29- Venture Concept 2

Opportunity

1. Who has the need: Home watch business owners who are either just starting and do not own software or are dissatisfied with the reporting software or methods they currently use (due to the price of the software or the time it takes report all the information to clients). Customers are people who want to send detailed and professional reports and pictures of the home to their clients. The customers are not people who do home watch as a side job or for friends and family. A user of the software will likely feel uncomfortable writing a casual personal email or sending a text to the person whose house is being watched to say nothing extreme has happened.

2. Nature of the need: Home watchers will want this product because they have a desire for efficient data entry for the reporting process of home watch and want to avoid having to re-type checklists and notes into emails and invoices or numbers in financial reports for tax time. Home watchers also use reporting software to appear detail-oriented and professional in emails and invoices so as to maintain the trust in the home watcher-client relationship.

3. Environmental forces: Snowbirds (people who move to sun-belt states from their home states during winter and move away during summer) who own two or more houses and want to ensure that their winter homes in Florida are in order when they are in their home states (or not around), creating the opportunity for home watch businesses to grow. In order for a home watcher to effectively manage a large number of clients (say due to the high volume of  snowbirds who leave their houses in Florida during the summer) or to take on more clients, they will want to be as efficient as possible when driving to client houses, scheduling contractor/client visits, reporting (generally), and sending invoices and emails to customers

4. Geographic/demographic market: One of the highest volume areas for snowbirds to migrate to and from is Naples, Florida. Naples is a city with many wealthy retirees and travelling business people who have enough spare money to have and travel between two plus homes.

5. Current satisfaction: Many home watchers use the QRID Home watch reporting software and are satisfied with the product. A problem I have heard home watchers mention is that the software is exponentially expensive as the home watcher increases his/her client base and the home watchers do not want to spend so much of their relative income. I believe that this is a valid concern and common theme and if the home watchers using QRID are given a viable alternative for a lower price, they will use it. Also, home watchers who are increasing in client volume are likely to become dissatisfied with non-software reporting and will purchase software to become more efficient or to appear more professional/detail oriented.

6. Market Size: The market is relatively small because there are only so many home watch businesses in the United States, but in Naples alone there are around 30-40 home watch businesses and the industry is growing in states with snowbirds. The market is also likely to expand as baby boomers retire. There are likely more than 200 home watch businesses around Florida and I expect to be able to sell software to about 10% of them. This would add up to about $1100 per month.

7. Window of opportunity: The window will be open until a coder is able to incorporate all of the best aspects of each of the different home watch reporting softwares into one, or if QRID, in the face of competition, lowers the price of their software substantially.

Innovation

Users will pay $55 for one month of access to an excel spreadsheet-based software that home watch business people will download on their computer. Although similar home watch software exists, home watchers will be able to will expatiate their home watch reporting process with this software for a lower cost than the competition and for a GUI which they may prefer to the competition. To save time reporting on their homes and to ensure they have checked everything important in the house, home watchers make checklists. With this software, home watchers will be able to choose from our list of pre-formatted checklists, which saves them time from making checklists themselves and can give them ideas for what to check in each house. They will also write notes in the notes section and upload pictures to the software, and the program will create cleanly formatted emails and invoices based on the checklists, notes, and pictures that the home watcher uploads. The software will save all checklists, notes, and pictures in a low-data-usage archive on the local computer. 

Venture concept

1. Why switch: Since all current home watch software charges a monthly fee, the price of an expensive software only adds up. If people are able to get a easy to use, clean (GUI) home watch reporting software for a lower monthly fee than the competition, they would be wise to switch.

2. Competitors: Competitors to BhekaTec are QRID and HWSoft. HWSoft appears aesthetically outdated and has additional charges for different components of the home watch software (such as scheduling/calendar, accounting). QRID's GUI is a more aesthetically appealing, the program is simple to use, and it has the added benefit of allowing home watchers to report their GPS location to clients to prove that they did go to the house as they said they would. The software otherwise includes most of the same features as HWSoft. The issue with the QRID is that the pricing model charges home watchers exponentially based on the number of clients they have, making the software impossibly expensive for home watchers with higher client bases.

3. Customer experience: Our product to home watch business people is the sale of software, but the support from BhekaTec doesn't end there. We will personally help home watchers set up the program and give them any support along the way- they will have access to a support line and email for the software to address any issues or concerns they may have.

4. Organizing business: This software business will likely not need employees because once home watch businesses own and use the software on an everyday basis, they will not need much support. Even if the software has 200 subscribers (people paying the monthly fee for the product) the work to be done on the software will be minimal and it will easy to handle for one person. The startup cost of making the software is high (in terms of the time it takes to code), but the operations/day-to-day business is low-cost and will only require cost to keep the website up and maintained and to pay the state LLC renewal fees.

Minor Elements

1. Most important element: The most important resource we have in BhekaTec is the experience with coding. Without this experience, it may take a person 1-2 years to come up with the same program as what has been developed over the past 3 months. Many inexperienced coders would likely give up in the face of such a challenge or would have to allocate a substantial amount of their time learning coding in order to replicate the product.

2. What's next: The software is still in development. As soon as the software is done, we will be sending it to a number of home watchers who are willing to beta test the product in exchange for a discounted or free version of the software. As these beta testers comment on the product’s features, mention bugs, or suggest improvements, there will be rapid integration of their feedback into the software to establish a more complete and higher quality product. The improved software will be sold to home watchers on the BhekaTec website which will have a cashflow through PayPal . The plan to acquire business once beta testing is over is to is to advertise the product on google (or at least to make sure it's on the first page), to cold call home watch business people, send them pamphlets in the mail, and to interact with them through email and social media. Additionally, to avoid being liable for potential lawsuits, the software will be published under an Limited Liability Company (LLC).

3. Where do I go: This first venture is my way of planning out the business aspects of the product my father is developing and learning about the entrepreneurial process. Until I come up with a good idea of my own I will likely not be an entrepreneur  (I do not feel like an entrepreneur currently because I am not developing the software myself and have no control over the technical aspects of the product- the most I can do is market the material once it is complete). Overall, while I hope to start my own business one day, for the time being I am comfortable getting a corporate job as long as I have work-life balance and have enough time to pursue my own interests.

Summary of Feedback

I did not complete the "What's Next" exercise and did not receive constructive feedback on the venture concept itself (other than encouragement to seize the market for all it's worth), but I fixed some grammatical errors in the venture concept above and added some content to the "Where do I go" and "What's Next" sections.