Forming an Opportunity

1.  In my experience there are a lot of needs in the world right now.  One of the most glaringly obvious is a making sure you are up on time.  I would like to focus on finding out if people agree with me that there are better ways than the current system.

2.  In my opinion, a major problem that exists for both me and a lot of my friends, is the struggle to wake up in the morning.  This is definitely true after going out the night before or being up late for any reason.  This need exists for anyone that has to wake up early for school, work or any other reason.  The need to wake up on time has always existed, and will for as long as society exists.  It is currently being met using alarm clocks, often on phones.  This solution is alright, but leaves room for adjustment.  It is simply to easy to roll over in the morning, shut off your alarm clock and go back to sleep.  The world needs a way to prevent this, and I am about 80% certain that there is a large group of people that feel this way.

3.  The prototypical customer is anyone that needs to wake up in the morning. It can be narrowed down to more specific such as people that tend to go out a lot, people that have trouble sleeping, people that need to wake up very early or at weird hours and anyone that requires a lot of sleep.  I feel that this problem is particularly prevalent among teenagers and young adults.

4.  Well interviewing people I discovered that a lot of people have the same problem as me.  They are unable to wake up in the morning.   One person said that it happened almost every morning, two people said that it is on and off, and the final person said it has only been a problem during this state of emergency.  The main problem that I ran into was that people were already satisfying the need.  The person that said this has only been going on during the pandemic did not see this as a problem because he had no reason to stay awake.  Two people said that they set multiple alarms and that usually works.  There was however one person that said even when setting multiple alarms they struggle to wake up.  This type of person would be my target consumer.

5.The main thing that I learned about my opportunity is that there is an audience for it, but it is not as large as I expected.  People have a product that while not 100% effective, they are pretty happy with.  Especially with alarms on phones, it makes things far more convenient, and I do not think many people would want to stray from that.  I now believe that there may be a different opportunity to create an app for a phone.  This would allow people to solve their problem, while not having to buy a new product or inconvenience themselves.

7. My new opportunity has changed, but is still similar.  Before I was looking for a new product to help people wake up, but I think a new technology would perform much better.  The idea of my original opportunity has stayed the same, but my platform has changed to a more realistic solution.  I think it's important to be able to take feedback into consideration.  You do not want to completely uproot your entire project, but if you receive feedback to make it better you should certainly adjust.