The semester in review

This semester as been a true learning experience that goes far beyond the classroom. While our original goal was to create a smartphone app, sell advertising on it, have all of Harrisonburg download it, and make 200 dollars, we learned that a vision which can seem foolproof in the creators eyes, is clouded by visions of grandeur. We expected all this to happen during the semester, and it didn't. We did create the smartphone app, and I am truly proud of it. It did exceed what I thought we were capable of, however we utterly failed at all our other objectives. We were unable to nail down any advertising in the short time period, and since the app has only been on the market for a day, we have little response. Because we we unable to sell ad space, we were also unable to make $200. Fortunately for my thanksgiving break yard work, we were able to provide a small bit of revenue. I think our venture didn't meet up to our expectations because of our grand visions, and the other priorities of the people working with us. I also believed we thought too long before taking action. Sometimes its better to dive right in and fly by the seat of your pants than to have a good idea and sit on it because of insecurity. Next time, I would start moving forward from the brainstorming phase sooner. I believe we wasted too much time thinking about the viability than jumping in. I recommend that future entrepreneurship groups, find an idea they can take from concept to physical product and take it to market right away. If your group does not have a product in hand be the end of the first month, you will be crunched for time. 


While the project was hard for the semester, Chris and I plan on taking the smartphone app further next semester, we believe it to be a really cool and useful tool for jmu students.

I was going to photoshop Dr. Wales in as the whale, but my photo shopping skills are nonexistent 

Cheers!

Specials in the Burg

The app is officially up on the Android Market!  For all you JMUers that have an android phone, head to the market and search "Specials in the Burg."  There you will find our app that will provide you with food and drink specials for popular bars and restaurants in Harrisonburg, for example Jack Browns, AJ Gators, Daves, and more.  The app is free, so be sure to download it and support us!

the final countdown

So, following up from this week. We will have our smart phone up and to the market by this afternoon, hewever it seems too little too late. We now have to decide what direction we should move in as the semester closes. thankfully the revenue generate by the lwan care service has provided us with a little bit of income. While it is not the revenue stream we wanteded. that is nice to see some money.

When the going gets tough...rake the leaves...

So, over here at Green Lite we're getting pretty desperate. While I think our Smart phone app is really awesome and can make the money we need, we are running out of time. So, when I got home for Thanksgiving break I threw an add up on Craig's List to do some leaf removal. My dad already has a leaf blower and this cool thing called a Billy-Goat, basically a leaf vacuum. It wasn't hard either to get much business either, seeing how much leaves are lying around. So as unfortunate as it is that the App is struggling, its nice to have a little revenue.

I will say i'm fairly disappointed with how the revenue stream for our app has turned out. I really think it is a good product and its viable, I think we were really unprepared with the time constraints for R&D and getting the product to market. I think if we did some partly parallel development we would be in better shape.

Heads moving faster than our feet

So,

Chris and I were really excited about this week. We did a lot of work with data collection the week before and had big plans for the prototype to be ready for the market this week. Unfortunately, its taking our programmers a little longer to get our data loaded and clean up the app. That being said Chris and I are going to be finalizing the advertising contracts this weekend and should be able to get the app to market by next week.

Get your Party Hats Ready!

We're on the final stretch!  We've compiled enough restuarants and specials for Harrisonburg and we plan to (hopefully) have our app on the market by the end of this weekend.  As we explained before, the app will be free to all android phones once it's available.  Once we get the app on the market, our next step is to go around harrisonburg to any business that may be interested in advertising on our app.


Here's how we plan to make money. We will have several "Options" for businesses to advertise on our app.  For a business that wants more ad coverage on the app, they can pay more for a higher probability of their ad showing up on the app.  For those that want to pay less, they can get an option for less coverage probability.

Once we get the app up and running on the market, we hope to finally start making some revenue in the next week or two by the latest.  So be sure to check back soon!

p.s. we're still trying to think of ideas for a name!  if you have any ideas, post in the comments.

Prototype!

We now finally have a working prototype of the app up and running!  The prototype just consists of the basic functionality of the app and doesn't have any of the added features yet (color, etc), but it's really cool to see how it's going to work.  Here are a couple of pictures:

Here, on the left, you can see what the app will look like on your phone.  This menu will have a list of restaurants that you will be able to choose from.  So, for example, if you wanted to see what Dave's Taverna has to offer in terms  of drink specials, you can select Dave's on the menu...

Next, by selecting Dave's in the above menu, a window will pop up with all of the drink specials that Dave's offers during the week!

So as I mentioned before, this is just a prototype.  We will be adding many more restaurants over the next few days, and then we will be adding some color and tweaking out some bugs.  If you have any suggestions you'd like to offer, be sure to comment!

GreenLiteInnovations