6A- Identifying Opportunities in Economic and Regulatory Trends

1.     Regulatory change: As of January 1^st, 2020, Florida allowed documents to be notarized electronically. This matters a lot because it makes the entire process of getting important documents notarized. There's a huge opportunity for online notaries, or perhaps an app that allows you to get documents notarized cheaper, faster, and more conveniently notarized. I found this opportunity while reading the Miami Herald. Anyone who gets documents notarized (pretty much everyone at one point or another) with a phone or wifi connection can be a potential customer. This opportunity might be As of January 1^st, 2020, Florida allowed documents to be notarized electronically. This matters a lot because it makes the entire process of getting important documents notarized. There's a huge opportunity for online notaries, or perhaps an app that allows you to get documents notarized cheaper, faster, and more conveniently notarized. I found this opportunity while reading the Miami Herald. Anyone who gets documents notarized (pretty much everyone at one point or another) with a phone or wifi connection can be a potential customer. This opportunity might be harder to exploit, because I've no experience with apps, and I'm not a notary, and it’s a little too late. But this would’ve been better if I had the money to invest in it prior to it happening. I saw this opportunity because I recently had to get a document notarized, and it was such a pain. Making the process electronic would be worthwhile to me as a consumer.

2.    Regulatory change: Ban on nicotine/ vape products for individuals under 21. I found this opportunity back in December when I was reading the news. This opportunity might exist because of the recent influx in popularity over nicotine alternatives like Juul, which were recently outlawed for individuals under 21. Juul’s and similar products are extremely addictive, so there’s a market full of addicts that need a solution to their nicotine addiction. The customer is those 18-21 who previously used these products. I think this opportunity would be difficult to exploit, addiction is a tough issue to tackle, and an alternative to juuling that would be most financially accessible to me would be to convince people to quit their nicotine addiction- also no easy task.

I saw this opportunity because I know a lot of people who use these products before, and now they can no longer buy them. They’re very frustrated by this.

3.    An economic trend at the moment is college becoming more accessible, via a series of subprime student loans—which cannot be recollected upon like a car or home. Student loans are risky business, and a lot of people get into debt they can never pay off. In a few years. I suspect student loan defaults will be at an all-time high, as more unqualified students attempt college and try to finance it. There will be a demand for more affordable education. I realized this trend while reading an article from a business insider about the next big recession, where the author theorized subprime student loans in the US would be the bursting of the next bubble. The customer would likely be an individual with lower academic potential with a demand for education that’d make a difference in their career field. This task could be relatively easy or hard depending on the fix you make for it. If you want to create a course on entrepreneurship on Instagram and sell it online that’s an easier fix to the career problem than educational reform. There are multiple solutions. I saw this opportunity because I have a deep interest in college admissions, and realize now that I’m attending my fourth university that the barriers to entry for a lot of programs/schools are too low. This coupled with the article I read really made me see this as an issue.

4.    Another economic trend is the depletion of phosphate reserves. Phosphate is used to increase agricultural yields up to 5x. but it’s a resource that we cant reproduce. A huge portion of the US economy is based around agricultural exports, and if we can't continue to increase agricultural yields, many parts of the world will be lacking in food. I found this while reading an article on Quora, then I did more research on it. This opportunity may not exist now, but it’s going to be a huge problem in the future. The potential customer is a producer in the agriculture industry, but governments (especially that of the US) may be interested in a solution to increase agricultural yields. This opportunity may be difficult or easy, alternatives to foods may be a better solution than trying to solve the phosphate problem, if we can find a more efficient way to produce foods without this natural resource, we can maybe avert this crisis. I saw this opportunity because I’m majoring in economics, and see a lot of things as economic problems or issues with incentive structures. This problem seemed very comprehensible and I’m sure has an economic solution.