Assignment #1

Your Business, Your Purpose

Operational expenses for any business can be a potential barrier for many start-up companies
attempting to immerse themselves in the increasingly competitive market seen today. However, if I
were given the gift of being able to operate for two years despite any revenue I would love to create a
start-up that focused on providing educational services for all students, elementary through post-
secondary, which allowed the ability to take any class they wanted for credit online which would then be
transferable across all major schools and Universities.

As Dr. Freeman stated, “Business is about purpose and creating value together” (Tedx, 2014).
While this may not seem like a novel idea, my goal with my start-up would be to provide the academic
resources to students that the current methods of delivery lack. My values of fairness, equity, and
seeking truth are all represented in my start-up as I wish create something that allows everyone equal
access to knowledge regardless of their location, socioeconomic status, or any other commitment that
may prevent them from experiencing a traditional on location experience of school or University.

These previously mentioned values drive me to operate my business as I recognize that I’m
privileged enough to be able to afford an education as a Canadian citizen while many others don’t have
this luxury. I can see many of my classmates, in this course as well as many others I have taken, are not
from this country and often come here just for the opportunity to obtain a degree. During this pursuit,
many of these students take on high levels of debt and make even more sacrifices and stress. Much of
the traditional “learning” can be done online and in turn save students money in traveling to campus,
purchasing physical textbooks, staying in dorms and local housing, and most importantly time. As I have
seen from taking classes during the pandemic, an asynchronous option to experience lectures can be
effective and save students the stress of in person classes. More importantly, a single lecture can by
benefited by thousands of potential students that would otherwise be unable to attend that specific
class. The prospect of having students all across the globe being able to have access to education
privileged people already experience is what would be a major driving factor for me.

Since the funds used for operational costs are being derived from raising money, one of the
major stakeholders would be those individuals that gave the money. Many start-up companies fundraise
through crowdsourcing (e.g Kickstarter) or use the traditional methods of taking a loan from the bank.
For this case I would probably go to a bank and negotiate an amount to cover the initial costs of the
start-up. The stakeholders of this project, as mentioned in the textbook (Business Faculty from Ontario
Colleges, 2018) would include, myself and my employees, the students who use the platform, the
teachers who contribute to the platform, the various liaisons of the educational institutions I intend to
collaborate with, and the bank from which I took out a loan to fund my start-up. These are the
stakeholders that I would need to consider since they are all individuals and organizations that have a
vested interest in my company as they will be primarily affected by the success or failure of it.
 References

Business Faculty from Ontario Colleges and eCampusOntario Program Managers. (2018).
Fundamentals of Business: Canadian Edition [E-book]. eCampusOntario.
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/businessfuncdn/

Tedx Talks. (2014, January 25). Business is about purpose: R. Edward Freeman at
TEDxCharlottesville 2013 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=7dugfwJthBY