Reminder of 2nd Startup Competition Meeting

Hello pple,

Merry Christmas! May all of you be blessed with a beautiful and happy year ahead.

I will be going to Genting tonight and will only be back on thursday night so here's a reminder for our next meeting.

It will be on 29 Dec, fri, 10am to 12pm at chatterbox.

The objective of this meeting is to:

1. Establish individual roles and responsibilities in the project. (e.g. finance, secretariat, research, report compiling ... )

Hence pls prepare yourself by knowing what you can contribute to the team and thinking of the essential roles that are needed in the team so that we all can propose this during the meeting and establish the roles. (take note that you may pair up 2 pple to fulfil one role)

2. Finalise on the idea we will use for our business plan competition by discussing the ideas proposed.

To facilitate the discussion, pls read the ideas posted on our blog and highlight your main concerns for each of the ideas (i.e. which is the most impt task without which the idea will fail)

Last but not least, here's an interesting idea. Can we set up a restaurant that allows customers to dine in the dark? Apparently this will heighten the senses of smell and taste. It'll be a fun experience for the customers as well, although the execution will be quite tricky. I think this has been done in overseas already and should be feasible.

See you on Friday!

Cheers,
Ivan

My idea 3-Improvised and personalised wheelchairs

There was once when i was walking on the streets and saw a malay old man struggling to move his wheelchair because his hands were tired.I attribute this idea to him and people whom i've seen who lack both arms and legs.

The problem with normal wheelchairs is that it is tiring for the owners to use them especially if they are elderly.So,i suggest we use button and battery operated electric chairs.Electric chairs do exist in the market but are not very convenient due to their bulkiness and other limitation properties.Can any engineering major think of making them lighter?And these electric chairs are certainly not useful for arm-lacking people .For these people,we can have buttons accessible near their mouth area so that they can move their wheelchairs using a pen held by their lip muscles.

And the second problem is as such.Physiotherapists warn that the movement of muscles is necessary for a person's good health and survival.There was one a physiotherapist told me that her patient died because she was unable to make him work his muscles and the muscle cells started "dying" out..I was thinking if we could incooperate OSIM like muscle excercising machines to the wheelchairs because the users cannot use their non-moving limps.

Heh,what you all think?Am sorry for posting so many times.I couldn't attend the previous meeting so i thought i'd post them so i cld have some comments.

My idea-2:Operation agency

Nagoor here:
There are 2 important groups in any retail business-operations and sales.Presently,companies focus on sales more ie.they recruit sales staff more than operations staff.What operations employees do is things like ordering stock,returning dead stocks,replenishing and arranging stocks,deciding how products are displayed and making sure the outlets look attractive and neat.And companies need coaching and education for both sales and operations staff.

So i was thinking if we could hold workshops for operations staff on -eg,housekeeping skills(like front facing and displaying product items,checking their expiry dates,manufacturing dates) because many of these staff are o level and n level graduates .They,therefore, need special courses before they do operations jobs.This would ensure in professionalism in each retail outlet.And we can have partnership with Ngee Ann Poly and NUS Business school to include some of their information on operations services durign our workshops.And we charge the employee companies for us to hold courses for them.

Likewise,we can hold programmes for the sales staff as well.Note that these courses are theory and hands on practice based.And we can go to companies regularly to check on staff's performance after attending these courses and hold higher level courses if they can pass the beginner's stage.

Expansion of ideas

Nagoor here.
Sorry abt my critique.
I assume expansion lies in the foundation of critical thinking.So i suggest,we leave comments on each others' ideas so that the owner of the ideas can further expand them:)Criticism is important at times but they are effective when they are worked on(ie.improvements and expansion)

And ya, do feel free to leave your comments on my ideas.I'd post more when i have the time.

To those brief ideas,hmm how about finding out roughly if the market target group would like to be your customers?Eg,if you wanna do career workshops for students,you can do market research-ask your target group how much they wld be willing to pay and how long they think the workshop shld be,what kind of service they wld like,ask teachers if they'd seek us for help and what aged students would need us..(A ROUGH research shld eb sufficent,i think)..Yeps,we'd need to be convinced that our target grp wld consider our products and services to be important so that our demand wld be high!:)

Till i post my next idea,Byes!

Ivan ( Ideas discussed during meeting)

1. Product - Service quality training (to improve service quality of service providing companies eg. hotel)

Market - Tourist industry (in view or IR opening in 2009)

Unique Selling Point (USP) - character matching; public speaking skills all rounded training

2. Product - Trendspotting service (import feasible business ideas into sg)

Market - giftshops, companies (eg. ig's heaven, Barang Barang)

USP - (Felyna can you fill us in?)

3. Product - Cold Noodles (briefly mentioned)

4. Product - Website to facilitate online shopping process (especially in the area of medical equipment and products wheel chair... we discussed this later in the meeting)

Market - consumers of medical products

USP - Provide comprehensive info about producta and how to get them as well as provide criterias for comparison.

5. Product - Wheelchair

Market - Wheelchair users

USP - can fit in taxis (less bulky)

6. Product - Plug in security device or add on for atms

Market - banks

USP - enhance security at low costs

7. Product - Career Guidance for students

Market - Secondary to Uni students or even schools

USP - creates awareness in students about jobs expectations and helps them plan their career. Achieve thru talks camps workshops.

8. Product - Recruiting agency for elder workers

Market - retirees and senior citizens who wish to contribute to society and earn an income

USP - Service exclusive for elder workers, Provide IT or job skill training


9. Product - Home cooked food catering service

Market - Families who prefer home cooked food than eating out

USP - Interesting traditional menus, food prepared by experienced housewives, senior citizens (integrate with idea above)


WOW! SUPER SHAG! Feel free to discuss abt the ideas and post them online. Keep an open if you know wat i mean.

CAN I ALSO REQUEST THAT WE DO NOT CRITICISE ANY OF THE IDEAS BUT TRY TO FORTIFY THEM OR EXPAND THEM.

Feel free to ask me any qns if you have any doubts.

hey=)

from felyna. (think it's easier to put name at the top so we know who it's from ? =) )

hello all=)

nice to see our blog's up and active thanks bing!

i need a few more days to either further develop what i shared with u all this morning or maybe something else more interesting will hit me haha=) will post and give enough time before next meeting.

anyway bing what blogger account u talking about?

love, fel

Hello All

Just to provide a brief summary of today's meeting.

1. We will participate the competition as a group of 8. Felyna, Nagoor, Biying, Ruth, Jinrui, Kelvin, Tenghui and I.
Pls sign up individually for the competition at www.startup.org.sg before the next meeting. We can then form a team with our individual accts.

2. Next meeting will be on next Fri 10 am, 29 dec.

3. We also went through issues about the executive summary.

Objective of executive summary is to present ur business idea clearly in a focused manner to potential investors in 2 pages.

Basically it will have to include the following:

1. What is the Business?
a. The Market
b. Product
c. Value Proposition (Unique Selling Point)

2. Who are your competitors?

3. Describe the profile of ur team members and ideal board of directors

4. Financials how much to make break even? How much profits you expect to make based on reasonable assumptions.

5. How are u gonna run ur biz

6. Why shd the investor invest in you and wat is ur exit strategy?

4. Finally we went thru each others ideas (I will describe them in a separate posting)

Pioneer Fruit Paradise

HAve you come across Mr Bean and have seen it to be flooded with health conscious singaporeans?Yes,people are now obsessed with the health benefits of whatever that goes into their mouth.

Just like how Beans have nutitious values,fruits are even better in their nutritous aspects.They contain magnesium,potassium,vitamin A etc and even those minerals that cannot be stored in the cans.Better still,they contain lots of fibre and do not create IBS(Irritable bowel symptoms) like beans do.And while beans cause problems for oily skinned people,fruits help in complexion-be it people have dry,combination or oily skin.

Executive summary:
1.Product/Service
My plan is such that we sell fruit dishes,snacks and drinks like grape wine(Product).And give customers diet consultation and calorie leaflets(Service).

2.Market
The market is good.(1.You can ask any woman who goes for facial-they ask you to eat fruits and drink lots of water for better complexion 2.And ask any doctor who treats digestive problems-fruits cure almost all diseases because biologically,health revolves around the digestive system)

3.Technology
Technology wise,I have the expertise and it's easy.I do lots of reading up of health,diet and beauty issues.Calories of our own dishes can be calculated via Q=m.degrees.(We need water and thermometer and weighing machine and burn a bit of food)

4.Management team
We need our parents to give us cooking tips and we should roughly know what customers want because we are often the customers:)
Treasurer to track profits
Health Manager to track service

5.Potential target
Health conscious people with lots of money

6.Financial
Input will be quite high because fruits are expensive these days compared to JUNK food(which i hate because i'm super HEALTH conscious)

We may need to self finance because it is not very expensive.But we can seek hospitals for finance and start our first outlet in hospitals because our outlet is a health outlet with natural benefits.And then form other outlets outside to target our larger target group.

But output wld be great because people pay for creative manipulation of fruits and service

7.Exit
If loss happens,which i doubt,we can change our dishes or include new dishes.Or worse come to worse,we work as a department in a hotel:)

Additional info
Advantages
1.People need not go to restaurants to buy healthy and delicious fruit snacks
2.Our dishes wld be creative eg.Strawberries in chocolate dips.Like soya bean pancakes,we can have banana pancakes.Instead of vanilla ice cream,we can have frozen and crushed mango on the cones.
3.Our dishes are done on the spot(if possible) so that maximum nutrients can be obtained.
4.For the old people who cannot afford the high end products,they can purchase fresh cut fruits at a cheaper price.We need to attend to the less advantaged too:)
5.As a follow up of this business,if we are successful ,we can begin diet consultancies for different blood type groups(There are certain food that different blood groups can eat to increase metabolic rate-ie.What is good for A blood may be not good for B blood because their blood cells have different protein components),write books on diets and food recipes,start health and fitness clubs,fruit facials (Aha) or go to schools to help overweight students.We'd probably earn more than the other fitness companies because ours is based on natural products-FRUITS!

Photo-tourism

(Preamble: Wedding albums normally costs about $7000 each, not inclusive of miscellaneous expenses like travel costs and costume rental. But it doesn't need to be so. Hiring a photographer and using photoshop to create an nice album. My guess is that it is overpriced because people are willing to spend on their once-in-a-lifetime event. What if we make it less exclusive? =P)

My idea is to allow people to hire photographers during their overseas vacations with their families. Our package is such that there will be many photographs taken throughout the trip, and a full photo album will be made, complete with editing and an artistic layout. This is to let people remember their trips, and have something to show their relatives.

Although many people like to take photos themselves, there are limitations.
1. not everyone has the skills to take good photographs.
2. it is difficult to take the entire family, unless you ask a stranger for help. And they are probably not skilled either.
3. Many nice photographs are candid shots which can show emotions. It is not often shown in posed photographs.

The plan is to create a network of photographers and photoshop software specialists globally, such that customers can hire our services anywhere in the world, without needing to pay for the photographer's travelling costs. The digital photographs can be easily sent around the world for cheap and good editing.

We are looking at 2 main target groups:
1. the rather well-off people who want their trips to be more memorable
2. special events - company retreats etc

This is a rather high-cost venture. Photographer rate is at least $20 per hour. One day (8 hours) would probably work out to be $160. The costs could be lowered further by giving them the option of using student photographers.

Estimated costs per album : $1000

- Jinrui

we've only just begun

hi guys! the blog is up, so start posting all your fabulous ideas up here. pls put your google user names here and sign up for a blogger account at www.blogger.com so that i can add you to the posting list :D