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Venture Concept Write-Up Guide

My idea is to provide a mobile water bottle delivery truck for Puerto Ricans. I plan on investing around 5000 dollars into this venture. Depending on the success I may invest more. However, I don’t see this lasting for more duration than a few years. I am going to describe the opportunity, the innovation, and the venture concept. Furthermore, I plan to describe smaller elements like what my most important resource is and the future for not only my venture but also myself.

There are many opportunities in the world that people can solve. The opportunity that I ended up attempting to solve was the fact that Puerto Rican citizens and Puerto Rican grocery stores have a lack of clean fresh water to drink after the devastating Hurricane Irma. The potential customers are people that have particularly high levels of water usage and would be willing to buy clean water from any place. Furthermore, my customers will be particularly lower income because they did not have enough money to stock up on water before the hurricane. Water is needed for basic human needs like drinking and cleaning. Without water people may die or resort to unlawful behavior to get their hands on water. It appears America is not doing enough to give aid to Puerto Rico. This forces people to find solutions themselves. Currently many people drink dirty water and complain on social media about water treatment plants and running water systems not working. Shifting gears, the officials of Puerto Rico have declared months ago that water problems are diminishing. The residents beg to differ, as many complaints on social media contradict what the local government is saying. Taking what the government says is true as a conservative estimate of how big the problem is, around “72% of Puerto Ricans now [have] running water.” The population of Puerto Rico is 3.337 million people as of 2015; therefore, doing some simple calculations 934,360 people have issues with water.

My innovation to solve this water issue is to have a truck that acts like an ice cream truck for residents of Puerto Rico but selling water rather than ice cream. This is not a radically innovative idea, which is an advantage. People know what ice cream trucks are and don’t need to learn how they operate. There won’t be any learning curves associated with my innovation which translates to a quicker rate of adoption than more complex innovations. I plan to buy bottled water in bulk. I can purchase each bottle at 86 cents. I plan to buy $3,237.20 worth of bottles. If I sell the bottles at $4 a piece I can make a profit of $3.14 per bottle. I can ship the bottles directly to Puerto Rico, so there will be no costs for transporting them from the mainland. I also need to rent a truck which will be costly. If I were to purchase this, it would be around $3000-$8000. This is more capital than I currently have so I am going to rent one for as cheap as possible. I would expect this to be around $750.

I plan on being a mobile water salesman in Puerto Rico. I think that customers will switch to my product, at least for the short run, if they have an absolute need for water. My prices are high to take advantage of their inelastic demands. Someone is going to pay all the money they can if that means they protect their family. I don’t think it will be hard for them to switch in the short run, but in the long run when the water supplies are fixed I don’t see the practicality of my service. The competitors are the water utility companies, other people who have my same idea, grocery stores the have water supply in Puerto Rico. The distribution of the water is huge for my business plan. I plan on bringing water to people so it is convenient and easy for them rather than having them go out and scavenge. They will be more likely to pay higher prices if they have water right in front of them because people are risk averse. They can take a higher price now or gamble and try to find limited supplies at grocery stores or in supply drops. I plan on this company only being myself.

My most important resource will be the truck. With the truck I can find new people easily, I can transport water directly to people, and I have a safe place for my water storage

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I don’t see this venture lasting in the long term. This is supposed to be a quick profit where I have no strings attached and nothing holding me back. I want to be in and out of Puerto Rico as quick as possible making money in a short amount of time.

In five years I want my venture to be completely finished and making a profit around $50,000. As an entrepreneur in a decade I want to continue doing small, quick, and easy to pull off ventures like I did right here because I make money for little effort. This venture helps me achieve my vision because it gives me a taste of what a fast paced business looks like.