Marcus Manzoni ENT3003

20A – Growing Your Social Capital Person 1: -Bill Hessler: Senior Mechanical Design Engineer at The Legacy Companies. Identifiable by his title, Hessler is the head designer and engineer of products such as the “chef’s choice - knife sharpener” -Domain expert -Found them through online research and LinkedIn. I then proceeded to send him a message through LinkedIn -As of now, he has not responded. -If I have Bill Hessler in my network, I could possibly get an advantage in how I could/should design the razor blade sharpener because he is an expert in designing similar products. Person 2: -Nadine Cernigla - Senior Marketer at Townsquare Media Albany (has worked in marketing over 30 years) -Expert on market -Nadine is a family friend and I reached out over text -Through our conversation, I was able to ask what are the best ways to network, find potential customers and to best conduct customer research. There is no return expectation because they are a family friend. -Having Nadine in my...

Idea Napkin No. 2 1.I am a 20 year old, male, college student, originally from New York and I am now attending the University of Florida. I feel like some of my strongest skills include my work ethic, my determination, my vision and my social skills. I have also been able to increase my marketing talents through my internships with both a minor league baseball team and a start up sports news company. If I were to actually go out and start this business, I would want to make this my main priority. I have always longed to create something of my own and be my own boss, and although I have had, what I believe to be, some really good ideas, I feel like I have never really had the time/means to actually produce and sell the product/service. If I decided that the product I came up with for this class was something I wanted to pursue, I would have to give it my full attention and do whatever it takes to sell the product and make money. My main goal for the product, although shallow, would be...

17a - Elevator Pitch 2  Link to the new pitch -  https://drive.google.com/open?id=11L6FqrHRraefPq8a54cvWBsGYZknOX9M  The thing that stood out most about the feedback was how important the stats were at the beginning of the intro, so I decided to keep it the same for this pitch. Other than that, I thought there was some good feedback on the order of the pitch where it goes intro/statistics, coming up with a scenario where the product would be useful and then describing how the product would make life easier. Overall I kept a lot the same, but with a few minor presentation and word changes.

Create a Customer Avatar Prototypical Customer: My prototypical customer is a 40 year old man with a desire, and a job that requires a clean shaven look (lawyer, politician etc.). This customer is a middle high income male, drives a nice car either silver or black (Mercedes, Audi, Tesla, Jaguar) and enjoys playing golf outside of work with his friends. He is married with two children - one boy, one girl and has a pet golden retriever. They live just outside a city in an upper class suburban neighborhood, but he has to travel a lot for work. He enjoys watching the news and other shows that are informative or just watches sports. To relax he listens to classics or big band music like Sinatra and enjoys a glass of whisky or a homemade martini.  Similarities:  Realistically I currently don’t have most of these things in common with my prototypical customer, although some of these aspects do sound appealing. For my product, it is not meant to be targeted to this one specif...

Marcus Manzoni 16A –What’s Your Secret Sauce? My 5 Unique Human Capital Aspects: 1. I am essentially a full blooded Italian because my entire family as far back as we know on both my mom and dad’s side of the family are also fully blooded Italians. This culture and lifestyle is embedded in my DNA and I had a very unique childhood experience. 2. I have started to learn other languages for fun. Although I am new to this venture, I have already begun learning the basics of different languages like Spanish, French and most recently Japanese. My willingness to explore different cultures and languages on a whim with no real purpose is unique. 3. I am really good at playing out scenarios in my head before they happen. It makes me more prepared for future events and it helps me with project and organizational vision. 4. I am very realistic with myself and those around me. Having this situational awareness helps me recognize when things are and are not going well and I can wor...

Marcus Manzoni 15A: Figuring Out Buyer Behavior 2 From conducting interviews with three random people who fit in my product’s (razor blade sharpener) market segment, I was able to better understand how the aspects surrounding my product such as location, price, design and quality affect the consumer’s willingness to purchase my product. In the alternative evaluation I found that all three of my interviewees said that having a high quality product mattered the most. If the product did not do a good job at sharpening the blades, then there was really no reason to have the product when they could just go and buy another razor. The price was interesting because the interviewees all had differing opinions. One person said they would only buy the product if it was cheap because the reason why they don’t buy the new, best razors is because they want to save money. If this were too expensive, it wouldn’t even be worth it for them. The second person said that as long as the product was good q...