Growing My Social Capital

1) One person must be a domain expert in your industry.
The domain expert I found was Vegan Restaurant Finder. I was able to email this company, but couldn't arrange a time to talk on the phone so I continued emailing back and forth. This company is essentially what I want to implement in my app, but lacks the nutritional information on certain foods. Through email I was able to find out how they are able to make a profit and what they recommended me doing to improve my idea. I was told to incorporate a system that allows for consumers to recommend places that are relatively small that offer vegan friendly food. Essentially allowing  a sharing aspect using forms of social media.

2.) One person must be an expert on your market.
The expert on my market is The Vegetarian Resource Group. I originally had no idea where to look so I googled my market and found this group. I went ahead and emailed and was lucky enough to get a number of someone that worked there. The information they told me was pretty much what was already on their page, but they did tell me their initiative of educating on veganism and the issues related to health. 

3) One person must be an important supplier to your industry.
I contacted McDaniel Nutrition Therapy as a way to learn how my app can go about garnering information on food products. I simply contacted this company due to my knowledge of nutritionist in Missouri( used to live there). I was not able to reach the company via phone so I sent a email and heard back a couple days later. I was told plain and simple that in order to gain the information regarding certain foods is by looking at research done and incorporating that into determine whether or not a product is vegan. They also mentioned that now with all the technological advances that gaining information is accessible by many other sources. 
Finally: Reflect
This experience helped me learn a lot about what I need to go moving forward on my business venture. I was nervous at first to contact all these individual companies, but learned after talking to all my experts that I don't need to be nervous and that any questions I had they would discuss and help me better understand.