Week 15: Venture Concept No. 2

Venture Concept No. 2

1) My Venture Concept:

Clear Vote

Opportunity: Potential customers with unmet needs.

“Voting is arguably the most important civic opportunity given to citizens in the United Stated.” So then why is everyone not voting? Out of the whole eligible voting population in America, only 64% of citizens actually voted. With this time, specifically 2016, election time, candidates for the next presidency are flooding the media and our daily lives. But how many of us actually keep up with politics and the government that directly affects us? The government, media, friends, family and pop culture, and the Internet have misled voters throughout American history. People have a wide access to lots of information but even this has caused confusion and biased views on politics, bloggers and others like them give people personal views which may seem to be unbiased but is actually just an individual’s interpretation of certain political issues. C-SPAN is the only unbiased political medium, but lets be real. What young person actually is down to watch full, uncut speeches or addresses? Clear Vote plans to fix all these issues.

            Clear Vote’s ultimate goal is to improve the population’s general political awareness in an unbiased way. This app will mainly focus on the youth, primarily college students, while still having a focus on the broader view of any American citizen including older people. The fact that young people are voting does not mean they know exactly what they are voting for. 45% of the young adults (ages 18-24) voted during the 2012 presidential election (U.S. Census Bureau); however it was unlikely they made a fair-minded, well-informed decision. Media, school, family, peers, and misconceptions all lead to confusion and misunderstanding in voting. These factors influence the voter’s perception of the candidate they choose to elect. So even out of the 45% of the youth that voted, not all of them knew whom exactly they were voting for due to presumptions and a lack of accurate information. In addition, 42.2% of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 did not even bother registering to vote because they were “not interested in the election / not involved in politics” (U.S. Census Bureau). Aside from the youth, new voters (such as new citizens), uneducated people, the uninformed electorate, and uninterested people would all benefit. The app’s audience is directly in the United States of America, and aiming towards the younger and more uninformed population, focusing on the 2016 presidential election.

Innovation: What is Clear Vote?

Clear Vote provides a mobile device application that focuses on candidates and their respective issue. It provides users a way to make voting easier and more specific to an individual’s values and beliefs. The application is a way to vote in an unbiased manner, it takes away the face from the candidates and the prejudice they bring with it. It will focus on more truthful, factual information on politics, educating the user with straightforward and easy to use information. The app is a user-friendly interface filled with info on candidates, upcoming elections, and helpful information based on the geography. The main feature is a quiz that once taken it matches the user up with a candidate that correlates with the users values and opinions on certain issues. Many of these questions will be based on national, well-known issues such as abortion, immigration policies, gun control, reliance on foreign oil, as well as foreign policy in general. The quiz will then provide the user with a candidate related to their voting area and mirrors the user’s values.

The app will allow for people to know exactly whom they are voting for. It will provide facts for users to do research on certain candidates concerning who they support, various companies they have ties with, their background as well as other candidates they are allied with this will in turn lead to more overall satisfaction with the users matched candidate during their term. The user will have an option to put in their geographical information so the quiz can generate fairly framed questions based on their location, addressing issues more related to their community. We are joining the political media industry, an industry that is lacking heavily in unbiased truthful information on politics and candidates. Clear vote will revolutionize American political media, as we will become the news source that the American people have wanted.

Venture Concept: How will Clear Vote fix America?

            Companies that will compete with Clear Vote include EZ Politics, the mainstream media, specifically FOX News and CNN, and CSPAN. EZ Politics is an existing app that claims to deliver “unbiased politics” as well, but they do so with a more historical outlook. EZ Politics also charges upfront just to download their app for an information only program whereas we offer an overall free interactive service. Fox News and CNN are major competitors as well since they are big name news networks that are well accepted by constituents. However, they lack in the ability to be unbiased because of political support. These two news sources are heavily polarized with a specific party, framing the news they deliver to satisfy their viewers that generally think in that certain way (confirmation bias). Our last and perhaps biggest competitor is CSPAN; not only do they have the name, they have a large reputation for truthful, honest politics and claims to deliver “unedited” proceedings of the House and Senate; but, even CSPAN lacks the personal aspect that clear Vote provides.

            So why download Clear Vote? People are sick and tired of misleading politics and are concerned with what the government is doing but do not always understand or trust what they hear from national news stations. Citizens crave the truth; no one wants to be ignorant of what is happening around them. Our application remedies these issues. By allowing users to take a quiz that matches them up with a candidate that correlates with the users values and opinions on certain issues, an overall satisfaction will be achieved; revolutionizing how political news is conveyed. 

2) Summary of Feedback:

The feedback I received for my venture concept idea Clear Vote was actually very positive. Respondents praised the fact that my idea was being pursued around the perfect time, with election season coming up for the next President of the United States. People also said that the idea would also help small scale elections which was great and more importantly, educate the people more to allow them to make the right decision. One of the comments I got was: "This is a great idea that could be a very successful application to many users across the country. Rarely do people actually go vote and your app would raise awareness to the importance of voting because it is a good right to have. I also like the fact of the quiz to see what candidate would fit each individual." Unfortunately none of my feedback was negative or constructive which is bad because I know no single idea is perfect. However, I do know that some of the things I wanted to implement like voter registration would be very difficult and I would need to make some revisions or changes on that part. 

3) How I changed my venture concept:

After reading the comments, even though they were primarily positive, I made a few changes to my venture concept where I thought needed revision. The main change I made was eliminating the voting registration via the application because as some people pointed out, several issues can arise through that. I'm glad to see my venture concept a lot better now.