Types of Ventures

No matter what kind of industries or what kind of products, there is always a life cycle of a market. when most persons think only technology-break-thru idea could make a buesinss flying, that is not true. In fact, a business can be successful or not depends on how good it can realize the stage of the life cycle and put itself on right position. For example, tissue paper market is a mature industry therefore Kleenex spends lots of marketing fee on doing advertisement and they are still making good profit. However if someones want to build a start-up from garage w/o rich family, a disruptive idea should be the only way to do.
When Jack Welch took CEO role at GE, he realized most of GE's products are on declining period, What he focused was to restructure GE. Only profitable and on great postion on market were kept, others all gone. That shows no matter where you are on the chart, as long as you can realize and play great role, you have your chance.

The Business Plan

A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals - Wikipedia
Beyond the definition, business plan is also a check list which founders can use to "prepare" before "go". Business plan should be set and keeps flexible when business is building. Risk of it could be either not able to complete or inadequate for organization...
One important part of a business plan is to tell a story. There are 3 stages including
1.Set the stage
2.Introduce the dramatic conflict
3.Reach a resolution
The style of Steve Jobs' presentation normally starts with a "conflict" or "problem" and such problem will frustrate everyone so bad and make everyone wants to see a life saver. Then it would be the time for him to introduce Apple's new products. No doubt, he is a master of story teller.

Strategy

My strategy is to co-op with mobile carriers like AT&T or others to use their "push mail" infrastrures to access email accounts.

But starting with running as stand alone service first. Once I have enough users and stable enough service, I will try to work with carriers.

SWOT Analysis

Here is the SWOT anaylsys for my business.
Strengths - low cost, having the technology, fast to market, scalability
Weakness - privacy concern
Opportunities - hugh mobile driver markets worldwide
Threats - mobile carriers may implement their services. Mobile app developers may join the competition

Opportunity and the Concept Summary

Where to find opportunity? or how do we "identify" if this is an opportunity.
There are nine catagories of opportunity and we can use the list to "identiy" it.
1. Increasing the value of a product or service
2. New appliations of existing means or technologies
3. Creating mass markets
4. Customization for individuals
5. Increasing reach
6. Managing the supply chain
7. Convergence of indeustries
8. Process innovation
9. Increasing the scale of the firm
From the list we can see the opportunity comes with some kind "innovation". It could be new technology, new market, new communication, new inventory control, new process, new industry or simply new human resource.
Only "innovation" can create new opportunity. But don't be fooled, even there is no news happening now does not mean there is nothing new. In the world, there is always someone working on something new in somewhere.

Economic Growth and the Technology Entrepreneur

Everyone could be an entrepureneur but not many will try to be one. Even fewer will be successful.
There are millions of reasons why NOT able to be successful. Most time entrepureneurs fail because they fail to find the "sweet spot" for the business. Let us talk about what is the sweet spot.
Sweet spot is the intersection of Attractive Opportunity, Interest/Passions and Skills. Only when there is an intersection of all 3 factors then entrepureneurs can go thru, will go thru and be able to go thru the journal of starting a business.
No attractive opptunity, no goal.
No interest/passion, no will.
No skills, no ability.

My Competitive Advantage

There is no similar products on market right now. In Blackberry, there is a close app which can read everything but that will overwhelm drivers. 5-10 years in the future, voice delivery will keep as the best and most reliable service to deliver information.

And my service will be able to read foreign languages and allow users to deliver only the messages users want to hear when driving on the road.

Another advantage would be NO data plan needed to deliver the service and virtually all kind phones would be able to get the service.

My Business Model

I plan to build a service which users can specify which email accounts they want us to read, convert and call users and play for them. When users are driving, they cannot read emails w/o looking at phone. That will distract drivers and create danger.

My Mantra

We read; You drive.

My business plan is to build a service to read emails for you while you are driving or prefer hearing than reading.