23A – Your Venture’s Unfair Advantage

1. Software Experience-
1. Valuable: Highly Valuable as it makes many tasks easier to do. 
2. Rare: This is not the easiest to come by as it can take many years of experience to be a capable software engineer. 
3. Inimitable: With enough schooling this is easy to imitate. 
4. Non-Substitutable: Needed for this product as something needs to be programmed to correctly control the temperature. 
2. Mechanical Engineering Relations-
1. Valuable: Highly Valuable as it is important for the product as a whole. 
2. Rare: Similarly to the previous one, it's not the easiest thing to come by because of the needed schooling. 
3. Inimitable: This is imitable as long as someone goes to school.  
4. Non-Substitutable: Needed for this product as something needs to contain the technology that is being used to control the temperature. 
3. Low Cost for a Quality Product-
1. Valuable: Somewhat valuable as it will not pose a problem for people who prefer spending on inexpensive items. 
2. Rare: Not rare at all as there are always cheap products that attempt to do similar things. 
3. Inimitable: This is imitable with the right planning.   
4. Non-Substitutable: Hard to substitute something at a low price. 
4. Personal Beach experience-
1. Valuable: Valuable as I have experience in products that may or may not be affected by the beach environment. 
2. Rare: Not rare as there are many people who have beach experience. 
3. Inimitable: This is imitable with the right planning.   
4. Non-Substitutable: This kind of experience is hard to substitute. 
5. Low Cost in producing the Product-
1. Valuable: Valuable as I have experience in products that may or may not be affected by the beach environment. 
2. Rare: Not rare as there are many people who have beach experience. 
3. Inimitable: This is imitable with the right planning.   
4. Non-Substitutable: This kind of experience is hard to substitute. 
6. Transportability- 
1. Valuable: Somewhat valuable as it can allow the product to be used in several locations but it also may limit how often it can be used. 
2. Rare: Rare as there are very few items that can do this and be small. 
3. Inimitable: Imitable with correct planning. 
4. Non-Substitutable: The size of the product cannot really be substitutable.  
7. Solid Starting Fund- 
1. Valuable: Important as there are several things that need to be invested in and mass produced. 
2. Rare: Not super rare but not super common either. 
3. Inimitable: With enough time this can be done as well. 
4. Non-Substitutable: Loans. 
8. Optimal Location- 
1. Valuable: As my product is targeting beach goers this is really valuable. 
2. Rare: Not as Rare as there are several locations for beach goers. 
3. Inimitable: Yes as long as a beach is near. 
4. Non-Substitutable: Somewhat substitutable as it can target other similar locations.
9. Strong Instagram and Facebook Presence- 
1. Valuable: This is really important as people who are going to the beach will constantly be updating their social media. 
2. Rare: Not as rare.
3. Inimitable: Yes 
4. Non-Substitutable: Not really, socially media is the best in outreaching to large groups of people. 
10. Good Customer Service- 
1. Valuable: Somewhat important as my device is going to be cheap so people may choose to just purchase the same product again after a few months, but needs to be present for people who got broken products at the very . 
2. Rare: No
3. Inimitable: Yes 
4. Non-Substitutable: No Customer service cannot really be replaced. 

After looking through the list, I have decided that the most important trait would have to be the experience in software that comes with my company. This can be a very costly thing as it takes a lot of schooling to do this and is really important to the product that is being made. A lot of the other 9 items can be imitated or are not as expensive.