HOW MIGHT WE LEVERAGE TRENDS IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY TO CREATE A NEW RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY?

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND VALUE CREATION

This class was one of the required coursed for my Business Entrepreneurship degree and it tasks students with building an operating start-up business in 16 weeks. This hands-on “entrepreneurship boot camp” was design to teach us how a business model is created from ideation and identification of opportunity, to creating a monetizable value proposition and creating market access. These businesses were developed in teams of 5 and we were expected to ship product or generate revenue by the end of the semester.

PAINT WARS

Our team decided to focus in the entertainment industry. At the time, research showed that teenagers and young adults were getting more and more interested in new types of recreational events such as the Color Run, Life in Color, and Tough Mudder, as their preferred source of entertainment. The domination of the digital world and the drastic change the in the relationships we have with devices makes people crave exiting experiences. PaintWars was a recreational event that consisted in a variety of paint-filled water balloon games. A good way to think about it is as a combination of a water balloon fight and paint ball.

CHALLENGES

Our biggest challenge was the financial constraint we had to develop this business model with a small $50 operating budget. This made it harder to find a location to host the event, especially because no one wanted to get their place dirty! Also, in order to have all the games we had in mind, we had to fill the water balloons with paint one at a time. This consisted in getting 3-liter plastic soda bottles and replacing the cap with a narrow Smart Water cap that had more of a nozzle shape which allowed us to fit the balloons. We then had to carefully squeeze the plastic bottle to generate enough pressure to fill the balloons. This process took days

THIS IS WAR!

Proof of Concept - Minimum Viable Product 1 & 2

MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT I

Like any business should, we had to develop a prototype to test our idea to the market and also see where we had pivot in order to eventually have a profitable business model. In this first prototype, or minimum viable product (MVP) we simply wanted to test if people liked the concept and if this is something that they would be willing to pay to do. The first PaintWar, which took place in the middle of the desert and had cardboard boxes as the obstacles, had games such as dodge ball, Paint Pong (similar to beer pong), Balloon toss, Team Death match, and Free-for-All.We charged $10 dollars which included the games and a slice of pizza and soda.

MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT II

The excitement that we received from the first market test was reassuring but still not enough to state that we had a proof of concept. For the second prototype, we hosted the event at a local park with much more open spaces and switched the cardboard box obstacles for wood panels. We also sold 3X more tickets and increased the price to $15 which meant we had to fill 2,300 balloons as opposed to just 1,000 for the first MVP. The increase in participants allowed us to have teams which made for more fun match ups. Capture the Flag also came in as a new game replacing Balloon Toss.

OVERALL PROJECT LESSONS

QUICK PROTOTYPING

Out of all the lessons from the class, this was personally the most valuable. In order to develop an idea into something that is useful, or in our case, marketable, it is crucial that we continuously use research and feedback to change the idea. "Fail, and fail often" is not only a catchy phrase that entrepreneurs throw around but it is rather a method of creation. A practical tool that we used for this was the Business Model Canvas, which practically laid our our business model and allowed us to look at gaps and see areas where we could tighten up the screws.

RESOURCEFULNESS

The reason why most people and business fail is not because a lack of resources (tine, money, connections) but rather because of a lack of resourcefulness. Having a budget constraints and a strict timeline forced us to use what we had at hand and stretch it as far as we could. In order to have obstacles we would go to back of grocery stores to pick up old cardboard boxes and duck taped them together to create hiding structures as well as look on craigslist for people who wanted to get rid of wood panels. Another example is how we filled up the balloons. Since we didn't have a water compressor and a tank to mix the paint in, it took us a total of almost 40 hours to fill up 3,300 balloons for both MVPs using the method described above

CASH FLOW MANAGEMENT

Almost 90% of startups fail in their first year and its largely due to the fact that they do not know how to manage cash flow. In our case, $50 were not going to be enough to cover the expenses for the event, even if people were interested in participating. So in order to have enough to finance the MVPs, it was within our business model to sell the tickets two weeks in advance.

SELLING THE IDEA

I think that most of us had the idea that pitching our business would be like what they show on Shark Tank. However selling your idea in real life does not always have the theatricals and you have very little time to get your point across. We also learned to tailor our pitch depending on who it was that we were presenting to. Business owners need to know what information an investor has to know and what information a customer has to know because they seldom intersect. This is why researching your target market and identifying what triggers people to buy is so important.

FUTURE OF PAINTWARS

Even though it was only a temporary business, PaintWars was one of the most profitable business of the entire class. The main reason why our team decided not to pursue this idea as an actual business was because the process of filling up the balloons and setting the event up was to much work for the return we were having, not to mention the fact that we already had our agendas full. However, new developments in the water balloon industry have opened the possibility for this event to be a profitable business. Although the idea of picking back up were we left off is tempting, im keeping my clothes clean for now.

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