Final blog entry for the class

Shooting the video for the local rocket

We (Mike, Bertrand and Hunter) set out this semester to create value for a set group of people in an entrepreneurial way.  Our group, responsible for creating thelocalrocket.com, began the course figuring out what exactly it was that we could do/create that would not only create value for a group of people by solving a problem they have.  We started out thinking this semester inside the box and focused only on what we were good at.  With Mike having experience in the technology field, Bertrand having bilingual experience in both English and French, and Hunter being from the area, we decided that a marketable French application for iPhones was the answer.  This focus within what we each could bring to the table sank quite quickly.  You cannot be a successful entrepreneur by focusing primarily on what you do well, you've got to get out of the box a little.  We found that we each had a lot to offer but that combining all these brought little to no value to anyone.  Who in the world would purchase such an application in this area?  How many Harrisonburg students/locals would value a French application, or how many even have an iPhone?  We began thinking outside the box, which is where the entrepreneurship process led us.  We found that the area neglected to inform locals/students of all the options going on throughout the Harrisonburg area.  We heard throughout the halls many people talking with friends about where they were going that night.  Many just referred to the same places that they always go to.  This got us to thinking, do locals/students know all their options?  We began brainstorming concluded that not could this be a problem for all these people, we too felt that we did not know all the options and that our own idea could benefit ourselves as well. 

                  We learned that just because you are good at something does not mean people will flock to you and buy whatever it is that you are selling.  We found that the best way to succeed is truly find what people want, or what they don’t even know they want, and cater to that.  Until they find your product is of value, they could care less what you are selling.

                  Thus, we decided to shift our attention to customer needs.  By conducting surveys on Facebook and finding that 84% of those surveys agreed that our idea was a problem for them, we decided to follow this path.  Mike felt he had the technical expertise to create a website for locals/students to help them find out all their options in the Harrisonburg area, as well as help businesses in their marketing.  The site was built and the functionality had its ups and downs, however Mike came through for us.  The hard part was then to find out exactly what all the options were and get them on the site.  Thus, we spent the majority of first half of the semester just simply finding all the options/deals going on in the area.  The site was then approved for advertisements and we began placing ads on the site.  Mike started our site for a simple and inexpensive cost of only $10.  This lack of expense in creation helped avoid a high risk investment into a product we were not sure would even get off the ground.

                  The changes that took place in the process of completing the site (getting the site where it is today) were evolved to better the functionality of the site and to help the people using it understand and relate better to it.  First, the map was set up so that you could click on each event (marker on the map) and the event would show up under the map.  Mike quickly found that this was much more appealing when you click on the dot and the information pops up out of the marker, still on the map itself.  We also found that people relate better with pictures and interaction on the site.  Thus, Mike added pictures at the bottom of the screen of what was going on in Harrisonburg, as well as the gps picture that goes with each location.  This alteration to the site allowed more people to get a visual of the value we were hopefully creating. Also, right at the end of the semester we decided to test another hypothesis we had - that students are tired of getting screwed by the bookstore when it comes to buying and selling books. To quickly test this hypothesis we didn't add features to the site, we just altered how they were used by uploading pictures of our books and putting pricing and contact information in the description. We're also still in contact with a manager at Applebee's, who is hopeful that corporate will approve money for advertising on the site. If they pull through, this is definitely something we'll be continuing beyond the semester.

                  The results (what happened in the end) were above our expectations and we find the results to show our value that we have created.  The profit for the site is sitting above $150 and our current page view count is over 4,600.  Over 900 unique visitors have viewed our site from 26 different countries.  We believe that our product was different from others in that it combined awareness with convenience.  They were made aware of all the options/deals in the area and they were all present on one website, instead of multiple websites.  With today’s society looking for fast and easy information, this combination allowed each person fast and easy access to information that otherwise would take a while to access.  Though marketing the product was only through facebook, word of mouth, throughout campus and online websites, we feel the sky is the limit in the future.

                  If there were a next time, I believe we would focus more on customer wants/needs than the creative ideas we found to be interesting.  Customers ultimately make or break a business and more focus needs to be put on them, and I think we spent too much time looking inside the box instead of outside the box.    Another area we could change if there were to be a next time would be marketing.  With our busy schedules we somewhat neglected getting the word out about our product through multiple channels.  Though marketing the product was through facebook, word of mouth, throughout campus and online websites, we feel the marketing could go beyond this and could/can get our website further recognition.  Whenever we did have time to market our numbers would increase, thus showing the future potential our site has if marketing is increased.  We felt confined to our busy schedules and neglected this essential part of our business but hope, in the future, to put more emphasis on this aspect.

                  For future entrepreneurial teams I would advise them to focus on what problem people have instead of what exact skills you have.  We tried combining all our skills and came up with an idea that went nowhere.  When we found out what people were having issues with and that is where we found success.  Also, don’t stress too much over creating the next facebook.  Worry more about what an issue is currently around you.  This will help because the people who are around you can help you the most in creating value.  The final advice I can give is to keep up with how society is in the present state.  We found people to be lazy and looking for what is most convenient.  Convenience is a huge society trend and realizing/utilizing this will help in making the entrepreneurial process fall into place.

More marketing

This past week we ramped up content on the site in preparation for some marketing that we have planned for the coming week. We also have an email list of restaurants that we will be contacting on Monday. We also added a button that allows people to support the local rocket through paypal. We plan on using this to collect advertising payments not paid in cash as well as any donations.

As the class is quickly coming to an end, we have begun talking about what we're going to do after the semester finishes. Since we believe the site has potential, we plan on pushing forward over the summer. We're discussing what to focus on to build something that people truly find useful. We'll lay out our future plans over the next to weeks, so you can see whats up next for the local rocket!

Meeting with Applebee's

Reenactment of our meeting with Applebee's

          On Tuesday, Mike and I (Hunter) had a meeting with Applebee’s in Harrisonburg to sit down and talk to their manager (David) about the possibility of having Applebee’s ads put on thelocalrocket.com.  We realized, after the meeting was already set up, that we should have gone after a restaurant or business that was not involved in or part of a chain.  My point being is that Applebee’s is a great ad for our site, but they have to go through multiple steps and present our website to corporate before we can establish an agreement.  Thus, our meeting was with the local manager that now has to take our ideas and present them higher up.

            After sitting down with David, we explained the problem we found in the Harrisonburg area and what we were attempting to fix the problem with our website.  We included how the site works, average daily page views, our fair price range for Applebee’s posting ads, how we are currently marketing, where we plan to go in the future, and how we had not met with any of Applebee’s direct competitors in the area. (Chili’s, Roadhouse,etc.)  This, I believe, had David sold on our website and interested in pursuing our website.  I say this because he then went in to talking to us about the possibility of an exclusivity agreement.  He also went as far as to say if he didn’t have to go to corporate, he was sold on our site and felt we really had something going.  As we finished up the meeting, David said he would pitch it for us the best he could and would do all he could because he really liked our approach.  One last thing, he talked to us about making shirts and stickers and if we really join an exclusivity agreement we can both benefit.

            Though we walked away without money in hand, the experience we gained and the boost we got was far beyond money.  We will be hearing back within the next few weeks to see where we stand and if corporate wants to pursue our site further.  Mike and I feel that we pitched thelocalrocket.com well and that our meeting couldn’t have gone better.  We look forward to moving ahead and getting the site out there.

Bertrand

This week we also worked on a "support our website" button to make more profits. We are getting the word out about to businesses so that they can post events on there. Hopefully, they will donate money if they feel that our website is helpful.

Dear Mister,
We identified two problems in our locality. People are unsure of their options for what to do when they want go out, go eat or do something in general. Also, businesses are unsatisfied with their current marketing efforts.
In consequence, our goal was to link businesses and customers and we have been developing a website for the last past three months. Our idea was to build a site that has activities on a map that will show people what events are going on around Harrisonburg. It is benefiting customers by giving them the different options for the week and businesses by marketing their events or specials.

In the first two months, we developed the website to its full capacity by developing features and adding events online. In the last past 30 days, we started to get the word out to students and locals about the website. It is actually working very well.
Number of views?
We are now trying to work it out with businesses in order to get more events on our website. We give you the possibility to add your own events and pictures for free on our website. You just need to register and click on ADD events or Add Pictures!
We hope that it will help your business to get more people in. You can access the website here: thelocalrocket.com

If you feel like our website is very useful to your business, feel free to support our website by donating! (feature included on the website)

Sincerely,

Bertrand Moulin

Continued Growth

The local rocket has been viewed in over 18 countries and 23 states!

The top 7 countries on average spend 1 minute or more on the site, with New Zealand topping out at 6 minutes!

We started to increase our marketing this week by posting the local rocket to the JMU subreddit and Hacker News  (run by ycombinator). The results were very positive. We got 9 comments on the hacker news post and 15 up votes, and 2 comments on the reddit post with 12 up votes. Nearly all of the comments were positive, and many appreciated the design of the website. Posting the site to those boards increased our page views quite a bit, resulting in us breaking into triple digit revenue. Next week we plan on posting to some other sites to further spread the word. We're also working on plans for some on-campus marketing in order to get more students to the site. 

Hunter Knott

                  This past week I approached my boss where I work in Bridgewater, Virginia.  He is a financial advisor and current partner at the supermarket I work at.  He looked at the site and after explaining to him how the site works he admitted he liked the innovation and creativity.  He also agreed that it has potential to take off and expand farther out than Harrisonburg.  His only disappointment from our website was the site was currently focusing on the Harrisonburg area alone.  He gave his word that if we ever expand out to say, Bridgewater, he would be interested in investing in the site to draw more people to the supermarket.  Though we are only currently generating revenue through google ads, this commitment and interest in our site, outside of Harrisonburg, gives us confidence to possibly range out farther.  This of course will not take place until we feel we have a product worth expanding and or marketing strategy established.

                  Another quick note, I currently have a meeting with Applebee’s on Tuesday to talk about establishing an agreement on advertising for them on our site.  If this idea falls through we are planning to email and approach as many restaurants/businesses for advertising as possible until the end of the semester.  This will be for the class alone, but after the semester we plan to continue the website and dealing with businesses.

Redesign

The Local Rocket underwent a major redesign over the past week. We've simplified the map portion and added the ability for anyone to share pictures to the site. The idea is to show what's happening locally, and we hope it will help capture 'the local scene'. So head on over to the site and check it out. With that said Hunter and Bertrand will talk about some of the problems we've had up to this point.

1.     Revenue sources- One of the key problems we are facing is the best approach for revenue from potential businesses.  Do we have them pay us to post specials and events on our website or do we have them pay us for advertisements on our site?  We are currently generating small revenue based solely on google ads but want our revenue to come from the value we are creating not google ads alone. Potential sources would be local business and a donations feature on the website.

2.     Focusing on a direct product/area- Our website is currently fluctuating between a Harrisonburg deals website, events website and possible sales website.  We are attempting to create too much and are expanding out too far.  We need to focus on an area and build on it.  If a pivot is possible in the near future we will do so when necessary to shift directions.

3.     Sources of marketing- Our sources of marketing right now are currently just facebook and word of mouth advertising.  We would like to advertise to businesses but are still trying to better the site so that websites will be interested.  Thus, our marketing at times is stagnant due to the attempt to create the best product before taking the step toward businesses. Last monday, we practiced our pitching skills for our website. 

4.     Locating sufficient information to draw viewers- Based on our customer interviews, we found the best approach is through restaurant deals and local events coming up.  Certain restaurants do not have deals, have everyday deals or come in only deals.  Finding all the information to draw the customers is quite a bit of work and at times a struggle.  We want people to come on the website and find that deal or event that widens their eyes.  The problem is finding it, posting it, and getting people to come on the site and find it valuable.

5.     Time (open) - Time is another problem we are dealing with.  Creating a valuable website that companies are willing to pay for, generating $250 revenue, and doing so over the next 5 weeks is not something easy.  We learned in class to get a minimum viable product out to generate feedback and revenue.  We then learned to take failure and make something positive from it.  We are currently struggling to find the time to put all this together and make money in a minimal amount of time.  We have learned that it takes time to put something really good together.  Now that it is down to 5 weeks, its crunch time to see if we can put this all together and meet the expectations we each hold for this product.

Launch Week

We're officially launching The Local Rocket this Friday. We're excited to start adding new users and to keep informing people about all of the events that are going on in Harrisonburg. Since we started slowly rolling out the site to users at the end of February, we've actually already been generating traffic and making some money off of advertisements. Over the past few weeks we've been continuously adding events and improving on the site design. We added buttons to set a time range of events and we also added a list to show the events. Finally, we ironed out some bugs with how events are displayed.
Without giving away too much info, the following graph shows our revenue stream since launch.

If we can sustain this level for a couple of weeks, we'll be in a good position to hit our revenue goals. We'll see where we're at in a week. Stay tuned.

Steady progress

This past week has been a productive one. The website now shows advertisements (which means we've started collecting revenue) and the team has been adding more content everyday. We're looking to officially launch the Friday after spring break (in about two weeks). We want to accompany the official launch with a bit of marketing to spread the word. We decided the best thing we could do is get an article about us into the school newspaper, The Breeze. It's a good way to reach our target market, and will be essentially cost free.

Mike was able to talk to someone from Clementine and learn about how they market and if our project is something they would be interested in. He gave us several good tips. He said he doesn't like marketing in newspapers because there's no way for him to see his return on investment. He liked the idea of only paying when people see an advertisement, and seeing data about how many people actually saw the ad. This is how Facebook ads work, and how ads for local businesses will work on our site.

Through talking with friends and classmates, we've gotten some preliminary feedback on the site. People mostly  like it, but we learned that we should focus on restaurants, deals, and live performances to really draw people onto the site. Also, in order to drive viral growth, we really want to include a Facebook 'like' or 'share' button that way we can leverage people's existing social networks. We'll be in a good position if we can get people sharing in this way.