Building a Business for my Capstone Entrepreneurship Degree.

[mferrone]

Hey everyone. This is my first time posting on the Fastlane forum so I'm excited to make this one. I'm currently in University studying Entrepreneurship and my capstone course, Business Plan Development, is having us develop a business concept that we plan to pitch to investors at the end of the semester. The idea that I have started to roll with is as follows,

A management software and system for the affairs of fraternities and sororities. The software will house a CRM system for keeping track of active member information (contact info, age/class, class schedules, GPA, paid/unpaid member info, etc.). The chapters can also manage their finances through the software by piggybacking off of existing spreadsheet software (Excel or Google Sheets) via an API. In addition, here are some additional features that the software can incorporate into its system:

• Can store documents for the organization via the cloud
• Calendar and event planning capabilities
• Syncs to Apple/Google Calendar
• Communication channels for announcements
• Email/SMS blast capabilities OR communication channels (like discord of Slack)
• Customizable for Fraternity’s/Sorority's colors, universities, logo, and affiliations.

As a 21-year-old college student who has no experience in building a startup. I'm not sure what I should tweak within this idea as well as what to do next. I'm hoping to leverage the minds on this forum for some guidance on what my next steps are. Additionally, I would love to hear your feedback and the concerns you have with my idea. If it is feasible, I want to take this to market and build it beyond my capstone course. Thank you for reading this and I hope this can elicit some feedback!

 

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[Bounce Back]

Not to make an example out of you but to make an example out of this post:

To all those who as of late have been asking opinions on entrepreneurship degrees note this student didn't go to his professors for advice on coming up with a business concept but an entrepreneur forum.

That aside this seems pretty niche to me (not always a bad thing but you are talking maybe a couple 100 potential purchasers here - quick search says 1,500 or so Greek orgs and I imagine they are not all too big here but I really don't know maybe there is a market here). From a business perspective I wouldn't personally waste my time on that if this was for a real business from that point alone as the scale will be hard unless they are just begging for this software and there is no solution today.

Have you interviewed anyone who currently manages these things? Even if your software was great if they don't absolutely hurt right now from their current solutions to these problems then they most likely wouldn't buy it.

Update: Found Top 10 Sorority and Fraternity Management Software so perhaps I was too quick and there is a market - I was just guessing you'd of already done a search on it. So the question becomes what will you offer these don't?