Entrepreneur guidebook

                The guidebook starts with some statistics to give an idea of the odds a tech entrepreneur has to face and to show that almost all entrepreneurs will have to face failure at one point or another throughout their careers. Because of this, an entrepreneur needs to be unshakable in his belief in the company and the business model. He must have the courage to forge ahead knowing the odds of success. He needs to have a laser focus when it comes to getting the job done and he needs to have the discipline to work through the drudgery. An entrepreneur needs to be a leader, able to build teams and instill confidence in others. An entrepreneur is always thinking ahead.

                The tech entrepreneur’s guidebook defines the three goals of a successful tech entrepreneur as follows:

1.       A technology entrepreneur seeks to innovate and solve a problem that exists in the market, not merely identify and follow a trend.

2.       A technology entrepreneur seeks to build long-term value. They want their company to have sustainability, not just attract investment dollars at high premiums.

3.       A technology entrepreneur seeks to have freedom, is willing to accept the risks that come with the job and is not discouraged by the uncertainty of the future that they face.

Graham Evans visit

            Graham Evans spoke about the importance of breaking your business down into different layers and visualizing how each layer of your business works on a canvas. First, we took business ideas from those who were willing to share theirs. Then we voted on which business idea we wanted to break down and decided on an idea for an electronics recycling company.

We broke the business down into 9 separate layers on a canvas, Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources, Value Propositions, Customer Relations, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure, and Revenue Streams. Each team of 2 was assigned a different layer to fill out. My team got customer relations but we weren’t sure who the customer would actually be. We decided that the company could ultimately go in 2 different directions, it could be a for profit organization in which the customer is the one who supplies the electronics and then expects a cut, or a nonprofit like the recycling of glass and plastics that may ultimately lose money but reduce pollution and have the government as a customer.

After we broke down the business on canvas we could see a more flushed out picture of how the business would work. The problem was that only the person with the business idea had a clear view of how he wanted to monetize, so some of the layers left room for a lot of different possibilities.

Bruce Kendall guest speaker

Bruce Kendall spoke about his job of convincing companies in Pierce County to stay in the county and also convince other companies to relocate to Pierce County. He talked about how he works with a group of about seven individuals that are all responsible for meeting several times with companies and investing time, money and effort to bring them to Pierce County.

 He also mentioned that the software industry has not grown in Pierce County like it has in other places because of higher wages and shortage of qualified workers. He said that one of the major deterrents for a lot of companies that are thinking about moving to Pierce County is the expensive labor pool that is due to the high cost of living in the area.

 He also discussed Boeing’s recent decision to base their next project in Washington State instead of North Carolina and the significance that having a company like Boeing brings to Pierce County. He said that businesses like Boeing with astronomical starting costs are invaluable because they control a near monopoly on the market because no one can afford to compete. In Boeing’s case they only have one competitor in Airbus. Location is a big decision for any entrepreneur. 

Startup.com

     Startup.com is a documentary about two entrepreneurs and high school friends, Kaleil and Tom (and a third), that create a company called Govworks at the end of the dot com boom and just before the internet bubble burst. The documentary captures the birth of the company from Kaleil's decision to name it Govworks, through the meteoric rise of the company's value, to the eventual tech issues, competition, bust and death. Startup.com is an informative first hand look at the struggle of building a company and bringing a product to market.
     Kaleil and Tom start off with an idea for a website that would allow citizens to interact with the government in their own homes without having to show up to a city meeting or other public place. They start off with little competition and they are quickly able to raise enough money to hire a team and get started. The company is so hyped that Kaleil even gets to meet president Bill Clinton before the company has even released a product or made a dime.
    The company ultimately suffers a series of unfortunate events starting with an incident of corporate espionage, likely perpetrated by one of the competitors. Next the tech bubble begins to burst and companies like Govworks begin to drop in value dramatically. The final nail in the coffin comes when the website performs poorly compared to the competitors, which leads to Tom being let go by Kaleil. Eventually they end up with nothing to show for their work except the experience of building their first company.

Guest Speaker Eric Hanberg

     Eric Hanberg spoke on Thursday about his experience as an entrepreneur and the businesses he has been involved with and started since leaving his job. He talked about the advantages of being an entrepreneur (like being able to play chess with a friend at 8am) and the disadvantages (like stress and working long hours into the night at times). He also showed a graph of his earnings before and after becoming an entrepreneur and talked about how an entrepreneur's earnings are mostly peaks and valleys as opposed to the stable salary you would earn working for a company.

     Eric also had some sound advice for people who had never attempted to create their own business before. He talked about his experience writing novels and said the biggest hurdle is completing a novel from start to finish. In business terms the biggest hurdle would be taking your idea and working on it until you have a complete product ready for release.

     He also said that there are things in the business world that are just out of your hands and you can only worry about things that you can control, and be prepared to fail several times before you can succeed because a successful entrepreneur often fails more times than he succeeds. Those are two pieces of advice that I had heard a million times before about baseball when I used to be a college baseball player.

What I want from this class

        I want to learn how to take my business ideas and begin building a business around them. I want to learn how to avoid the pitfalls of other unsuccessful businesses so that I can avoid them. I want to create a business model that will lay the groundwork for a profitable company. I want to lean how to thrive as an entrepreneur so that I can be my own boss. I want to know what makes a successful entrepreneur and what makes a failure. I want to know what steps I can take to fund my idea. I want to hear stories from successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs about the challenges they have faced and how they dealt with those challenges.

Business Ideas of Interest

Business Ideas of Interest

          My first business idea is quite simple, I want to create a good quality free to play game for phones and tablets that would generate revenue though advertisements or a $1 game. I notice a disturbing trend in free to play casual touch screen games where the game developer will try to squeeze money out of the customer any chance they get. Most of these games even require you to pay money or wait a certain amount of time to continue to play the game when you lose. Another issue is the quality of these games, especially on windows phone. Almost none of the games offered are worth playing, even $1 games (unless you are still entertained by angry birds). I believe there is a market on tablet and phone for more than just rip off and low quality games for casual gamers. My idea is to create a set of episodic RPG games based around player decisions that affect the game story, like many popular handheld Nintendo games. Each game would build off of the decisions the player made in the previous games and the theme would be sci-fi or crime drama.

         My next idea is to create a website that would host high budget videos (like tv shows). I feel that television will become obsolete in the near future because of the greed of the cable companies making you buy 500 channels to get the one you want. There is no reason why you couldn't create a cheaper alternative and still have high budget entertainment through a subscriber system. It would operate much like Youtube but with a few major differences. Most importantly, the channel would have a much greater say over the monetization of their videos. For instance, a channel could choose to charge $5 per month to subscribe and watch their videos and take home $4 of that. This is important because it will finally make it possible for big budget shows (like walking dead, breaking bad, game of thrones...) to thrive on the internet and it would only be a small fraction of the cost of cable. Instead of paying $300 to Comcast for the 6 channels I watch, eventually I could just subscribe to 6 shows of the same quality online for $30.