Growing Your Social Capital

Domain Expert:

·         Who They Are/Background:

o   Robert Miller, He is a certified financial planner and works with people who want to control their finances.

·         How is this person a “Domain Expert”?

o   He was worked as a Certified Financial Planner for over 30 years, and he has worked with people of all income ranges from high income to low income.

·         How I found and contacted this Person:

o   Robert was my old scoutmaster back in the day when I was in boy scouts. We have remained in contact ever since. I sent him a text to schedule a phone call and we talked on the phone.

·         Nature of exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:

o   To begin we caught up for a little bit and made small talk before the meat of the questions. I brought up my idea about an app that tracks how much money that you spend on subscription services. He said that there is a surprising amount of money that is wasted on things that people do not use.  

·         How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:

o   Robert can be a huge asset to the application idea. He can assist with updates that will come out to cover more and more aspects of financial management. And move the application more towards what the consumers would need to better understand their finances.

Market Expert:

·         Who They Are/Background:

o   Bryce Ingersoll, He is my cousin and a guy who said last month when we were hanging out “f#ck dude, I had no idea that blue apron was like $60 a month... I can’t get my weekly waffle house if I’m wasting that much money. “

·         How is this person a “Market Expert”?

o    He doesn’t know how much money he is spending and can be a customer of the app.

·         How I found and contacted this Person:

o   He is a family member, I contacted him via facetime and we talked for a while.

·         Nature of exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:

o   This once again confirmed for me house wasteful people are with their money and don’t realize how much they are spending. He also told me how he would like the app to be laid out and how the interface should be set up for people to easily to understand how to use it once they click through all the how-tos.

·         How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:

o   Bryce can assist me in letting me know what the consumers want the app to look like and how it interfaces with the different types of phones. Also, he can let me know firsthand if the application will be helping people, and what people want in the app.

Industry Supplier

·         Who They Are/Background:

o   Scott Gerstel, He developed a successful game for the iOS and the google play store

·         How is this person a “Industry Supplier”?

o   He knows what it takes to make a successful application, and the different hurdles you

need to deal with when creating an application for the different application stores that are on the internet.

·         How I found and contacted this Person:

o   He is my Brother-in-law’s brother’s fraternity brother, hes also in my linkedin network. I got his phone number and we had a great test conversation.

·         Nature of exchange: What they did for me, what is the return expectation:

o   I explained vaguely what my app would do. He told me the many challenges that I had already figured, ex/ security, interface. He also brought up an interesting idea about application advertising. And how that can make a lot of money for an app rather than the download, and possibly coming out with a lite version and a paid version. Or a version with or without adds.

·         How will including them enhance my ability to exploit an opportunity:

o   He can help code the application, and he knows the major app developers quite well, and can possibly get a partnership once we create a  rough version of the app and they can then make the application.

Reflection:

            Finding someone who knows what you are trying to create and what you are trying to do is very difficult. I feel that there is no one expert that would cover all aspects of what I am trying to create, you need to work with at least two people (one financial planner and one app techy guy) to get the job done. I was lucky because I had people that I could contact that I knew somewhat, or we had a mutual friend, or the sort. From now on where ever I go and start I conversation I will try to connect with people more because you will never know who you will meet. This is similar to networking things I’ve gone to in the past at first it can be a bit awkward but after a few minutes it’s just like talking to someone you’ve known for a while.