Venture Concept

The opportunity I am looking to expand upon is something that I have found is a serious problem ever since I started at the University of Florida. The lack of parking and the difficulty that students and faculty have to go through on campus is a serious issue in my eyes. The people who I know are seriously affected by this problem are all students and faculty who have cars and need to park on campus. When people are going to the library, the gym, class, or anywhere on campus, there is sometimes a dilemma while trying to get a parking spot depending on the location and time of day. The reason that this is such an issue is because there is a lack of parking spots compared to the amount of vehicles that are trying to go to certain locations. This market geographically is just Gainesville, but I’m sure there is a need for it around the country at different colleges. Currently, this need is being met just by struggling to find spots, but this could be a large waste of time and even in some cases result in not ever finding a spot and turning around and going home. Even worse, it could result in parking illegally and risking getting a ticket, getting towed, or even endangering somebody’s safety.

The innovation part of the product is what I think sets the product apart from everything else. The actual product is nothing physical, it is a mobile application. It will not be sold, so it will generate revenue based on downloads. The product is to have sensors installed in all of the parking spots that UF owns for decals. These sensors can read when the spots are available, and records them. The technology then connects to a mobile application that not only tells the user how many spots are open and in which lots, but also the exact location of the spots that are available. This is applicable for cars and scooters. Therefore, when a student is going to the library, and could save valuable time for studying by knowing exactly where he is going to park before he even leaves for the library.

The reason that customers are going to use this product is basically to simplify this aspect of their lives. I know it seems like a very miniscule aspect of one’s life, but if I tabulated all of the time I could have saved had I had a product like this in the past, it would be an immense amount of time. Furthermore, it is a huge stress saver and will not get people as frustrated with parking situations. The simplicity of just downloading an app in today’s world is massive. People are reluctant to go and buy a physical product, but something that they can download from the convenience of their couch is a huge plus for many consumers. There aren’t really competitors in this market, which makes it something that could turn out to be pretty profitable. There are signs in parking garages that do something similar like count the open spots, but nothing that converts to a mobile application. The business would not need to have that many employees besides the people who install the sensors in the spots and connect it to the application. I would need to have somebody to run my marketing and promotion, somebody to have on call for maintenance, and then a technological manager who updates the applications with anything that I need to enhance or fix.

I think my secret sauce is that this is a product that has never been done in this manor before. I think it would be very valuable to colleges all around the country, and could attract a lot of interest and investments.

What’s next for the venture is marketing as much as possible and trying to spread the word. The more people who actually know about the product and download it, the more success we would honestly have. Also, I would like to get as much feedback as possible so I could make it as attractive as possible.

In five years, I would like to have over 5000 downloads in Gainesville and have interest or even offers from other schools interested in installing this product on their campuses.