Assignment 20 - Growing Social Capital

Domain Expert:

Who they are?: This person works for a sports analytics company that actually inspired me to make my business idea. The company is called SportsAnalytics247 and they use data of hired sports analytics experts to help determine picks for games.

Which slot?: They are filling my domain expert spot and fill it because they are experts of the kind of product I would like to serve.

Contact?: I contacted them by direct messaging them through Instagram and they were surprisingly very helpful and enthused to help me.

Exchange?: They told me all about the natures and specialties and offers of there business. They told me all about how they like to use a system where they offer more picks and discounts to others that they feel are “valued” customers that follow them on all kinds of platforms. This was a cool and unique idea to me that I had not considered. The favor they did for me is they gave me knowledge and inside information of their expertise. The favor that I did for them is that I help them by following them on more platforms and got a lot of my friends to follow them and use their services.

How will they help you exploit an opportunity?: They already helped by giving me expertise on their business model and what they like to do and how big social media can be for an upstart business with a new service.

Market Expert:

Who they are?: This person is one of my professors for my sport management classes, Sport Marketing.

Which slot?: They are filling the market expert as they are experts on the field of sport consumer behavior, plus understands the sports gambling field.

Contact?: I just asked him after class what he thought real quick of my idea.

Exchange?: He informed me that although I have a god grasp of who I am selling to, I should include how the effects of some characteristics of the behaviors of sport consumers should factor into my business model.

How will they help you exploit an opportunity?: He helped me understand that my opportunity to reach my consumers goes far beyond what I originally thought it was. He helped me see that using what he taught me about understanding sport consumer behavior, I can really target my customers better and use this opportunity to grow my business. The favor they did for me was by helping me grow more knowledge of my customer base.

Supplier:

Who?: This person is one of my friends’ dad that actually sells to sport consumers and primarily golf fans and consumers.

Which slot?: They are filling the supplier slot as they sell to sport consumers, which I intend to do.

Contact?: I asked my friend to give me his father’s contact information and set up an phone interview where he allowed me to pitch my service and business idea to him.

Exchange?: He told me that I should continue to adapt my model based off more personal selling to customers as I am going to be an upstart business and service and that customers would be more trusting if they put a face to the business as well as backed up data that proves my service is something that is more accurate then just basic gambling off feel or someone making a glorified guess. The favor he did for me was giving me more knowledge on how to sell and gain customers.

How will they help you exploit an opportunity?: They will help me exploit the opportunity of trust in my industry as there is not a lot of areas of trust with other companies, but I have the opportunity to gain trust with my service.

Reflection: This experience really showed the importance of networking as there are many people out there with a lot of knowledge that can help guide me with my business. This differed a little bit from my networking experience in the past as it required me to ask more in depth questions and get outside my comfort zone.