Guest Speaker - Jim Kastama

This Post was never written, since we did not have time in the quarter to hear form this speaker.

Dot.com to Dot.bomb

On Tuesday, March 8 Andrew Fry gave the class a presentation about what happened during the Dot.com to Dot.boom Era. Andrew explained that previous to the Technology bubble bursting there had been many and different kind of market bubbles, like the Tulip Bubble a long time ago, or housing market bubbles. 

In this presentation he used Dinosaurs to represent how the bubble came to be. The Dinosaurs were the big companies that thought they ruled the technology world because they were so big and their leadership was old and cocky. They used to think that the way they had always done business would continue to stay the same and that because they had stayed a float for quite a while that their business model worked.

Yet, one by one they perished. And the big hit that wiped most of them was when the World Wide Wave took speed and everyone started to go on the web services that would be free or lure the masses into trying new things that would be based on new business models. Indeed, only few of this dinosaurs survived and can still be found on the depths of the web such as Yahoo or AOL. 

One of the key points to take away from this presentation is that as people or companies age they need to continue doing their best to adapt to their ever evolving environment if they want to continue thriving in it. Otherwise new things and things that may seem weird or strange to them may take over for them. On the other hand, as opposed to the dinosaurs, we also have an option to just let go of those things and just enjoy the rest of our time on our own terms. 

In a short sentence, the main concept to remember is to be flexible and perceptive to changes that go around us so that we can continue to thrive and not perish. 

Guest Speaker - John Dimmer

John Dimmer

On Thursday, March 3 we had John dimmer come talk to our class. I found him to be very interesting as I wrote 8 pages, front and back, of notes of what he had to say to us. In general I found him very excited and eager to share with us what his experiences had been like and what he had learned throughout his journey as an entrepreneur in very specific areas. 

John graduated form Clover Park High School. He attended the University of Oregon, where he received a B.S. in Finance. He also played for their golf team during his first years in College. Soon after college he worked at Puget Sound Bank.

He knew from early on that he wanted to get jobs that would provide him with good experiences and opportunities so that one day he would be ready to start a business of his own.

In 1994 John and Andre Fry started Free Media Range, a web development firm in the Puget Sound area. In 1999, prior to the .com bubble burst, they sold the company to Luminant Worldwide Corp. And he retired on January of 2000. 

He said that after he was fully free from any connections to the company he had a lot of free time and wanted to spend it with friends playing golf but all of them were working on their regular jobs so he found himself bored many times. 

He decided to do something constructive with his time. He became an angel investor and soon was contacted by a friend to start a Honda dealer in the area. He mentioned that after about 11 years his and his partner's business heavily relied on the management experience of the manager of the Honda car dealer they had hired from early on. John says that in making a business successful "the key is in hiring the right people." He also says that "When you are running your company it is a 24/7 business."

John and his friend needed to find the "Golden Handcuffs" to use on their best employee, the manager of the car dealer so that they continue thriving on their business and not loose him to a competitor. This came in the form of opening another business down in Oregon. This time they would open a premium RV dealership in Portland, Oregon, and the manager of the Honda dealership would be given stock options on this new business. 

After that he discussed other things in class, such as how to fund your business and important things to consider while doing that. He is a very informative speaker and I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for advice on how to start your business. 

Guest Speaker - Amy Sallin

Business Plan Competition Flyer( Font and Back side)

On Thursday, February 25th Amy came to our class to speak to us about the UW Business Plan Competition. She told us that this competition is open to all students in colleges all over the state. She said that on the first round over 102 teams apply and only 36 teams move forward to the next phase. In the end the top 3 teams are picked and receive a cash price. As noted on their Website: 

2015 Prizes

$25,000 Grand Prize sponsored by the Herbert B. Jones Foundation
$10,000 Second Place Prize sponsored by WRF Capital
$5,000 Finalist Prizes sponsored by Friends of the BPC and Fenwick & West

She said a good way to think about the competition is to think of how you and your team would keep your company running for the next 6 months to a year. She recommends applying and following through on it as best as you can because a lot of good things can come out of this for you. She said that over a period of 6 years they have helped create 46 companies, out of which 37 are still in existence today. But if for example you were a student who is thinking of going to a job right after you are done with your degree then you should still apply. She says even if you do not want to go work at a startup or start one yourself with the team the experience you gain is very valuable. This experience will show your employers that you can start and finish a project given the fact that you basically started a whole business from the ground up. And the networking opportunities are tremendously valuable as many of this people could be helpful contacts in the future whether you want to start a business or get hired by a company.

Company's Vision and Mission

My company's vision is to let children, youth, and adults know when their favorite treats are near them across the nation.

Many times people do not know that their favorite treats are near them and they miss out an opportunity to enjoy them. If only there was a free service available to them that would inform them of the trucks driving nearby, then they would get a chance to drop their current activity and hurry for a sweet treat. As this service becomes popular and people start to use it more and more then they will never go out another day without knowing when and where their favorite treat is coming near them.

My company's Mission is to bring happiness and provide smiles to the world. We do this by informing people of when and where their favorites treats are. We will also seek to make the work experience of our workers enjoyable. And lastly but as equally as important we will seek to make our funders happy by providing great returns on their investments.

My Company story

Name:

                   Ice Cream n' Coffee n' More

Logo:

Product:

The main goal of my company is to deliver happiness to those who seek it. We will provide this by connecting users primarily with ice cream and coffee trucks so that they can know when these trucks are coming near them. Customers will have the ability to see when these trucks are coming to their respective locations and even get reminders of when they are driving by. 

We can think of users as being parents and children. Children seek ice cream and other goodies but never know when these trucks are coming by because they are not as aware about timing as adults. This is where my service will help these children set up reminders of when these trucks are coming by and they find more information about what these trucks sell. 

For parents, well they could also go out and get something from these trucks, like coffee and other goodies. Many adults are busy, but if they have a reminder or know when the Coffee truck is coming by they may drop what they were working on in their dining room and head out for a special treat to refresh their mind and get some happiness. Maybe they bring the kids for a treat as well. 

Of course, the app will be free and the revenue will come in through ads. The design is still in process. The "more" on the name of the company refers to the option of food trucks to provide other things based on their markets and customers. 

Guest Speaker - Brian Forth

On Thursday January 27, 2016 we had the privilege to hear Brian Forth talk in front of our class about his experience as an entrepreneur. Brian founded and is the president of SiteCrafting Inc. since 1998 (18 years). Brian attributes many of his strengths to the experiences that prepared him from an early age. He worked for Disney and from there he learned the ethics of service and got businesses referrals. 

Many of his experiences help to teach us a lesson. He says that as a CEO you must always be present where the action is. Brian states that the CEO "can not tell somebody to do something they would not do themselves". He recognizes that new employees should be allowed to fail, preferably early on so that they can learn from their mistakes pretty soon without too many consequences. 

He says one of the main things the CEO does is to motivate others to believe in the company's mission and fully invest themselves in their work because it makes a difference in the world. He personally like the strategy of fully satisfying his customers to ensure they will come back or recommend his company to others. 

He says no plan survives, it always changes with all factors that surround it. So the best thing one can do is embrace this change and not ponder on it. He suggest to move forward without looking back and never giving up as the best strategy to recover from failure or the unpredictability of making tough decisions. 

Toughts on the Joy Film (Film about Entrepreneurship)

Alert!!! Spoilers ahead, watch film first then come back to read my blog :)

In this film we see how the life of a young woman named Joy unfolds and how she deals against all odds to achieve what she always wanted "create products for everyone to see". 

When she was young she always made her own toys and inventions. She would show these to her mother, grandmother, and friends. They all had different opinions about what she was doing and what she should be doing. Her mother, due to her disappointment with her ex-husband decided to give up on life and just lay on the couch and watch tv. Her grandmother wanted her to grow as a strong woman and be industrious and get a husband and have a family. One of her friends told her that to make her fantasy paper world complete she needed a "prince". But to all these opinions, Joy had only one thing in mind. Joy just wanted to make things and give them to people so they could see them and use them. She consider it a special power to imagine her world without a "prince" just with her imagination and people to share her ideas with. 

Later on in the story we find out that as she grew up she did end up married and divorced with two children. As an adult she lost track of her industrious self. She ends up working at an airline front desk. But she continuously had dreams of how she should be getting back to building things or perish as a failed person. 

She decides to use her kid's crayons and papers to design a mop that would be re-washable and that your hands would not get dirty. She struggled first to convince her dad and his new girlfriend to invest money into her new product. When she finally did she had to find a way to sell her product. 

This part is the hardest thing to over come in my opinion. When no one believes in your product or gives you a chance to show them how useful it could be you get frustrated. As I have previously posted on my blog about our guest speaker Erik Hanberg, one of the most important things to do is find ways to ship your product or get it out there. From this film I learned another strategy that is available to us today. In the film, back then before the internet or before people had as much access to it as we do today, people had to go to a TV network to ask them if they would advertise they products. Today we have YouTube and Social Media where you can make a video of your product and post it on YouTube, Facebook and other places. I now understand how this may work and the benefits of it.  

To Read more about the Movie Vs. Real Story check the link. 

Guest Speaker - Erick Hanberg

    Erick Hanberg came to speak with the TINST 475 class about his experience as an entrepreneur on Thursday, January 21, 2016 at UW Tacoma.  Erick's life experience was really interesting to me. After working for many non-profits, Erick landed a full time job as the director of the Grand Cinema in Tacoma. Through that experience he developed many of his entrepreneurial skills. He learned how to approach that point on which the business almost runs by itself or with minimal effort. This led him to believe in himself and decide to start his own business. Some of the projects he started were:

•        Side X Side
•        The Horatio
•         Exit 133
•         Suite 133

    He currently is working on Side X Side with his wife as well as selling books he wrote. He has always been inclined to writing in all kinds of forms and his interest in many subject make him a curious and well-rounded character. His graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in English and through this he developed a better skill writing for his audiences. Through writing books he learned and provides the wise advice that if you want to sell a product you must first practice to start and finish one. He says shipping is supper important. Along with figuring who your product’s audience is and how to reach them. 

He says a good strategy to reach out to your possible future customers would be to make a website and project what your idea is and how they could benefit from it. Then you could ask them to provide you with their email address so that you could reach them once you are done or ready to release your product. You could use this website and advertise it on social media or other websites to test and see if you get an audience and how large that audience is.

Erick motivated me to pursue my dream of possibly writing a book and to keep things simple, to look for wats in which I can do something with things and tools I know. 

Thoughts on the Startup.com documentary

In this documentary Kaleil Tuzman and Tom Herman, old high school buddies, unite efforts to make a startup. Their idea was to help people pay their government-issued tickets online. They named their company GovWorks. In the first scenes we can see the tremendous amount of effort they put in to secure a good amount of funding.

From this first part of the film we see how in many cases to start a startup one must sacrifice many things. We see Kaleil leaves his full time job, the ups and downs of his romantic relationships due to the amount of time spent on the startup, and the loss of relationships because business got in the way. But we must also recognize that he made that decision as many entrepreneurs would. He made the decision to embark on this life journey with all the good and the bad times.

On the second part we start to see how the startup begins to crumble down. First with the buy-out of a third co-founder for the amount of 800K. Then we see how Tom seems to object to many of Kaleil’s decisions. And finally when Kaleil decides to opt out and the company runs out of funding.

On this part we observe how problematic it can be to mix friendships with business. When we hear that Tom would rather lose the company than Kaleil’s friendship we can see that Tom was not committed to the idea of the business. Tom should have known that the business came first. If he had not wanted to lose his friendship with Kaleil he should have not gotten into business with him.


I think this documentary helps to show a lot of the things that could go wrong, however it also shows that it can be done and that if you want to get into it you must be willing to take a good risk but above all always stay positive. 

2016 MLK Jr. Unity Breakfast: The Spirit of Justice in a New Generation

    

                  

Image of ad for the event at UW Tacoma

On Monday January 18, I attended the MLK Jr. Unity Breakfast at UW Tacoma. 

The event started out with an awesome breakfast: 

Followed by the program: 

And a lot of opportunities to network and commemorate M.L.K. Jr.

The guest speaker finalized the event saying that we are not living in a post racial society. That Racism is still very present in our daily lives and that we can not let history repeat itself. He told us that when we look back at history we see how before the movement for civil rights emerged a similar pattern to what is going on in society today was going on at that time. Events such as the police violence against blacks an minorities, at times close and prior to election years, mass incarcerations and other sad moments in our history were taking place. Now when we look at today we see that some ripples are reemerging and we can not just let this happen again. As this day ends I take the time to reflect on his importance to ensure that not one group of individuals is treated as second class citizens and that everyone is afforded a chance to compete and prepare so that they can reach true success, happiness, and freedom in this country. 

Guest Speaker: Derek Young

On Thursday, January14 we had Derek Young, our guest speaker, come and talk to our class about his time as an experienced entrepreneur. He told us that he started out his career on the path to politics and biology. But soon got more into the field of IT. He worked in a corporate office for 10 years and then moved up the ladder throughout that time. He said one thing that happened during and after that time was he changed friendships. He surrounded himself with people that thought like him and who would look to move up the ladder in the corporate world or start their own businesses.

One quality he has is the ability to take risks. He said “he is that type of guy who would jump off a cliff and then check to see if he had a parachute.” He does consider it important to look for certain risks before getting into any type of businesses. He says sometimes he spends time with his friends going over what could go wrong about a business before getting going with it. He says he only pursues businesses that he feels will have some kind of future, and an easy way to get them off the ground. He seems to know when to walk off something that he just doesn’t feel its working.

When asked about what strategy he uses to name a business, he responded by saying he likes to use big white boards and the mind mapping strategy. This strategy consist of drawing a bubble at the center of the board and then writing a word in the middle, then connecting more words to that bubble. Once there are many word on the board people are able to connect certain words that will lead to a good catchy name.

When asked about how his political views have changed after all his experience, he said that they have not changed very drastically.  He considers himself a left-wing centrist. He said when he grew up in a very conservative environment which lead him to shape his current views of today in a little bit of an opposite direction, but he said that he is all pro for giving help back to the community. However as an entrepreneur when he is faced with ways to minimize costs he looks for ways to reduce the burden on him.  

My Three Business Ideas for Class TINST 475

As part of my first class assignment I was asked to come up with three business ideas I am interested in. One of these ideas can become the one that I chose to pursue and study more in depth throughout this quarter. 

My ideas are:

  

An app that lets people post questions about how to use some type of technology and wait for someone to reply back. I see this as a need as many people continue to find it hard to figure out how to do more advanced things with their electronic devices. The questions and answers could be saved and later be searched by others. People would get some kind of incentive for replying to questions and money would flow through in some undetermined form.  

An issue I have faced that I think could also be a good business idea would be to make a better platform for students at universities. The platform I am talking about focuses more on the side of student involvement at their universities. I would have to look further into this idea.

For my last idea I am just going to play around with it. I came up with the idea that it would be interesting to have an app that would let you know of the ice trucks near you. This way you would know when they are coming and the drivers would know if anyone is driving another truck around. I don’t know too many of the details for this app, but it seems interesting and creative.