Assignment 27A - Reading Reflection No. 3

Assignment 27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

1.     What surprised me the most about Elon Musk was his relentless nature. He doesn’t take no for an answer and is often ruthless when speaking to colleagues/employees. What I admired most about Elon was his commitment to the advancement of humankind. He was so passionate about the future that all of his goals were some extension of this massive goal. However, this also relates to what I least admired about him. It seemed that he was so overly concerned with the advancement of humanity in general that he didn’t care enough about individuals. He isn’t the nicest guy, and it is because he doesn’t care about people’s individual feelings as much as he cares for humanity as a whole. This can be both admirable as well as slightly despicable. Elon Musk most definitely encountered adversity and failure. To start, he was heavily bullied as a child, not to mention his less-than-enviable home life. His father was barely mentioned in the book. After starting his first company, he was then pushed out as CEO, which was a “failure” but in reality was also a huge opportunity for him. His next companies, Tesla and SpaceX, were on the brink of bankruptcy several times. He went through several divorces. Musk had an amazing ability to endure pain and failure and to persevere. He never gave up (obviously).

2.     Elon Musk’s most obvious competency is his extreme intelligence. The other is his ability to endure adversity and failure. Yet another is his vision.

3.     One part of the reading that was confusing to me was probably all of the technical talk about SpaceX and Tesla because I am not an engineer so some of that stuff went right over my head!

4.     I would ask Elon what his opinion is on personal fulfillment and happiness because it seems like they are not priorities in his life. I would also ask if he thinks his success is a result of his difficult childhood and upbringing. I think the impacts of childhood can last well into adulthood, and it seems like the vast majority of successful people had difficult upbringings. I think people’s childhood experiences might be the fuel that defines th rest of their lives.

5.     I think his opinion, as well as the opinion of every successful entrepreneur, is that hard work is absolutely necessary. However, I’m not sure that Elon even really considers it hard work, but instead simply how he lives his life. When you have as big of a vision as Elon, hard work probably comes naturally. I definitely share that opinion that hard work is absolutely necessary.

Assignment 26A - Celebrating Failure

Assignment 26A – Celebrating Failure

            My biggest “failure” so far this year has been when I applied for an organization on campus that I was passionate about and was denied. From the very beginning of the semester I was preparing to apply, by planning who I was going to ask for a recommendation letter, how I was going to get a professional headshot taken, and what I was going to say in the interview. I went to the meet and greet event to meet the participants of the program and ask any questions that I had. I worked hard on my application, and I felt prepared and confident. After submitting my application, I soon found out that I was selected for an interview. Knowing this was a very competitive organization, I was honored to even get an interview. However, the interview didn’t go as well as I had hoped and I was then rejected from the organization.

            I learned that I should have been slightly more prepared for the interview than I was. I was sick the day before, and so I lost a lot of the prep time I had allotted. However, I should have started preparing earlier than the day before. I also realized that it probably just wasn’t meant to be. I don’t think that I was qualified or prepared enough to take on that particular role, and that’s okay.

            I think failure shouldn’t even be considered failure, but instead an important learning experience. You can’t change the past, so the only thing you can really do is reflect and think about what you can do better next time. When I “fail,” I feel temporarily dejected, but soon after I realize that I just have to come back even better than I was before. Failure is your chance to work even harder and come back even stronger. After all, it probably wasn’t even meant to be in the first place. When one door closes, that means that another will open.

            This class has taught me that failure is inevitable in entrepreneurship. In fact, there will probably be more failures than successes in any entrepreneurial venture. It is the people with perseverance and grit who push past the failures and get to the successes. I think that I am more likely to take a risk now than I was a few months ago because I know that failure is normal and expected, and how you react to it says everything.

Assignment 24A - Venture Concept No. 1 MyChef

Venture Concept #1: MyChef
Opportunity

·      There is an unmet need among newly professional young adults today for quality, healthy, home-cooked meals. With their new jobs and new time commitments, they do not want to spend extra time cooking, meal prepping, or stressing about what to buy at the grocery store in general. They should be finding the right work-life balance which also incorporates relaxation time as well as time with friends and family.

·      The forces in the environment creating this need are the general trend towards eating healthier foods and moving towards a well-balanced lifestyle. Millennials feel the need to do it all and have it all, while maintaining their health and wellbeing.

·      The market is defined demographically by young adults who have just entered the work force and are just beginning to figure out their careers and long-term goals. They don’t have a lot of time left over for cooking, but still value healthy choices. The market is defined geographically by higher populated areas (cities) because there you will find enough chefs to sign up for the program as well as enough young working professionals.

·      Customers are currently satisfying this need by eating out at fast food restaurants or spending their extra time cooking when they could be doing something else. They are not very loyal to what they are doing now because they are extremely busy and wish they could find alternatives to make their lives easier without sacrificing health or wellbeing.

·      This is a large-scale opportunity. I believe this could work in any city and could continue to expand internationally. Convenience, health, wellbeing, and time savings are all things everyone cares for.

·      The “window of opportunity” will be open for as long as someone else hasn’t thought of the same idea. I don’t think any of these societal priorities will go out of style any time soon. There seems to be a general shift towards healthier choices and maintaining a work-life balance. This company satisfies both.

Innovation

·      My service consists of personal chefs that will home-cook your meals for you. All you have to do is request the chef with the personalized dish that you would like, and they will come to your house and cook the dish for you. It is like having a personal chef.

·      Each personal chef will have a profile on the app. It will show who they are, what dish they specialize in, and what ingredients they use. It will show the price and the travel time.

·      After the service, customers can rate the chefs on the app as well as recommend them/save them to their “liked” chefs. This way they can request them again.

·      Using artificial intelligence, the app would determine the personalized price for every chef/dish based on how many servings, the ingredients, the travel time, and compensating the chef. Each price would be different.

Venture Concept

·      This app will solve customers need for home-cooked meals, while saving time, and being able to do other things. Amateur chefs will have a platform to market their services while making a little bit of extra money. The emphasis is being taken away from big corporations who monopolize the food industry, to the everyday chef.

·      Customers will switch to this product because they want food cooked for them using healthy, honest ingredients. They don’t want to travel anywhere and wait for food to be made. They want to be at home, relaxing, spending time with loved ones, or getting things done while food is being made for them. I don’t think it will be hard to get them to switch, since they are already familiar with how apps like Uber work.

·      The competitors are any other food delivery service. However, their weakness/vulnerability is that it is not home-cooked. You never know what is going into the food they are making and it is most likely not healthy. Customers want ingredients they can see and recognize, and will prefer home-cooked meals to generic food delivery.

·      The customer experience will play a large part in the business. When chefs are going to customers’ homes, it should be a positive and pleasant experience for everyone. The customer experience is going to be a make or break aspect of the business because customers will never come back if they are treated badly or have a negative experience with a chef. The business location will play a large part in defining this business concept because the first city we start the program in will be a defining moment in the success of the company. If it succeeds in the first city, we can continue to expand to other cities.

·      My business would only need one central location in the beginning, with only a few employees. Obviously as the company grows, more employees will be needed but that can only be decided as time goes on. Most importantly, we will need to have chefs signed up with the program in designated cities.

My most important resource is the uniqueness of the business idea and its’ relevance in today’s society. There’s no other product/service on the market today with emphasis on food delivery, home-cooked meals, personal chefs, and health and wellbeing. Customers would also be familiar with apps like Uber and so would understand the concept and how it would work.

What’s next for the business is having home-cooked meals cooked in the chefs’ kitchens and brought to the customers’ homes. This way, if customers don’t want a stranger cooking in their home, they don’t have to. I also think this business could work the “other way around.” Meaning, the chefs advertise something that they had already made and customers will pick it up if they are interested. It would be a community in which home-cooked meals are advertised and shared.

In five years, I would hope that this business venture is continuing to grow and expand to more cities around the world. I would hope that I am still involved with the business, if not as CEO then as a member of the board of directors. As an entrepreneur, I hope I am still coming up with creative ideas to improve the world’s issues. Going through this first venture will expand my knowledge exponentially in regard to starting a business and things to look out for next time.