Key Takeaways:
Assignment 2 helped me do secondary research. Through these research, I found out areas of opportunity for my venture and I learned few things that I was wrong from my initial assumption.
One thing I assumed that job posting/seeking industry relies on paid keyword searches and advertisements to bring in big revenue, which was far from true. This area is a booster for them but never in their high priority list.
Another key element I learned is customer behavior, seeing as the target market is college students, research through Statista validated some assumptions. Assumptions such as: students spend hours and hours looking for jobs. Majority of students spend from 1-5 hours to look for jobs. On top of that 43% of post graduate students stop looking for jobs that are unemployed. The conversion ratio from seekers to employees is very low.
Most importantly, the assignment helped me figure out what type of business model I should pursue. It made me change elements around in my idea. For example: the secondary research of College Career Centers helped me understand that face to face user interface is a big success in terms of conversion from job seekers to employee. So, I didn’t want Rubicon to just be another job posting/seeking website, I want to hybrid the experience for students with user interface being a key element of the journey. This made realize “Multi-sided platform model” would be most suitable for my venture.
Concerns:
In all honesty, the biggest concern I have is implementing the vision to practice. While it is all well and good to have the idea and reframe/remodel and synthesize the idea multiple times. I believe I lack expertise and experience in areas that could really be detrimental to the process.
I also have concerns on how to find areas of revenue through this venture. I still believe as I’m remodeling the idea along the way, and the secondary research gave me impression on how others bring in revenue but for them they have built a database of users and clients; the real concern is how can I enter the industry market and find a good base of users and clients which can kickstart the idea.
Hey Tausif,
It sounds like your secondary research was really helpful! That’s awesome. It’s good that you found out that paid keyword searches did not bring in a ton of revenue. Your concerns are extremely valid and I totally understand the feeling of not having enough expertise in the field. You could always get a partner, but that is something for you to determine. Raising enough revenue is also something that is tricky, especially when there are huge competitors. However, this shouldn’t necessarily deter you! I agree with the Professor. If you think you should start over, you will have learned a bunch of valuable lessons from this.
Thank you for the kind words Karin. And no I don’t want to start over, I believe there is potential in this idea, however I have to see how many students will be interested through our testing.
I totally understand the concerns. This analysis is exactly what you need to do. Now you know what gaps you need to fill and if the “tech-gap” is too wide, you can walk away from this (good) idea without spending a penny!