13 You and a few of your classmates decided to become entrep

1.3. You and a few of your classmates decided to become entrepreneurs. You came up with a great idea for a new mobile phone application that you think will make lots of money Your business plan won second place in a local competition, and you are using the $10,000 prize to support yourselves as you start your company a. Identify the key decisions you need to make to be successful entrepreneurs, the in- formation you need to make them, and the business processes you will need to en- gage in. b. Your company will need to exchange information with various external parties. Identify the external parties, and specify the information received from and sent to each of them.

Solution

a) The first step to build any business plan is identification of customer need. The new mobile application should service an unfulfilled need of the customer or fill the gap in the services provided by the existing competitors.

The USP or the unique selling point will differentiate the mobile application from other applications.

The end purpose of the mobile app on the solution should be clearly stated like what purpose exactly would the app serve to the people or what difference will be brought about in people\'s lives by using this mobile application.

The exit plan or the end goal of the company should be defined like an acquisition by an external entity or an IPO or for personal cash flow.

The type of company entity should be finalized like an LLC or C-Corp or any other corporate entity.

The end user market should be stated including the total available market, the serviceable available market and the serviceable obtainable market.

Statistics should be used for market projections of the future to have a clarity on the future growth expectations of the company.

The competitors of the company need to be assessed in depth along with their service offerings. SWOT and PESTEL techniques can be used for market assessment.

The marketing strategy for the company should establish the customer acquisition strategy, product development strategy and other key metrics for business sustenance.  

The financial plan should lay out the operating model for the company for revenue generation like advertising, app charges, in app purchases or subscription fees.

The financial plan should also incorporate the startup costs like one time cost and recurring costs. This will also help clarify if additional funding is required for the mobile application development, in addition to the $10,000 prize money.

b) There would be several external parties involved. The platform for application development should be decided iOS or Android.

Once finalized, the respective parties need to be contacted to obtain the guidelines required to be fulfilled by any mobile application. If the app uses advertisements as a revenue generation source, then the app needs to get in touch with the app providers all use Google AdSense on AdWords features outsource their affiliate marketing plan to an external agency.

Further, if the app is an aggregator service like cab aggregator like uber or hotel aggregator like air bnb, then the external parties involved would be much more like the cab drivers and the hotel owners respectively. The app then needs to clearly define the information exchange happening and what all access in the app do those people or external parties get.

the mobile application at the time of installation should exchange information with the end user as to what all access does it need in the mobile like GPS, camera, microphone, file access or any other access it needs from the mobile after obtaining due permission from the person concerned.