Venture Concept no.2

Opportunity:

 Millennials, or the younger Gen-Xers are spending their money differently than they have before. Spending trends have changed from one-time purchases of services and goods to subscribing to them every month, week, year etc. For example, 5-6 years ago many men went out and bought razors at the store, now Dollar Shave Club has been popular for 4-5 years and a large majority of men pay the monthly or weekly fee to have razors shipped to their house.

This is also occurring because people want technology in all aspects of their life, and want to make it as easy as possible. But, there is a downside to this ease. These services tend to cost a fair amount of money, and if you are not using that service to its fullest then you are wasting money. Americans on average spend about $860 a month on subscription services or recurring payments.

This puts financial strain on whoever is paying the bills. What is there was a way to track when these charges were going to be coming out of your bank account, or even see what you are paying for. Many Americans are still paying 6.95+ a month for Flickr, something that is totally obsolete in today’s world, or a gym membership that you got and have gone twice the past year. People for the most part don’t know what they are spending their money on, or how much they are really wasting, or what they are getting.

The main force that is creating this need is the economic trend to move towards subscription billing to maintain customers. The market for the most part is anyone who is on their own and paying bills, everyone pays for some sort of recurring payment in their lives. It can be anything from a car payment to a mortgage to a Netflix account. Currently, there is no way to track you recurring payments in an application that links to your bank account to track this, and give you the option to cancel the subscription through the application.

Innovation:

                They way that people will be tracking their recurring payment spending is through an application, that can be downloaded through the App Store, Google play Store, or windows store. They will log-in and link the app to either their credit/debit card accounts or to an individual bank account. It will take about 3-5 minutes to find all the recurring payments going back 1 year. Once all the payments are found it will list them and show the cost of them. Once a payment is listed you can cancel it by clicking on the name of the payment and selecting the cancel payment button. In addition, it will give the user alternate options for another service that may be cheaper or better suits their needs.  The way this app will make money is through a download fee of $2.99 and it will also provide other financial tracking programs and financial suggestions through in-app purchases ranging from 1.99 to 2.99 depending on the service. Now there will be an option to purchase all the extra offerings for 4.99 as well.

Venture Concept:

                

The customers will use this product for a variety of reasons. The main one is that there are no products like this now available on the app store. For this it won’t be difficult to get the users to switch, it will just be difficult to get the users to download the app in the first place. There can be competitors in this space, a bank’s banking app could provide this service, or another person can come up with the same or similar idea. The weakness here is the security of the app, we need to ensure that the users information is protected and that it is secure. Pricing for apps is usually low and relies on the volume of downloads. With the app costing $2.99 it is at a competitive price, and many financial tracking apps offer a variety of in-app purchases to gain more revenue from the user. Our app will be having these to get more revue from our potential consumers. Once the app takes off we can create other apps that work in the same space, and have our brand name be a part of that space. According to the feedback that I had for the previous venture concept, I need to include customer acquisition costs. I believe that these acquisition costs could be relatively low based on the type of advertising we use. I feel if we advertise on sites like Dollar Shave Club, Hulu, or Instagram that we could get a lot of downloads for a relatively small price. For example, a sponsored Instagram ad can be done for as little as $5, and a Facebook post can be done for as little as $10. This can be a cheap and effective way to reach my target market, as most them have social media accounts.

Three Minor Elements:

                Our secret sauce as described previously is going to be our adaptability. We can change the application to fit a variety of needs and offer a variety of services, or develop new ones if need be.

                The next step will be working on developing a new app, and making updates to the first one. Updates will be next to fix any bug issues that people might have. The next application will probable focus on credit card payments.

                What’s next for me? Assuming this app takes off and makes me the next millionaire, I will be putting forth most of my efforts into this application. I want to be running my own business, and if this is successful it will put me right on my way to running my own company.  

Feedback:

            The feedback I got was both negative and positive. For the most part the feedback I had had to deal with the price of the application. Many people thought the price of $1.99 was a bit too low to make money. So, in response to this I upped the price and it will now cost $2.99. This is still competitive with other applications in this space as some can cost up to $15. I also upped the price of in-app purchases to keep up with this. Previously I had the in-app purchases ranging from .99-1.99, now the in-app purchases are 1,99-2.99 per feature. I also added an option that you can purchase all add-on features for $4.99. I also added how I am going to attract the people to the application. I said that main source of marketing will be through social media for its low cost, and high amount of people that it can reach. These were the main things that I got from my feedback, so I changed and adjusted my strategy on those aspects of the application. The rest I did not get feedback on, so I kept it the same.