Johnathan Eichler's Blog

1. The segment that I have chosen for this product is UF college students. 3. The questions I asked for need awareness are as follows: a. Do you feel that it is difficult to coordinate pickup sports? b. Why do you think it is difficult? c. How often do you experience this? d. What time of day do you experience this? e. Where do you usually experience this? 4. The questions I asked for the information search are as follows: a. What do you usually do to try and solve this problem? b. Do you find this/these method(s) to be effective? c. If not, why do you think that is the case? 5. What I have found from interviewing my three target consumers are that they all have the problem that coordinating is difficult. Two of them said that they can mostly find enough people at a specific time at the gym but the other one was different. Like me, he said that when he couldn’t find the people, he would just not play the sport. Thi...

1. My name is Johnathan Eichler and I am a Sports Management major at the University of Florida. My talents are that I am fairly decent at every sport but my main one is basketball. Also, I am pretty good with computers and software and I can learn software programs relatively quickly. My aspirations with this business concept is that it will become a routinely used product by not only me but my friends and people in the area to coordinate their pickup sports activities. 2. What I am offering to my customers an app that is an interface to allow strangers to communicate with one another specifically to coordinate sports. A user will create a post that shows who they are, what they want to play, what time they want to play, where they want to play, how many people they have already and how many people they need. It will be posted on a feed that is shown to those in the area and people can reply or dm the poster so that they can set up meetings. These posts will be called “LFG...

The need that I have identified is the difficulty in scheduling recreational sports with friends and strangers. The ideal customer is one who plays sports several times per week but has trouble finding groups. I interviewed 5 people at southwest who had found a group to play basketball with. They should have had the need that I identified because they are not in a formal league but it turns out they said they had no problems with playing sports. They all said that they just show up to the gym and it is usually busy enough to find a group. However, 2 of them said that they did have trouble before they could go to Southwest because they had been Santa Fe students and were not able to go to the UF gyms. They were forced to play outside and there are significantly less people playing outside of Southwest Rec center. This narrows the market a bit for this solution because not as many people had the need as I had expected. Inside the Boundary Outside the Boundary ...

A solution to my problem of scheduling recreational sports with others is a website or an app that can be downloaded on a person’s mobile device. This can be used by people who are friends and those who are strangers because they can communicate on one platform from wherever they are easily. In my head, one would be able to make posts on this website or app that details things such as what sport they want to play, when they want to do this, how many people they already have in their group, how many people they are looking for, etc. There are other apps like this for things like video games and they are called “LFG” apps or Looking for Game apps. Essentially, this app would be like those other apps but for sports.

1) The opportunity that I wish to pursue is the coordination of recreational sports. 2) The opportunity I have identified is that people have a hard time coordinating recreational sports and often times end up settling for times that don’t fit their schedules. The who of this situation are those who wish to play recreational but have trouble coordinating the events. This is because of many reasons but mainly it is a scheduling issue and the fact that sports require a lot of people to play an actual game. 3) From what I have observed from the previous assignments, I have seen that there are a lot of people who find it hard to schedule recreational sports with others for several different reasons. I believe that this need applies to all sports that people want to play but it is mainly seen in the younger community. Most of the time, people blame the fact that they all have differing schedules with their friends, so they cannot gather the proper amount of people to play...

Economic Trends: An article in the Los Angeles Times titled “California gas prices will probably rise after attack on Saudi oil plant” details the economic trend of soaring gas prices in California. There is an opportunity here because people are forced to buy gasoline even though the prices are higher than they want to pay and they are very displeased. The most likely customers are people who have to commute via car or motor vehicle that consumes gasoline in California and maybe the rest of the United States if gas prices rise nationally. I believe this opportunity is relatively difficult to exploit for me to do, but other companies may be able to exploit this. We know that people have been trying to develop alternative fuel sources for a while and none have come about so it seems to be quite a difficult task to overcome. An article from Mansion Global titled “U.S. Housing Market Poised to Shift in Sellers’ Favor” suggests that house prices are increasing and becoming harder for ...

I believe that there is an opportunity to make something that will allow strangers to interact with each other to play a sport together at a specific venue at a specific time for any sport of their choosing. The unmet need is that it is difficult for people to coordinate activities with their friends and with random people, specifically pertaining to pick-up sports games. People who have this need are those who cannot already form a large enough group to coordinate a game with two teams. This need has been around for a while because I know that my friends and I find it difficult to coordinate our schedules or know when random people will be playing a sport at a specific venue at a specific time. The way people are dealing with this problem is that they are just showing up at around 4-6pm at Southwest Rec Center to play the sport of their choosing because that is usually when there are a lot of people at the gym. I am about 70% sure that this problem is a true problem among my peers. ...

UF Preview prices broke state law. How are they fixing it? https://www.alligator.org/news/uf-preview-prices-broke-state-law-how-are-they-fixing/article_2daeae4c-d2b6-11e9-9c0c-9fca1017f082.html New UF students and parents are saying that UF’s preview fees are too expensive, and they are. Public universities are only supposed to be charging $35 while UF is charging $90. An investigation is taking place. They say that there is a site that links directly to a $35 preview option but the link doesn’t work according to the article. Parents have to pay for their own lodging separately as well. People are very dissatisfied from the looks of it. Tolls begin Nov. 9 in Seattle’s new Highway 99 tunnel; here’s what you’ll pay https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/tolls-begin-nov-9-in-the-new-highway-99-tunnel-heres-what-youll-pay/ The city of Seattle is now implementing a $2 toll on the tunnel that runs through downtown. This will affect those attempting to go downtown or just pa...

The most prominent example of entrepreneurship that I was exposed to as a child was an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. During this episode, the main character Spongebob received a magazine in the mail about all these fancy things, such as a pool, and a guy sitting in a pool inside of a pool. He and his friend Patrick wanted to obtain these things and they came up with the idea of being entrepreneurs and selling chocolate bars. They obtained these chocolate bars and then began attempting to sell chocolate bars as door to door salesmen. They encountered a lot of different people, from a guy who was screaming at them to a guy trying to scam them into buying chocolate bar carrying bags. Their experience had taken a toll on them and the future was bleak, but at the end of their adventure, the guy screaming at them about chocolate decided to buy all of their chocolate. They became rich and went to a fancy restaurant and rented the entire restaurant out, making their neighbor Squidward jeal...