Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept No. 2

Many if not all individuals should exercise regularly.  Some of those individuals just go to the gym with no plan, and others go to the gym with a plan and a goal in mind.  The same routine over and over can get tiresome, boring, and not be effective for the individual depending on the goal.  On one slope individuals eventually want to switch up their gym routine.  Others want to not have to bring paper and pencil to the gym in addition to everything else.  Our technological advances have not kept up with the age old art of working out, and exercising in general.  This area needs to be fully integrated.  We too often, do not, create effective mobile applications to simultaneously satisfy needs of working out and the importance of tracking the workouts and results readily on your phone.  We are in the digital age.  The need of such a mobile application exists.  Our phones and technology around us keeps advancing and connecting us with all activities in life from helping us find the best restaurant to eat out at in town to helping us wake up during the correct time of our sleep cycle.  Everything else in the world around us has caught up with us.  Working out and our mobile technology has not. These customers are only satisfying their need through a few different mobile applications related to working out currently.  Other than those individuals there are still potential customers that still use pencil and paper, or just don’t keep track of their workouts at all.  All of these potential customers should keep track of their workouts, and/or have an easier time tracking their current workouts than the method or way in which they are being kept track of currently.  The market though is somewhat above a certain level because of the mobile data usage needed to run the application.  This will just limit the number of people that will be able to use the mobile application.

The service/product itself will be called Gym-in. It will be a mobile application available on the apple app store and the google play marketplace.  The application will consist of a multitude of features centered around exercising and working out.  This application will allow workouts to be tracked in real-time, effectively search for information concerning workout plans and nutritional information, It will be able to match the music you should listen to, to your workout based on your current mood, and it will allow you to check-in where you are working out to compete with others in your area, to help promote exercise of all forms from all individuals.  There specifically will be a find a workout plan, with personalized questions including experience, age, current weight, goal weight, overall goal, current height, and etc. regarded to your physical appearance.  The mobile application will then be able to run an algorithm sorting through the database of workouts and using the answers to the questions answered by each individual to find and customize the 5 best workout plans, which can then be separated by the variable amount of time you have available per week.  This will be the center feature of the mobile application.  All of this will be connected with a website where you can do everything you can do on the mobile application.  In addition, there is a B2B sales website as well.  Through this intermediary we well be selling and leasing the newest gym equipment.  Alongside the new equipment, we will also have refurbished equipment that can be bought.  This will be one our revenue drivers here at Gym-in.  The gym equipment will have such a large range as some equipment can be sold for just $100 while others can sell for close to $10,000.  The refurbished equipment will look to retail for half of those amounts to be made more affordable.  In addition, we will have accessories like wrist wraps to actual products like protein being resold.  This is to add another revenue driver despite the smaller returns.  The website will include advertisements for other companies wanting to target the same.  The ads would be sold based on time and rotational frequency over 100 different banner ads, for example.  These prices will vary and depend on what the company wants and what I can produce in website traffic.  Lastly, we would include a premium service for five dollars a month with a one-month introductory period for one dollar.  This is my innovation and the revenue drivers I have in place to generate positive cash flow.          

My mobile application, Gym-in, will get America moving again.  It will help individuals have that personal trainer in their pocket they aren’t able to afford.  It will give the experts the extra personalized tip that will get you past that hump to keep getting stronger without having a watchdog.  It will help solve the issue of time.  Workouts will be sort-able by the time available.  It will help keep customers and add more.  It allows for all these features and especially combined with the personal workouts, to satisfy the needs for any individual, whether they already workout, or have never worked out a day in their life.  Current consumers have trouble with the features, don’t even know that the website has a coinciding mobile application, or are even intimidated by workouts on the current mobile applications.  Gym-in will be the most personalized service available, this will help us drive advertising revenues up.  By being more organized and offering more combined features than our biggest competitor, Bodyspace which is the workout tracker application for workout plans through Bodybuilding.com.  This will help draw customers away from their mobile application to ours. It will not be an easy task, but since they are our only main competitor in the market of workout tracking applications we will also be able to introduce a lot of new users who were not using a mobile workout tracking application because of our simplicity.  The main issue is startup costs and accuracy.  Are we actually delivering the best top five individualized workouts for the individual, and at the same time is our platform simplistic for every user, young and old.  Then lastly, will we be able to market our product enough so our name and associated logo gets out to the public, so even if our download rate is low, our awareness rate is high enough to offset that.  As I jump into the role of packing and supply chains, I would most likely start the mobile application and the website simultaneously in the beginning.  Then as a means of growth add the gym equipment side of the business since we would have at minimum more access to credit and/or cash flows for investment.  Early on, the company would consist of very few individuals.  I would say a minimum of five people, between a coder, design specialist, an expert, and a few utility people who would deal with the financials, secretary work, and other utility types of issues that we as a team would have to deal with. Overall, I would play a role in the accounting and financial side of the business while overseeing the overall product development.  I would institute an open forum for all ideas at all times from any employee.  Otherwise, it would be departmentalized based on function.  For example, there would be a design department and then an IT department which can convert that design through code into the mobile application.  These are just some of the departments.  There would also be a chief financial officer, a chief operation officer, and a chief executive officer once the company grew above 15 employees. This is because I believe that if the corporate culture would be to be installed too late then it might not create the structure necessary to continuously succeed.  This is how I would fuse working out for everyone from their pockets.

Three Minor Elements

My most important resource will be our simplistic integration of multiple functions all in one mobile application.  Usually for the features I am looking to offer, usually there are multiple applications that one must download in order to achieve all the similar functions that we will offer in one.

The next opportunity that I have decided would be adding in the gym equipment department in which they can be bought, leased, or sold at discount once refurbished.  This will target a businesses and help spread the mobile application through getting gyms to sponsor the app while leasing the newest equipment from Gym-in.

For me, I would eventually want to sell the company while its growing.  Personally, I want to retire young and not have to work when I’m older. Also the company could have future ups and downs but I can exploit the upside early on so I can capitalize on a return and then reinvest my money into another venture.

2) Provide a summary of the feedback you received from your previous venture concept description. You certainly want to include the student feedback, but you may also include the feedback you received from others during the "What's Next" exercise. You want to summarize all of the feedback, but be sure to place an emphasis on what people recommended you change about your idea. (In other words, don't just describe the positive feedback.)

I know it says not to just describe the feedback but that is all I can do.  Everyone did think it was a good idea.  Respectively, each had their different reasons why they approved of it.  These reasons, in my opinion, show me the things I should and did keep constant in my Venture Concept Number 2.  Specifically, one person who commented liked how I thought of leasing the gym equipment, to add another revenue driver that would increase revenues and smooth them out as well. Also two of the three people who commented also enjoyed reading about my concept over time and loved watching it develop which to me, necessarily is not feedback, but in a way it helps when I need to push forward coming up with the idea.  Lastly, one person mentioned an opportunity that I had never thought of before.  This was helping with consistency.  Instead of targeting new and old veterans at the gym, target the fact that people need consistency and help staying on track with their workout.   That was by far the best piece of feedback I received.

3) Describe how you changed your venture concept, based on what you learned from the feedback.

Once you've done all of this, please post the URL here, and make the declaration. Well done!