1. How do they came up with the idea(s)?

2. What problem(s) do they faced?

3. Why did Rangnekar contacted Gupta? How do Rangnekar and Gupta known each others?

4. What is BenchPrep?

5. Do they develop the solution themselves? Should they develop the solution themselves? Why?

6. What are the first validation point for their idea?

7. Are timing very important for their idea? Why?

8. Is first mover advantage important for their idea?

9. After realizing that writing the practice questions is not scalable, what do they do?

10. Why partnership important to their idea?

11. Is the decision to quit his job and continue study a right one? Why?

12. What are the second validation point of their idea?

13. What are the current status of BenchPrep?

14. What are the lessons learned from this case?

15. How this case can help you?

n 2008, Ashish Rangnekar was working full time and trying to prepare for the GMAT exam. He did all the normal things in preparing for the GMAT, like buying the study books and taking the practice exams. Lugging the big study books around and trying to find time to take the practice exams was a frustrating experience. It seemed as though when he had the LEARNING OBJECTIVES books he didn't have time to study, and when he had time to study After studying this chapter you should be he didn't have the books. He thought, "There has to be a better way ready to: to manage this process." 1. Explain why it's important to start a new At the same time Rangnekar was preparing for the GMAT, the firm when its "window of opportunity" is iPhone came out, and Rangnekar was one of those people who open. waited in line to get one. He found himself spending a dispropor- 2. Explain the difference between an tionate amount of time messing with his phone-whether it was opportunity and an idea. 3. Describe the three general approaches checking e-mail, surfing the Web, or playing a game. Thinking entrepreneurs use to identify opportunities. about the GMAT and the iPhone, a thought occurred to Rangnekar. 4. Identify the four environmental trends If people could use their iPhones to study for the GMAT, they could that are most instrumental in creating solve two problems at the same time. First, they wouldn't have to business opportunities. carry the heavy study books around. And second, because people 5. List the personal characteristics that normally carry their phones with them, they could maximize their make some people better at recognizing business opportunities than others. study time by catching a few minutes of study between meetings and on similar occasions. 6. Identify the five steps in the creative process. Excited about the prospect, Rangnekar contacted a friend, 7. Describe the purpose of brainstorming Ujjwal Gupta, to discuss the idea. Gupta was a PhD student at and its use as an idea generator. Penn State University, and Rangnekar and Gupta had known each 8. Describe how to use library and Internet other since they were undergraduates in India. Both were fasci- research to generate new business ideas. nated by the idea. It merged a pain, the hassle of carrying around big study books to prepare for the GMAT, with a technology, the 9. Explain the purpose of maintaining an idea bank. iPhone, in a manner that could potentially improve the way people 10. Describe three steps for protecting ideas prepare for the GMAT. The obvious thing to do was to create an from being lost or stolen. iPhone app. Neither Rangnekar nor Gupta were programmers, so they didn't have the background to create an app themselves. Fortunately, they found an undergraduate at Penn State who was a great programmer and was interested in the project. By the end of 2008, they had the first version of their app. In the photo, Rangnekar is on the left and Gupta is on the right. Rangnekar kept his job, working for Capital One through most of 2009 but focused intently on the app. It was more than just a GMAT study guide and catalog of practice questions. The app could do many things, like compare a student's practice scores with others who were using the app and project a student's score on the GMAT based on his or her practice exams. Once available in the iTunes Store, the app immediately started being downloaded. Incredibly, in just two months after the app was launched, they had more than 1,000 customers in seven countries, all of whom had paid a one- time fee of $10 to download the app. This level of interest was validation for Rangnekar and Gupta that they were onto something. At that time, the majority of iPhone apps were either free or cost 99 cents. To have 1,000 people pay $10 a piece to download the app was evidence of the value of the product. One thing that really helped Rangnekar and Gupta, which was more a fortunate turn of fate than anything they planned, is that their timing was perfect. Their app came out just at the time when apps were becoming popular not too early and not too late. They were also the first GMAT prep app in the iTunes Store. The first group of practice questions was written by Rangnekar and Gupta, but they quickly learned that that method didn't scale. Their approach shifted to a model where their app, named BenchPrep, became a platform, and they then entered into partnerships with companies like McGraw-Hill to place their test prep guides on smartphones. Rangnekar quit his job and entered the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago in August 2009. Buoyed by BenchPrep's early success, Rangnekar was determined to make his business school experience as useful as possible, so he took classes, joined clubs, and attended conferences sponsored by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship to boost his entrepreneurship-related knowledge and network. In May 2010, BenchPrep's won the New Venture Challenge at the Booth School of Business, which was further validation of the company's potential as an ongoing business. BenchPrep has continued to mature and grow. The company now provides cross- platform apps to help students prepare for a number of standardized tests including the GMAT, GRE, SAT, LSAT, and MCAT. The functionality of the app has also expanded. For example, the app gives students progress reports to show where they are excelling and where performance needs to be improved. The app can also be synced across mobile, desktop, and Web platforms. So you can access the GMAT app, for example, on your iPhone, and access the same place you left off in the app on the Web when you get home. As of late 2010, BenchPrep's apps had been used by 75,000 people in 20 countries. Some apps cost upward of $30 to download. BenchPrep obtained Series A funding from Lightbank, the fund operated by Groupon cofounders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, in July 2010. The company now has about 15 apps available and another 15 in the pipeline, and around 10 employees. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of understanding the difference between ideas and opportunities. While ideas are interesting and can intrigue us as possibilities, not every idea is in fact the source of an opportunity for an entrepreneur to pursue. In addition to describing the differences between ideas and opportunities, this chapter also discusses approaches entrepreneurs use to spot opportunities as well as factors or conditions in the external environment that may result in opportunities. As