25A - What's Next?

Existing Market

1) For my existing market of UF students and people living in the immediate area surrounding the campus, I believe that a logical "next step" in the services offered would be to potentially begin to gather data from people's phones so they don't have to self-report, much like the way a GPS app does.

2) I talked to three UF students that (not currently) live in apartments east of 13th street. They said that the concept seemed pretty complete to them. One of them discussed wanting to see where their friends had parked if they were sharing a car or whatnot. That seemed like it could be easily done. Another said that you should be able to request a preferred location that you want to park in to see those spots first.

3) I believe those ideas would be easy to implement and they definitely could be done. I also think that in growing the market it would be nice to make it available to a further range in Gainesville as some students don't have the luxury of living right next to campus. I also think increased marking would be the overall best way to expand the current market.

Since the app would be constantly monitored by the development team it would be very easy to update so this product would definitely be one that would keep changing.

New Market

1) The new markets that I would like to expand to are other college campuses across the U.S.

2) I believe this is not only a Gainesville specific problem. This is definitely present at other colleges in the U.S. especially those in cities. I believe with appropriate research we would be able to take this concept to other colleges around the country and provide value in the same way we are providing value to those in Gainesville.

3) I interviewed two of my friends that go to other colleges. One goes to college in Boston and then other goes to college in Atlanta. They both told me that people that own cars have many problems with parking there as well. However, both people told me that not nearly as many students have cars as at UF. This creates a potential problem as the markets would be a lot smaller than UF and with less users, the app may not work as well.

4) Based on my interviews I believe that if I were to expand to other colleges in the U.S. I would have to either consider their geographic locations and whether they were more urban or rural. I would also have to do a lot of demographic surveys on the population to learn about the socio-economic conditions of the students and how many of them are frequent car users.

However, I believe with enough research, the concept definitely could be expanded outside of Gainesville.