Start UP Strategy Thesis

These units aim to find a scalable and repeatable business model in markets where huge demand is predicted (Steve Blank, 2010). In case of not finding such a demand or not being able to supply – these companies burn all capital and close in a long run. Secondly vast majority of start-ups aim to go internationally. Otherwise business model is hardly scalable and it cannot attract capital in the future. Coddle general info Coddle is a data start-up company which owns a product applicative. Com. It is a website which seeks to provide life quality information for citizens.People who seek to know more of their neighborhoods type their address and easily find information such as crime rate, pollution, average income, etc. Also it is really handy for people who search an apartment to rent. Data is linked to a website using free governmental sources. At the current moment company operates in Lithuania, Germany (Berlin), USA (New York, Confiscator, Chicago, LIKE (London). In upcoming o ne year they plan to cover all cities in USA and then go to Europe. One year ago they raised kick ERR capital for a product development.Now they are searching 1 million ERR capital which will be used for marketing and expansion operations. Most investors provide capital for start-ups with well-crafted strategies and business plan. Unfortunately Coddle doesn't have a strategy and doesn't know what factors determine growth of a start-up. Determination of a growth strategy became an important matter which will help to distribute last capital, raise new one and show direction for a company. Bachelor thesis purpose Research problem: how start-up companies should grow in a client base and eased capital.Aim of the thesis: To investigate what determines successful growth of a start-up company in areas of clients base and capital raised. Objectives of the thesis: Analyze internal and external environment of a Coddle start-up Conduct an help to craft a strategy, raise capital and distribute c urrent capital Research methods: Qualitative research using semi formal interviews with industry experts. Secondary data analysis and literature review. Practical value of the thesis: Start-ups with well-crafted strategies manage to grow and raise capital. Coddle has a shortage of capital and no strategy.This thesis will help them to set a right direction for a company, understand focus elements which enables growth and raise capital. Logical sequence of the thesis: 1 . Situational analysis. Internal and external analysis with a secondary data using PESTLE, 5 porter forces, market segmentation and attractiveness, competitors analysis, STOW. Defining crucial factors for company ‘s expansion 2. Qualitative research using semi-formal interviews. Interviewing people from successfully growing start-ups 3. Analysis primary and secondary data. Finding key factors which determine successful growth a start-up company 4.Making conclusions and providing recommendations for the company Si tuational analysis General information about company: I-JAB Coddle launched in 2012 is a start-up company which focus on providing neighborhood information for people worldwide. Concept is simple company has created a website which is like a search engine for addresses. Visitors enter a website, enter an address and click search. After few moments website presents neighborhood information linked to that address. It can be air pollution, crime rate, average real estate prices, near bus-stops and much more. In addition to that company has developed â€Å"Life-Quality† index which takes into account all available data sets and presents it in one numerical value. For example address 139-008 85 Drive, Queens, New York has a life quality index of 66/100. Data to the website is coming from open governmental data sources. Applicative. Com is in a beta phase and operates in cities: London, Berlin, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. Company has ambitious plans to be present in every city worldwide. In order to reach their ambition company has raised kick euros of capital. Most of that capital went for product development but at the moment website slowly darted building its own visitors base.Company is investing to both: product and marketing. Also they are searching for a second investment which would be somewhere around 1 million euros and used for rapid business growth. Product itself is in introduction product life cycle phase. Figure 1 Organizational structure Of the company At the moment company has zero revenues and they are living out of raised capital. Business model start-up has planned is BIB. There is no way to monotone in BBC since a website is absolutely free. For BIB there are two options: 1 . Sell advertising place in a website for real estate companies relied 2.Sell Life-Quality Index badge as API (application programming interface) integration for real estate websites or customized API with neighborhood data Coddle has worldwide Website was la unched in July and now it has approximately 6200 unique visitors. In upcoming year planned growth is 100 000 unique visitors. Coddle has 2 two BIB clients which have integrated Life-Quality badge to their websites. Badges were given for free in order to test a product and collect feedback. In the end of the year plan is to have at least 30 BIB partners which use our badge for free. In late 201 5 plan s to charge 70$ per month for badge integration.Table 1 Size of the market Chicago New York San Francisco BBC (website visitors) 2,35 million 7,31 million 0,73 million BIB 900 1 500 2400 List of small competitors: 1 . Bootlace. Com 2. Foundation. Com 3. Ravishes. Com The largest competitor is walkover. Com which is launched in 2007 and already for more than 7 years. They are operating in whole United States including cities where we are. They have more than 30,000 BIB clients and 1 , 200,000 site visitors each month. Concept of their business is similar to Coddle. They have a website Wi th address search engine.Visitors and check- p any address in USA and get neighborhood information plus walkabout index which is a summary of various place distances in one number (similar to Life-Quality index). BIB business model they are using is same as we planned – sell API integrations for real estate websites. Management of the company Company s structure is small, communication chain is short and they don't huge product portfolio. Therefore management style CEO uses it quite simple and unstructured. They have weekly meetings to check week ; s performance and set new goals for an upcoming week. Company plans work for no more than 1 month to the future.Sometimes CEO has unstructured individual meetings with employees to discuss on going assignments. Interns are being managed by a full time working person in a marketing field. Interns receive assignments from CEO and marketing person. Company does not use any theoretical methodology such as agile project management, lean or other start-up management techniques. Macro-environmental analysis Political factors. Open data movement which started in USA in 2007. Scientists Of LISA realized that government has collected a lot of various data of the country. Data is being collected simply monitoring governmental sector recesses.This type of a data is a great way to improve overall human knowledge base and help to understand word's complexity. Scientists have encouraged governments to open free data portals where data would be available for everyone (Joel Curing, 2014). In USA it is be data. Gob and even cities have their own data websites like New York mentioned before. EX. as well is establishing large open data infrastructures. Only because of this trend Coddle had a chance to develop such a product. Economic factors. Our BIB product is for real estate industry therefore if industry is growing that means hey have better incentives to innovate current situation.Real estate industry has 13% GAP of total US A GAP and they are steadily growing over the last five years. Even after real estate crisis in 2007 they kept growing. In addition to that key websites in USA real estate sector such as Zillion or Trivial invest several millions each year for neighborhood data. Data is being displayed in their websites and customers have better overview of a property. To compare with European real estate websites there is a big difference. Most of the largest websites in Europe do not display any neighborhood information ND keep simple search engine for a property.Secondly there is quite high competition in LISA real estate websites market and company are willing to invest decent amount of resources for better display of neighborhoods and local areas. Our website visitor has synergy points with real estate sector as well. Most of applicative. Com website visitors are people who are searching to buy/rent a new property. They are actively searching local area information. Growing real estate industry means more renting or purchasing and more people seeking information which our website provides. Social factors.Due to gig rates of obesity (Rulers, 2014) in USA we have new emerging trend – healthy life style. It is already for several years and growing even more. Demand for health friendly or environmental friendly products has increased. We can see examples like a Greek Yogurt since 2010 dominated USA Yogurt market. It is a Yogurt which is considered to be healthier choice. It has less fats and more protein. Other sectors specializing in healthy life style has grown. Technological factors. Current IT technology allows us easily link data from governmental websites to our which makes all start-up possible.Even annuity of a data is high but website can be well optimized and user friendly. Secondly to build a data crawlers (robot which scans websites and extracts data) has become much easier. One IT programmer can do it. Governmental institutions do not provide all data there fore company has to search for a new ways to collect it. Internet has decent amount of in depended catalogues like http://move. Yellowness. Com. Internet crawler can be cost effective solution for data extraction. Scrounging trend which started in 2006 has enabled companies to outsource difficult tasks for crowds.For example such platforms like Amazon Turks can be used for data testing or processing. Also using scrounging methods are great way to collect data. There are even successful companies which us mainly crowd sourced data (data which is voluntarily entered by a user) – Google maps, tomato GAPS maps (Stuart Dredge, 201 1). Environmental factors. In USA media is actively talking about pollution, crime and more topics related to neighborhood lifestyles. People have increased awareness that living environment is reflected in their quality of life. We have articles like â€Å"top 10 cities to live† or â€Å"best neighborhoods of New York†.At the current momen t people have higher interested in their living environment especially demographics young families. Legal factors. Coddle is registered in Lithuanian Republic therefore they are accountable to Lithuania law. So far company has no revenues and they don't need to pay income tax, but in the future they will face 15%. Since they are online business it is way much easier to overcome political barriers and change markets if it is needed. Also they don't need to pay value added tax because all product purchases are made online. Besides that company needs to pay tax for their employees which is 30% from their salaries.Risk analysis Cross-cultural risk. Since Americans are native English speakers there is a quit high risk of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Lithuanian can speak English but to communicate with American is harder. Also it is harder to compete from sales perspective. At the moment start-up tried to find BIB clients via Cold Calls, Linked, emails. It is a challenge to effec tively communicate a message for potential customer. Local company can do it much easier. Also American culture is a entrepreneurial and sales culture and most of business representatives are good in that (The Economist, 2009).Company s odds are getting lower when you need to complete with better business in better ecosystem. Commercial risks. Even the product is new in Europe but is not in ASSAI. They are 5 years ahead in usage of big data, especially in real estate industry. Market itself has some strong players such as walkover for more than 5 years. To outperform locals which already have a strong position makes a threat for Coddle strategic expansion. Financial risks. Every time when start-up sells a badge marginal costs are nearly to zero. Also online business doesn't have a lot of physical assets.USA currency s really Strong and has well establishes finance trading infrastructure with ERR. There are not so many major financial risks besides one – raising a capital. Sin ce Coddle is a start-up purely funded by a venture capital there is a huge risk of not raising a capital. Now company is trying to raise 1 million dollars and it is hard to predict what are the odds without trying. Country risk. No major country risks as well. USA is actively promoting online businesses and open data portals. Competitor analysis Ta able 2 Total Segment A – large real estate websites Medium real estate companies Segment BSegment C- Individual brokers Segment D accommodation websites Total market size (Units and/or dollars) 14 million dollars 20 (0%) 20,000 (10%) 180,00 (90%) 15 (0%) Share Now Sought in Three Years 25% Largest Competitor Today/Future Your Relative Share Walkover Coddle product is in pure introductory stage there they have nearly O market share. Also from the table we can judge that segment A and D might be not relevant but that is not true. Due to product specific these are main segments where company should focus. Reason is simple – eve ry API integration with a large website is linking their visitors to our website.

Group and organizational behavior Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Group and organizational behavior - Assignment Example are explicitly indicated as â€Å"simultaneously improving individual internally focused satisfaction and reducing work-unit absenteeism is the most promising approach to reducing individual absenteeism† (Diestel, Wegge, & Schmidt, 2014, p. 353). 5. The implications of these conclusions are: management should design factors in the job setting that would assist in reducing absenteeism; as an integration of both internally focused satisfaction (job conditions) and externally focused satisfaction factors (work unit). Future research could focus on increasing sample sizes or extending applications to other organizations from different cultural settings to validate consistency of the results. 4. The main conclusions of this article are: â€Å"perceived deep-level dissimilarity evokes perceived relationship conflict, which produces lower evaluations of subordinate performance, which, in turn, lead to higher levels of abusive supervision† (Tepper, Moss, & Duffy, 2011, p. 288). 5. The implications of these conclusions are the noted need to conduct further research on the subject in other organizational settings, particularly in health care organizations, to validate consistency of results. In addition, perceived levels of dissimilarity could not be structured as constant due to the personality differences of both, supervisors and subordinates, in different work settings. As such, future studies should rule out limitations, noted therein. Diestel, S., Wegge, J., & Schmidt, K. (2014). The Impact of Social Context on the Relationship Between Individual Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism: The Roles of Different Foci of Job Satisfaction and Work-Unit Absenteeism. Academy of Management Journal, 353-382. Tepper, B., Moss, S., & Duffy, M. (2011). Predictors of abusive supervision: Supervisor perceptions of deep-level dissimilarity, relationship conflict, and subordinate performance. Academy of Management Journal,

Situation analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Situation analysis - Essay Example Direct competitors include Seattle’s Best, Figaro and others while other fast food chains also poses as indirect competitors such as Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds and other fast food chains offering coffee as part of their menu. Competitors can either be direct or indirect competitors. Direct competitors are those companies who could offer the same product and services while indirect competitors are companies who could offer an alternative product or services (Mà ¶ller, 2006). Needless to say, Starbucks operate in a very highly competitive environment. Competition in the industry was aggravated by the recent financial crisis which changed the buying behaviour of Starbucks customers whose purchasing habits changed dramatically along with their choices of coffee products. Starbucks used to market its product as premium coffee commanding premium prices in the market. This strategy however changed with the changing behaviour of consumers in the aftermath of recent financial crisis. The â€Å"premium coffee† preference suddenly became less a priority and convenience and affordability moved to the forefront. The â€Å"prestige orientation† of Starbucks is no longer applicable in the changing behaviour of its customers. This trend continues and is now the reality of the market. Demand however is not seen to diminish. Customers however are now price sensitive to the coffees they purchase. Economic environment determines the financial capacity of its market and business has to adjust correspondingly for it to survive. In the case of Starbucks, economic environment made Starbucks reconsider its position in the market when the financial crisis hit in 2008-2010 that companies were compelled to adapt to the new market realities to stay afloat as a business (Miron, 2013). The main strength of Starbucks is its brand that commands confidence in

Qualitative individual Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Qualitative individual - Essay Example Bullying in health care involves all members of the medical fraternity such as health care workers, nurses, and doctors. Bullying in health care is more apparent compared to other problems such as sexual harassment face institutions. Bullying victims can help reduce the problem by reporting bullying incidences to the management (D. Jackson, 2008). According to (Gaffney, Donna, Anne, Judith & Wendy, 2012) in the article making things right: nurses' experiences with workplace bullying-a grounded theory, bullying is an internationally recognized problem that affect healthcare institutions. The article clearly states how the problem affects healthcare management. The article looks in to the effects of the bullying on patients, health care workers and the entire health care systems. These are the primary areas in nursing and healthcare. Addressing bullying in these, healthcare areas demonstrate that indeed bullying play a crucial role in prevention of effective and efficient health care s ystems. The article explains what the suffering patients go through because of bullying of nurses. Bullied nurses do not have the energy to serve patients with compassion and love (Monks, el et, 2009). The affected nurses loose esteem and there are a high probability for them to make mistakes as they carry out their duties. In some cases, the affected health care workers may feel isolated, get depressed and develop in drug substance additions such as alcohol. The primary objective of the research outline in the article was to understand the complexity of bullying in healthcare institutions. The article highlights the consequences of bullying as one of the outcomes of the research undertaken. The research question stated is extensive enough to qualify for a qualitative research. The main objective of a qualitative research is to bring a variety of data extracted from an array of sources using different methods. Qualitative research employs real world settings in data collection. The study design was consistent with qualitative research approach. The study employed qualitative constructivist grounded approach with the use of respondent’s individual experiences. Both online and offline means were some of the methods respondents used to give their experiences. Guided questions helped the researcher pick the bullying social realities. Quite often researchers engage their values and experiences biasing the research outcome. The researchers laid precautions to prevent researchers from biasing the research. Qualitative research does not use experimental approach since its primary goal is to capture a thorough comprehension of the concerned phenomenon. The subjects used in the research covered by the article â€Å"Making things Right† consistently comply with qualitative research methodology. The objective of the research is to get an in-depth knowledge and understanding of bullying in healthcare institutions. The setting in this research engages anonymou s respondents to give their own experiences inform of a narrative of 5 to 780 words. In qualitative research, data collection involves a number of methods. This particular research required unstructured data. The use of a web link to conduct electronic survey in the internet provided an ideal means for conducting data collection. The validity and the integrity of the data use in the research are crucial to ensure correctness of the research

Discovery and Meaningful Learning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Discovery and Meaningful Learning - Essay Example The sessions of discovery learning incorporate three key ideas including problem solving, learner management, integrating and connecting (Harari & Legge, 2000, p. 20). Problem solving motivates learners to come up with solutions by generalizing knowledge and pull information together. Learner management allows participants, in small teams, or alone to learn at their own pace in their own ways. Integrating and connecting encourage new knowledge integration into the existing knowledge base of the learner, which helps in connecting to the real world. Meaningful Learning According to Harari and Legge (2000), meaningful learning means that learned knowledge, for instance, a fact becomes fully understood by a person and the person knows how the fact relates to the stored facts in the brain. It is expedient to contrast meaningful learning and rote learning, which is much less desirable, for us to understand the concept. Rote learning involves memorizing something with no full understanding, and one does not know how the relationship between the new information and the stored knowledge. For instance, let us say we learn five facts in a course during a term or a semester through rote learning. The five facts learned have a relationship in real life, but they are stored in memory as separate items. The brain stores the facts as distinct unrelated information that can be recalled individually when a student learns them through rote learning. When the student recalls one of the five facts, he, or she does not recall the other four facts at that moment. This means that when the student thinks of fact A, the thought does not lead him/her to think of fact B-E. We can illustrate this as follows. The facts learned seem to have no relationship between them at all, yet close examination reveals a relationship of the facts. Meaningful learning contrasts with rote learning in that what a student learns, even if they are different facts in a course, he/she can relate as the facts ha ve a relational manner in the storage memory. The brain stores the facts together since they have relationship (Harari & Legge, 2000, p. 37). When the student recalls one of the facts, he or she will also recall the other facts at the same time, or a short time afterwards. This means that recalling fact E, triggers the memory for the other facts, B and D, which in turn leads to the recalling of fact A and C. We refer to this phenomenon as spread of activation. This is what entails meaningful learning. A student who learns by meaningful learning can solve problems in an easier way than the one who learns by rote learning. Thus, we find the value of meaningful learning; a way of learning that relates facts helping one to solve problems related rather than treating problems differently, which have a relationship. The figure below shows how meaningful learning happens. Discovery learning makes sure that the brains of the learners become engaged during all learning times. Thus, this lear ning method, although it accelerates the process of education, it leads to higher retention levels than traditional approaches of learning. There are certain benefits of discovery learning including condensed training

Organisational Behaviour Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Organisational Behaviour - Assignment Example Overview Of The OrganiZation This company came into the financial arena in the year of 1983. The company is an employee owned investment and, as mentioned earlier, it specializes in mergers and acquisitions in the financial service sector. The company is headquartered in the city of New York, which is the financial hub of the country. Berkshire capital is considered by experts in the industry to be the leading experts in the areas of wealth management, money management, alternate investment, and real estate brokerage (Berkshire Capital a). Due to its vast experience in this area, clients trust the company’s advice in this domain. Clients trust the company to provide conflict-free advice to them, which would help them to maximize their corporate objectives. It is this trust from clients that motivates the people in Berkshire capital to undertake successful transactions for their clients (Berkshire Capital b). The service portfolio of the company includes the following services: sales and divestures, acquisitions, valuations and fairness opinions and strategic advisory (Berkshire Capital c). The fundamental focus of the company is on maximising the corporate goals of their clients through their objective opinions and recommendations. By doing this, the company hopes to build long term relationships with their clients. Organisational Structure of Berkshire Capital: The company is basically having a flat Organisational structure to govern its operations. The company’s top management consists of 13 well experienced and well seasoned partners, who are in turn supported by 29 domain experts or professionals. The domain experts provide the partners with their insight about the company’s underlying projects, which is used by senior partners to deliberate over. In this way, the company amalgamates experience with insight to come up with the highest quality of services (Berkshire Capital a). As the company is operating in a services industry, therefor e, it is very cautious about nurturing a strong pool of employees, so that its services are of the highest possible quality. The flat structure prevalent in the Organization ensures that two-way communication between experts and partners is facilitated. This ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to handling the intricacies of the project. The structure that is currently working in the Organisation is the reflection of the fact that the management believes in a democratic and participative management style. The Organisational philosophy of governance is extremely efficient because it is extremely appropriate for companies operating in the services industry. Not only is the Organizational structure supportive and democratic but also the company’s management (partners) is also helpful. Since the management believes that their fundamental role is to impart their experience onto the second tier employees, therefore, this philosophy act as a guiding hand for exper ts who are new in the company (Robbins & Sanghi, 2006). Organisational Goals Berkshire capital can be classified as an employee and customer driven company. This company, by employing the talent of its employees, aims to satisfy the needs of its clients. The company considers its employees as an integral part of its business model and therefore employs all

Describe the main theoretical models of child abuse Essay Example for Free

Describe the main theoretical models of child abuse Essay Medical model, sociological model, psychological model, feminist model and contextual model are all theories relating to abuse. Although there are many different types of child abuse and many different reasons why it may occur, most cases have been wilted down to fit into one of the five main theories named above.  Medical mode is when the reason for abused is classed as a disease or an illness. Kempe and Kempe were the inspiration for this theory when they described it as battered child syndrome which was linked to Bowlbys theory on attachment. Bowlby came to the conclusion that children who failed to form this bond with their mother in the first three years of the childs life would have problems in later life bonding with people and trusting people. He also described a child with a lack of bonding to be an affectionless psychopath, which he described to be someone who shows lack of guilt when done something wrong has difficulties showing emotion to things around them or someone with behaviour problems. Another affect of not having an attachment in this critical period as it was also known in Bowlbys eyes was development retardation which meant the child may grow up with learning difficulties or slower intellectual skills. So if the main caregiver failed to have a strong bond when they were young then they may find it difficult to form a bond with the child. It is a vicious cycle that goes round and round. This type of abuse is shown in the case study in some ways. This is because the mother of the children had failed to form a bond with her mother, and there for she is struggling to form a bond with her children. Will these children grow up failing to form a bond or a strong relationship with their children because of this? Bowlby would have described Kerry, the mother as an affectionless psychopath. Sociological model is all about the environment that the child is being brought up in and around. Areas of social deprivation are often linked with abuse which has been proven in some research that has been carried out. Children need to be safe and grow up in healthy environments for them to get a good start in life and grow up healthy. Some people react to how they were treated when they were growing up. In other words if a child is abused or neglected then there is a higher chance that when they grow up they will forward this behaviour on to the children in their care. This is because this is what they are used to and they may think that it is normal was to treat children if they have seen no different. Another reason may be they feel that they have to suffer through it all and so should their children. It is not always this case however, some abused children grown up with the determination to treat the children with the love and kindness that they never received themselves. The case study states that the children are living in a high rise block of flats with faulty wiring, damp, and a lack of hygiene. The children are constantly around alcohol, drugs and known criminals. This is definitely not an appropriate environment for the children to be around and this is why I feel it fits in to this area of abuse.  Psychological model is based around the family and its relationship status. It involves one particular member of the family being scapegoated by the rest of the family and getting the blame for all the problems that arise in the family. This type of abuse can be linked with the case study because the older child Katie gets blamed for a lot of the things that go wrong in the flat especially linked with her brother. Her brother is only a baby and if he cries then Katie gets in to trouble. She is given the responsibility to take care of the baby even though she is only 3 years old herself.  The theory described as the feminist model is about the different sexes and the power and force in which the male figure has. This theory links mainly with sexual abuse.