BES3500 Business Capstone (Off Campus) - GoBoat Perth Crowdfunding - Business Strategy Assessment Answers

Business Strategy Assignment

The Assessment

This assessment is an essential assessment in BES3500 Off Campus contributing 50% to your total Unit mark.

There are two options, 1 being a group project on crowdfunding, and second option is to participate in Indigenous Mentoring Program as a mentor. This paper provides instructions for Option 1: Crowdfunding.

The task is for students, working in groups of 4, putting into practice a relatively new and innovative method of crowdfunding to attract funding.

Assessment Objectives:

• To examine how innovative business initiative such as Crowd Funding can be used for problem?solving in a business context
• To judge student’s ability to develop, implement and execute a business strategy

The Task

Your task is to develop, implement and execute a crowdfunding strategy for a real-life business GoBoat Perth, a start-up business looking to establish and grow as a sustainable business in Perth.

Working as a group, you are to produce a 2500 word report, addressing the following:

• Concept of crowdfunding (CF) : history; origins; benefits
• Cite relevant recent examples to back up the applicability of this method for GoBoat Perth
• Best practice crowdfunding examples for start-ups or similar business to GoBoat Perth
• Description of your real-life client organisation (you will need to talk to the client and get an agreement)
• Explain why CF would be useful for specially for your client (i.e. GoBoat Perth)
• Strategy to implement CF into GoBoat Perth’s business overall strategic plan
• Action Plan to describe the internal resources needed-Who, When, Why, How, time and inc. getting agreement on the internal resources
• How much time is needed and estimate the resources and costs for the client using a proposal
• SWOT or similar assessment on your CF strategy. Explain why you’ve chosen your particular analysis tool
• The amount of funds you aim to raise for GoBoat Perth through CF, the amount of time the CF activity will go for on your chosen CF platform
• Recommendations and conclusions
• Reflection: after executing your strategy

  • What did you discover? A constructive analysis is needed.
  • Did you raise the amount required? Was it appropriate amount/time?
  • What would you do differently next time in your project planning and executing CF?
  • Was this an appropriate strategy? Why? Why not? Would you recommend this as a viable funding model?

1. Time and resources required with the cost:

The time required to build GoBoat Perth will be approximately from 8 months to one year. Firstly the blue print of the boat is made and then the resources required are noted down. After this step the human resource required to build the boat is estimated. To make a detailed plan along with the flow charts, blue prints and the resources and labour required it requires around 3 months. Once the detailed document is ready building and finishing is carried out for the boat.

The resources used are Kebony wood is used in the boats for tables and building. The cutting edge solar panel is used to charge the batteries in the boat and also to light the buildings in the boat. Exide batteries are used in the boat. Recycled plastic bottles are used in the body of the boat to be built. Other items such as paddles, motors are also used.

2. The amount of funds aimed to rise for GoBoat Perth through CF and time duration for CF:

Crowd funding or CF is the small number of funds raised through large number of people especially through internet. GoBoat aims to raise a fund of 8,000 AUD through crowd funding. Crowd funding is done through online means even social media also is used as a mean to raise the funds. This is very helpful for small entrepreneurs when getting the funds is a difficult job for them. Firstly a proper platform needs to be chosen for crowd funding. This can be done by reviewing various website available for crowd funding which best suits our organisation. Kickstarter is a crowd funding website from which a fund amounting 5,000 AUD can be accepted. Circle up is another site where in a fund of 3000 AUD can be collected for which a portion of it will be taken by the investment bankers. Social medias can be targeted and a funding of 2000 AUD can be collected through it. Crowd funding campaign should be long enough so that we get the targeted audience. But not too long which will cause people to lose interest. Typically to reach the targeted people and the targeted amount for crowd funding it will require from 30 days to 50 days.