The market for searching for food online is exploding. According to one expert at Google, “there are over 1 billion restaurant searches on Google every month” (Kelso, 2020). To capture this market and ride the general digital trend of internet personalization (as evidenced by Google search results, ads, YouTube and social media algorithms, etc), we created Munch to be an algorithm meant to help people find food they’ll love. <br/>Munch offers the ability to search for food by restaurant or even as specific as a menu item (ex: search for the best Pad Thai). The best part? It is customized to your preferences based on a quiz you take when you open the app and from that point continuously learns from your behavior.<br/>This thesis documents the journey of the team who founded Munch, what progress we made and the reasoning behind our decisions, where this idea fits in a competitive marketplace, how much it could be worth, branding, and our recommendations for a successful app in the future.

Could you imagine a world without hot sauce? Unfortunately, hot sauce is a relatively new invention, and some people have had to experience and live without the wonders and flavors it provides. RAJAJE Sauce is a veteran-owned and family-operated start-up. RAJAJE Sauce originated in the heart of Mexico, known as Mexico City, where Javier and his family enjoy it with countless servings of tacos. His mother always dreamed of bringing this hot sauce to the market, but we weren’t sure how to go about it. There were so many questions. Was there a market for this hot sauce? Do other people like the hot sauce? Who would be our audience? How would we go about marketing this product, and how would the logistics of something like this work? Through extensive research, we found that there is plenty of room for the hot sauce industry to grow, giving RAJAJE Sauce plenty of opportunities to make a name for itself and become a household name with each new customer.

In the end, an increase in repurchases of company stock will also influence the rate of dividends to increase. This means, an investor should not necessarily worry about the dividends they receive, but rather to see if the company is making profit at a consistent rate and reinvesting into value-added activities. Through the major pillars of finance, technology, legal, and human resources, the budget for reinvestment can be optimized by investing into these respective categories with percentages that are mindful of the specific companies needs and functions. Any firm that chooses to ensure proven methods of growth will enact a combination of these four verticals. A larger emphasis on finance will branch out efficiency in the entire organization, as finance control everything from the toilet paper to the acquisitions the company is making. The more technology is used to reduce redundancy and inefficient or costly operations, the more capability the organization will have. IT, however, comes with its technical challenges; having a team on-hand or even outsourced, to solve the critical problems to help the business continue operation. Over-reliance into technology can be detrimental to a business as well if clear processes are not set about straight to counteract problems the business will face like IT ticketing systems or recovery and continuity support. Therefore, technology will require a larger chunk of attention as well.

The upcoming legal and HR investments a company will make will depend upon its current position and thus the restructuring will differ for every firm. Each company has its own flavour and style of work. In that regard, the required legal counsel will vary; different problems will require different solutions for risk control and management, which are often professionally advised by intelligent corporate counsel. This ability to hire efficient legal counsel would not arise in the first place if a firm were to give out dividends; the leftover profit would have gone towards the shareholders and not back into growing the equity of the business. Lastly, nothing is possible without the contribution of people, and their efforts. A quality that long-lasting, successful businesses have, is they are investing in their people and development. Paying salaries, insurances, bonuses, all requires extra capital that is needed to be set aside in order to grow human capital. Good people, better people. There are qualities for each role that need to be defined and a process for attracting talent needs to be invested in. This process can also include outsourcing to an external firm who specializes in these strategies. By retaining profits internally, the company is able to stretch its legs to have further reach upon the market they work in. Financially and statistically, dividends are likely to grow as well with the increase in equity due to the increase in security an investor feels with more cash reserve and liquidity within the company.

All in all, a company should not be pressured into giving out periodic payments in predetermined timeframes, in other words a dividend, to investors even when they are insisting. Rather, pitch and prove, a new method for reinvestment within the company that will raise the value of the company, through proven methods like the value chain model, to increase the equity in the company. By expanding the scope and capability, the company is allowing for a larger target market which will reap more benefits; none of it would be possible if it had continued to give out large percentages of capital to investors as dividends. Companies, and investors, should not be worried about dividends at all as a matter of fact; an increase in stock buyback, in other words reinvesting into the company, will increase the rate of dividends anyway, due to increased confidence and capital within the company.