Idea Napkin No. 2

1. I am Luis Soto. I am a senior at the University of Florida majoring in food and resource economics. I have previous experiences with sales, marketing, and management positions. I have had various jobs in which I have collected data based on people's wants and needs. Also, I understand how to handle finances, and I know that one of the most important aspects of starting a company is the financial aspect. My aspirations are to create a scooter rental service for students, faculty, staff, and any other member of the Gainesville community. This service will be mostly geared toward students, since students already have many expenses. Many students need a cheap and reliable source of transportation, and I believe that my service will provide just that.

2. I am offering students the peace of mind that they will be able to go places without the worry of not having reliable transportation. Students will not miss class, meetings, or interviews because of a lack of transportation. Also, I am offering the freedom to be able to travel around the Gainesville area without the worry of knowing the bus system or fear of missing the bus and being stuck somewhere. Also, I am offering this service in a very inexpensive way, since most students already have many other costs to worry about.

3. I am offering this service to all of the Gainesville community, but my largest demographic is the University of Florida students. My customers would most likely be students without a form of transportation aside from public transportation. These customers are people that have very busy days, and need a reliable form of transportation to be able to attend their classes, meetings, interviews, etc. in a timely manner.

4. The customers care because, they want to be able to make all of their events on time. These people want a reliable source of transportation so that they are able to attend classes and meetings without being late. Also, there is the want for freedom, and this service will provide them with the freedom of being able to go wherever they want whenever they want. I am also taking away the cost of having to purchase a scooter, which many students cannot afford, and providing them with an inexpensive form of transportation.

5. I am providing customers with a new idea. I have not seen this idea implemented elsewhere, and as of now I do not see any competitors in this market. I also understand my customers' needs and wants since I am also a college student with a similar situation. This service is also very inexpensive compared to the actual price of a scooter. Scooters usually cost around $700 - $1200 or more, and my service will cost about $10 to $20 a day or $100 month.

The different elements in this idea, do build on each other. This service is not meant to make money, but rather offer college students a reliable and cheap form of transportation. I believe that college students deserve an inexpensive and reliable form of transportation since they already have to pay for tuition, books, rent, and other expenses. This is an opportunity to help college students.

Five main points that I took away from my feedback were that I could use bicycles with small 80cc engines and reduce the cost further, I need to figure out how to fund this idea better, having a drop off and pick up service, how can I protect my investment (scooters), and I may need to charge higher prices. I think the bicycles could be an interesting idea as long as they were street legal and still safe. In order to fund this idea I would need a large loan to by some scooters, or I would need to try to get this idea started with a company that is already well-known in the Gainesville area for selling scooters. I still need to figure out if a drop off and pick up area concept is something that I would be able to do. I believe that I could have different areas on campus, like zipcars, where you would go to pick up your scooter. I could align these areas next to the bus stops so that it would be easy for people to get to these areas. I could again, use a scooter company in Gainesville in order to figure out where to store scooters if they are not in use. Overall, these are things that I have not completely figured out, but I do need to come up with a solution before going forward with this idea.