need to build my company in the most positive ways and I hope to acquire as much knowledge and information related to entrepreneurship as possible. I have always admired CEO's like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and my father, since it takes a lot of character and courage to launch a personal company to any market.