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Idea Napkin No. 2 Me: I am a college student, my talents are problem solving. I have been on a variety of political science related clubs and organizations, primarily the Model U.N. If I were to attempt this business concept I would hope for it to one day be a viable alternative to single payer systems that provides effectively the same service but disconnected from the government, preferably this would work even better than single payer but I would be fine with parity. I do not see this dominating my life for very long if I were to attempt it, I would get it started and then leave it to run itself, if I have done my job right it will continue to work well without my direct involvement.   Offerings: Obviously healthcare will be on offer. In our case this will be a nonprofit that reinvests all money into providing more better medical care. The more people buy in the lower the costs will become and the better the service will be and the better the possible services will ...

Creating a Customer Avatar My idea here has the advantage, and the disadvantage, of being marketable to literally all Americans. This means that my “customer avatar” could be anyone and everyone, so I decided to do just that, my customer avatar is the literal average American. The Customer: Has a job; may have been unemployed for some time during the recession. They have not seen an increase in their wage during most of their lives, but have seen a slight increase in real wages over the last year or so. (about 1.7% over the course of 2014) Those that do see increases in pay frequently hop from one employer to the next. Indebted: owes more in debt than the value of all their assets. Discounting those households with no credit card debt the average American household that carries debt owes $15,355. Discounting those households with no mortgage debt the average household owes $110,000. The average household with Auto loans owes $25,530 and the average househ...

What is Your Secret Sauce? Human Capital: Logic: I think like a Vulcan. Reasonable: nothing is ever personal, and if it were then it still doesn't change much. Strategist: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the long term is more important than immediate concerns. Selfless: I am about as charitable as the next guy, but when it comes to any organization I'm in it's the organization as a whole that matters, not my place in it. In leadership I am more interested in the organization's ability to outlive me than outsizing my importance. Intellectual: I drink (water) and I know things. Interviews: Everyone I interviewed was pretty consistent in terms of the useful information they had to share. Primarily of note is my breadth of knowledge and my work ethic. There were a few people that made mention of empathy or other emotional competencies. Comparison: From a logical perspective this makes perfect sense, I acted in certain ...

Figuring out Buyer Behavior No. 2 The Interviews: When it came to “evaluating alternatives” we ran into a bit of a snag. There, at first, appears to be some variety. But it quickly became apparent that this was not the case. There are seven insurers in Florida, currently 6 of them are on the ACA marketplace for Florida (Humana exited earlier this year). However, none of these insurers appear to actually offer plans in all, or even most, Florida Counties. This means that the list of alternatives is often very low for small business looking to provide health insurance for their employees. Small businesses do receive a variety of benefits through the ACA Tax cuts, lower prices, etc… according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Here there is a disconnect as some of those interviewed now and before belive that the ACA was damaging to them, when the evidence suggests the opposite. This suggests that there is a very real possibility that politics can ca...

Halfway Reflection I can't really think of any specific skills I have needed to use to “keep up” with this course. I have little enough to do this semester as it is so I have a great deal of time to spend on this class. The last time I really felt like giving up was in high school. I was having a lot of trouble with my algebra class. Ultimately it was outside help from an excellent tutor that got me to keep at it and I ultimately did well in the class. I even did a 180 in my opinion on math; I used to think it was useless besides the most basic stuff, but now I firmly believe it is absolutely necessary to teach. Advice:   Try to find intrinsic motivation for what you are doing, this makes it much easier to justify going through hardship. Learn to see the forest. It's easy to get stuck in the moment and miss the end goal, and this can make difficulties seem to not be worth it. But as long as you remember why you are doing something in the long run then it become...

Reading Reflection No. 1; Elon Musk From the Readings: What surprised me the most was just how difficult Musk’s childhood was. I imagine all his old bullies are kicking themselves considering present circumstances. I most admired his tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds. He did what he thought needed to be done regardless of what stood in his way. I least admired his arrogant know-it-all-ness. I act that way way too often for my own good and understand it comes off very badly. Acting that way will often hurt the morale of those who work for you and with you. Musk exhibits an astonishing eye for detail, memory and capacity to convince others of his vision. There was no part of the reading that was particularly confusing for me. I have been reading far more complex literature since I was in middle school, this was hardly all that challenging. Two Questions: In your childhood, when you read your comics or sci fi and fantasy novels, did you ever imagine y...

Figuring out Buyer Behavior No. 1 I decided to start this off with a very obvious and significant potential consumer base, American employers. The majority of the health plans in the U.S. are bought through employers, this means that the majority of plans hypothetically on offer from my own idea will almost certainly be brought by employers. Sadly I do not have ready access to the CEOs of major companies, but I do know my fair share of small(ish) business owners. While the very small business of main street USA rarely buy health plans for their employees because of their low net worth, mid sized businesses with under 50 employees but over a dozen can often afford it. The need among small business owners seems to become the most salient when hiring a large number of new full time workers. However, the absolute change in the extent to which this need is felt is not very significant. Businesses outside the relatively few hundreds of million dollar enterprises are often a knife'...

Idea Napkin No. 1 Me: I am a college student, my talents are problem solving. I have been on a variety of political science related clubs and organizations, primarily the Model U.N. If I were to attempt this business concept I would hope for it to one day be a viable alternative to single payer systems that provides effectively the same service but disconnected from the government, preferably this would work even better than single payer but I would be fine with parity. I do not see this dominating my life for very long if I were to attempt it, I would get it started and then leave it to run itself, if I have done my job right it will continue to work well without my direct involvement.   Offerings: Obviously healthcare will be on offer. In our case this will be a nonprofit that reinvests all money into providing more better medical care. The more people buy in the lower the costs will become and the better the service will be and the better the possible services will ...