From junior to senior
year of high school, everyone had to work on a business plan and present it to
Citizens First Bank and the top three winners received scholarships. After an
immense amount of brainstorming, I came up with an idea that I called E.O.I.
which stands for Eat Out In. Essentially, it was an app I was going to create
for people with busy work schedules who didn’t always have time to go out for
lunch or didn’t want to limit themselves to ordering pizza or Chinese every
day. I pitched the idea as “Uber for Food.”
Most of my classmates
thought the idea was great considering we weren’t allowed to leave school for lunch,
and everyone was tired of the cafeteria. My teachers agreed that they would like
to enjoy more than their leftovers as well. My parents were ecstatic about the
idea and told me they once had a similar idea for grocery delivery, but it
never worked out. All this support was really building up my self-esteem and
motivation to make this more than just a school project.
The judges shot down my
project due to a few errors in my math as well as my business partner not
knowing what was going on (he never really did any work; he was just along for
the ride). Although this brought my spirits down, I still though it was an
expert idea for a business. In the end, I just didn’t have the time or funds to
get the business up a and running, I was too busy with work, athletics, and
finding a college to really commit to a whole business.
A little less than a year
later, UberEats was launched and my heart broke. I couldn’t stop thinking about
how this was my idea and how this should have been my business. With
time, I learned that that’s just the way the news goes, and another
entrepreneurial opportunity will open up for me eventually but to this day I still
refuse to use UberEats. I can’t find my exact logo, but it looked similar to
the image below.
I’m taking Entrepreneurship in order to gain more insight
on becoming an entrepreneur. I think I have what it takes to own and run my own
business, but I would like to expand on my entrepreneurship skills. I honestly wasn’t
sure what I was getting myself into when I enrolled in this class but I’m so
happy I did. I’ve already learned so much from Professor Pryor and I can’t wait
to continue on this journey.
Hi Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI felt sad when I was reading your post because your idea didn't go through. At the time, your idea was a true innovation. Sometimes life can be very harsh but I guess that's the ways it goes. I hope that you were able to cheer yourself up after the judge disqualified your idea. Having such a great idea revoked because someone didn't believe it can be successfull can be very frustrating. I hope that in the future you can run your business. You are a real entrepreneur. Thank you for sharing this with the class.
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI hope this experience did not discourage you from having an entrepreneurial mindset. I am so sorry that happened to you. In my opinion, UberEats is relatively expensive. Maybe you are able to provide a cheaper platform than what UberEats offers. If you could come with an idea like this, you never know when your next groundbreaking idea will come around- it could be tomorrow, next week, or a year from now. I hope you follow through with it if the idea does spark!
Hey Kristen. Wow this is crazy. Just like our professor said Wednesday 09/11/19, you cant be afraid to launch your idea and you have to be willing to take a risk. I'm sure if you would have used the idea in the real world and developed it yourself and got a patent somehow, you would've been able to prevent Uber from doing this maybe. This idea was amazing and I'm sorry Uber took it away.
ReplyDeleteHey Kristen,
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading your post, all I was thinking about was the service of Uber Eats until I realized that you thought of this idea before it even came out which is extremely impressive. This just shows you already have incredible entrepreneurial abilities and a very creative mindset. Im sorry your partner did not contribute more to your idea, because maybe with another persons effort and abilities to help you out, it could have really turned into something special. Don't let that this experience put you down or change your goals and mindset because there are still so many unmet needs and ideas out there that can change a lot of peoples lives. Just keep looking!