20A – Growing Your Social Capital

1. The first person I interviewed was the creator of an app that lets people sell parking. 

2. Domain expert.

3. I knew of the person through mutual friends; they are around my age. Because I knew them through mutual friends, I contacted them via Instagram direct message.

4. I talked to him about how he began his business and how he came up with the idea. The way he came up with the idea was the same as how I came up with mine: he saw a need, and tried to come up with a solution. He began his business by finding an investor that was able to help financially for him to be able to start his business. 

5. This connection would help me because he would be able to tell me how to go about starting my own app and how to market it to customers.

1. Next I interviewed someone who works for the City of Gainesville which sells neighborhood/city parking decals for street parking.

2. Market expert.

3. I found the person by calling the number I called last semester to purchase a decal. We communicated via phone call.

4. He told me that there are often complaints of people who purchased decals saying that they still can't find parking. He told me that an app like my idea would probably be beneficial to these people.

5. In the future, this person could possibly refer my app to people who have this complaint, which would grow my hypothetical business.

1. The last person I interviewed is an app developer.

2. Supplier.

3. I found this person by doing a google search for app developers and communicated with him via email.

4. He gave me a quote for how much he would charge for an app like mine because the actual application would be pretty simple. He also gave me a rundown of how the process would go if I were to have him create my app.

5. This is a valuable connection because if I wanted to actually create this app, now I know someone to help me with this process. I could hire him to create the actual app itself and help maintain the app.

I think that this experience was a very valuable one. Through this I learned how to contact people who I might need to contact for future business endeavors. I wasn't able to meet with all of them due to the pandemic, but I did ask each to call me/be called to be interviewed. The domain expert's preferred method of contact was Instagram direct message and the supplier's preferred method was email. I know now that it really is important to make connections with people in each of these three different groups. At first I thought that the market expert might not be helpful, but then I realized our businesses could potentially go hand and hand and benefit each other, so this connection would probably be one of the most helpful. I also wasn't sure how helpful the domain expert would be until I spoke to him and realized how knowledgable he is on this kind of thing and would be able to help me if I were to create this business. Before I spoke with him, I didn't even think to interview an app developer as my supplier, but he mentioned this was a key component in the process of creating his own app, and that finding a good one is essential. Each of these three people I interviewed could help my business out immensely, which I did not expect.