We will not succeed if we merely rely on our own team members and stick to our initial ideas. Therefore, we seek advices from experienced parties or individual. Our elevator pitch was sent to Mr. Wong Yu Vee from MoneyTree and feedbacks were given which we thought was really beneficial. Mr. Wong Yu Vee is a very knowledgeable and experienced person in the business area. The advices given were valuable as it kept us thinking on ways to expand our initial ideas. He commented that our business has too little revenue streams which will be very risky because we rely heavily on collecting advertising fees. The first thing that goes on our mind was that we need to diversify our business. Another problem he pointed out to us was the issue regarding the barriers to entry of our business. It was clear that we do not have one, but with his advice we got inspiration on how to structure the barriers for our business plan.

Besides that, we thought that having a mentor which will provide beneficial advice to us will be good for our business plan. So, we approached one of our finance lecturer, Mr. Kenneth that is currently lecturing in Taylor’s University College. We believe that he has the competences to provide us valuable advices. As a lecturer, he does not limit himself solely on teaching but also involved himself in the banking sector. This is where he gained a lot of experience and thus excels in the sector of finance, marketing and investing. Along these years, he found passion in educating younger generation in tertiary institution. He is currently teaching a few degree programs across several institutions.

He was rather impressed when we told him that we were participating in the Maybank MoneyTree YES Challenge 2. Plus, it was our own will to join this competition. He saw how determined we were towards this competition thus agreed to be our mentor and provide some advices to us. However, he told us that all he can do is to guide us through and we will need to figure the rest of the things out on ourselves. We agreed to this because if we were to rely on him, it defeats the purpose of joining the competition in the first place.

Since our business does not have a clear targeted market segment, he advised us to identify a ‘niche market’ if we want our business to succeed. A niche market is formed because individual from this market is usually ignored as their needs are not served by other businesses. If we are able to target them, the chances of our business being successful will be higher.

Judging from the point that our business is easy to be imitated, Mr. Kenneth asked us to search for more competitive advantages. Our business should create some sort of ‘branding’ to block competitors from copying. Since our business offers convenience to users, he advised us is to think of more ideas that will offer ‘convenience’ to the users. As a result, it will drive more traffic to our website.

Based on the advices given, we reevaluated our business plan. We found out that our website only brings convenience to people who like shopping. This market however has already existed due to the fact that many businesses have been targeting it from the beginning. In order to tackle this, we came out with an idea to target the people who shops irregularly as well. Our business will also offer online delivery services where we will charge customers delivery fees. This will then increase the income stream of our business. We were inspired by what was told by Mr. Wong Yu Vee and Mr. Kenneth. We believed that by providing more conveniences, it adds value to the whole idea and also to the revenue income stream.

After all the discussion, we moved on to write our executive summary. We showed it to our mentor once we have completed it. His comment on our executive summary was lack of structure. He also gave us some ideas to drive more traffic to our website. Lastly, he encouraged us and told us to put in more effort because he thinks that Maybank MoneyTree YES Challenge 2 is a very good opportunity to learn practical business experience.

Besides consulting Mr. Kenneth, we also seek advices from an IT expert. Apparently, he has his own business in the IT field. He showed us a few ways to improve the navigation of the website so that it will be more user-friendly. Since the core objective of our business is to offer convenience to users, he said that it will be better for us to offer after sales services such as online warranty records. From there, we learnt to see in a long run perspective rather than thinking how to earn instant profit.

After the confirmation and encouragement from these people, we now feel more confident in our plan. We cherish deeply for the advices given by Mr. Wong Yu Vee, Mr. Kenneth and Mr. Boon Siong. We will continue developing our business plan and will also conduct market surveys in shopping malls. The results from surveys are crucial to us as it will more information on how we can change our business plan. We take this as a challenge and also to test how far can we push ourselves.