20A – Growing Your Social Capital

I decided to approach this assignment a little differently. My idea is based on an industry that operates mainly online. Therefore, I do not personally know anyone who is an expert that could offer wise advice. For this reason, I have decided that reaching out to three companies that most closely resemble my venture’s idea through their customer service e-mails is the best way to go.

I hope that by doing this, I can get some answers about their company’s success in a more personal way, rather than using search engines to find generic information online.

1)     The first company to reach out to is called “Ollie,” a relatively young fresh dog food company based in New York. They started out as a vision backed by Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm that along with a handful other partners were able to raise over $12 million to create Ollie. Ollie can be considered a domain expert in my industry. They are a successful and young company and they have extensive knowledge about providing fresh food to consumers.

I feed my dog Ollie and switching him to their food has created immense improvement in his health and eating habits. Knowing that Ollie is a young company and having the firsthand experience to know that their food is great in quality, I chose Ollie as a domain expert. The return expectation is knowledge from within the company that may be useful for my venture, and I think including them in my network will allow me access to the technical knowledge to provide better products and attempt a similar business model that works in the industry like it did for Ollie.

2)     The second company to reach out to is Purina because they are one of the dry food companies that maintain a large part of the market share in my industry. I was able to find information on the advertising techniques they use to maintain significant market share: https://www.purina.com/about-our-ads.

My exchange with Purina would again be through the e-mails available online which will allow me to contact a real person from their company. I think having the knowledge to reach potential consumers is greatly important when starting a venture, and this is knowledge that Purina is sure to have.

3)     Something I noticed from some of the competitors in the fresh dog food industry is that most of them promise to provide USDA approved meals. For this reason, one of the most important suppliers in my industry are meat suppliers of USDA approved meats. For this reason, the last company on my list is JBS, one of the largest meat providers in the United States, offering a large selection of quality meats specific to certain needs.

Finding the correct meat supplier is very important to my venture, so I hope that JBS will offer insights into what is most important to look for when looking for the right supplier and what the best deals are.

I believe this activity is great at being very targeted and specific. It reminds us that sometimes quality is better than quantity. Knowing many people in the industry can be great but knowing just three people that have so much knowledge and expertise can mean a huge difference.