Opportunity assessment for 'YPlan' Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Opportunity assessment for YPlan - Essay ExampleThere is a business opportunity in the last minute seat business as the theatre industry has an annual balance of 30% unsold seats, the picture show industry has 80% unsold seats while the live euphony industry has a balance of 40% unsold seats. The company YPlan is a recent app company founded in 2012 by Rytis Vitkauskas and Viktoras Jucikas. YPlan specializes in last minute event discovery which involves alerting users of available tickets for live events happening within the next 24 hours. The events it sells include wine tasting sessions, music gigs, theatre or silent discos with all featured events handpicked by the companys editors. The YPlan is based in London, UK, and serves the iPhone market in the city. The company was initially based in East Londons TechHub starting with two employees but grew quickly recruiting 17 employees in the march and shifted its base to Kings Cross. The company plans to expand internationally to other markets where the iPhone penetration is huge like the US and Japan. YPlan seeks to exploit a gap in the entertainment market by being the first app company to provide an efficient means of purchasing last minute nights out tickets. The founders have make out in the software industry and have a long history of entrepreneurship. Rytis, for example, has previously worked at Summit Partners where he was responsible for software and technology investments. He contributed to the sourcing, execution and management of summit investments in Acturis and Avast software (Baron 2012). Challenges in the app business The companys services were only available in London as of Jan 2013, but it looks to expand its business to American cities. The app market is crowded and competitive it is hard for most entrepreneurs to break through. The popularity of apps changes quite often therefore, entrepreneurs have to be familiar(predicate) with the latest trends in the industry (Chell 2004). To impel a successful app entrepreneurs have to acquire the relevant technology appropriate to a particular platform. If the entrepreneur intends to launch the app on different platforms, then he/she packs to purchase a platform specific developer license for each platform. Platforms are in general mutually incompatible, with each having unique technical detailing and coding. The coding and testing stage requires the services of experienced app developers and software engineers. The app developer also needs sound designers, graphic designers and cloy developers, in addition to, an effective marketing and PR team. The company does not offer a filtering system to sort between different types of events like music gigs and theatre. Some competitors like Hotel tonight appeal to customers with discounted rates for their services while Yplan offers discounts for only some of the events (Chell 2004). Other competitors like Groupon use coupons to advertise various products including sales of tic kets to a wide range of events at highly discounted rates. This could impact on Yplans bottom-line as its services are restricted to subscriber-only app based marketing. Groupons customers need not own a smart phone in order to buy its products. Groupon has also negotiated lucrative deals with various American companies and this could be a overleap to Yplans strategy of entering the American market. For instance, Groupon have partnered with the MLB to sell tickets to its games. Opportunities and product differentiation