Assignment 20A – Growing Your Social Capital


Assignment 20A – Growing Your Social Capital
Domain expert:
·         Bastian Lehmann is the co-founder and CEO of the wildly successful food delivery app/ service Postmates.
·         He fills the spot as he is one of the founders of an application/ service that is very similar to mine (the key difference being they only offer food). I would imagine he is very knowledgeable in the area of food delivery services and his input would be helpful in furthering my business idea.
·         I found Bastian Lehmann through google and then subsequently going to his LinkedIn profile.
·         There is no number or email that I could contact him from, but I could try to connect with him through LinkedIn.
·         Including this industry leader will help me to understand this industry more clearly and I might possibly gain some input on how to move forward with my business idea.
Market Expert:
·         Cameron who is currently a senior at FSU
·         He represents a large part of my market because he an extremely busy college student who always is in need of coffee on the go
·         I have been friends with Cameron for a long time and we still keep in contact with each other, primarily though Facebook.
·         He was able to give me some feedback on my idea, which was very helpful because he is in my target demographic and he also has experience making mobile apps, so he said he would be willing to help me further my business idea into an actual application when I get to that point.
·         Including Cameron will allow me to better understand the unmet needs of my target market and get some input on how to make mt idea better. Another added bonus is that he might help me make an application for my business idea when I get to that point.
Industry Supplier:
·         This part was somewhat difficult for me as I could need find someone a specific person that is an industry supplier, so I tried to contact Starbucks
·         They would be an important supplier for my company because they are one of the main places that sells coffee/ coffee related products.
·         I was able to find a way to contact Starbucks through their company website and you basically have to put in your contact information and they will get back to you.
·         I am still waiting to hear back from them, but once they get back to me, I will ask them information about how one would go about trying to get some sort of partnership with them.
·         I think including Starbucks is important because a partnership with them could be beneficial to my company since they are one of the most popular coffee chains in the country. I would hope to build a partnership that would be like the partnership that uber eats has with certain restaurants.
Reflection: I think this experience will help in furthering my ability to network with other people/businesses in the future. I think that networking is vital to any business venture and this exercise has helped me practice in that regard, even though I did not get as much information as I had hoped from some of the people I mentioned above. I think this experience differed from other networking experiences in the past because I had to go out of my comfort zone a bit to find people to network with, which I think is a step in the right direction for any entrepreneur.

Comments

  1. Blake StricklandMarch 29, 2020 at 11:54 AM

    Hi John,
    I found it interesting how you used LinkedIn as a portal to find experts in your industry. That is a fantastic idea, and I don't know why I didn't think of it for my industry supplier slot. Anyways, I think you did a great job matching these slots with people you know or people you'd like to know. These are definitely connections that would be beneficial to your service. I also have a good friend named Cameron who's a senior at FSU! Wonder if they're the same.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Quinton WiebeMarch 30, 2020 at 8:12 AM

    Nice job, John! Way to shoot for the fences and contact some pretty high level people and companies. If I have one suggestion, start small. Getting those major contacts, if possible, is absolutely awesome! But what about those smaller, local coffee companies? Large chains, like Starbucks, may end up having loads of paperwork, agreements, and regulations to iron out before you get selling. A local coffee shop will more likely help you start selling right off the bat. As a plus, you would be returning the favor by driving revenue to another small business like your own! Before jumping the hurdles of contacting one large corporation, try building relationships with a hundred smaller businesses.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brynn's ENT BlogMarch 30, 2020 at 8:31 AM

    Good Job John,
    I think LinkedIN is a very underutilized social media for our generation. It shows how many people we can have and what they could be used as a resource for. The only people that I have found to have one are the people who want to be in politics or are looking for higher jobs, like in Washington DC. I think it was very nice how you utilized that and found friends and other people to fit those descriptions. I wouldn't have thought about that on my own.

    ReplyDelete

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