Being an Entreprenueur. First step... Learning to Spell Enterprneueuer.

From the Tech Entrepreneurs Guidebook there was a lot of info to digest.  Approximately 88 pages of digestion.  But the info is good and useful if you are trying to start a business.

For instance, after the statistics page of IPO's and failure, they tell you how to write a good business plan.  It is a very long process starting with the executive summary.  The summary appear to be one of the most crucial parts of the plan.  "If they don’t get most of the information they are looking for in under one minute, your business plan has high chances of being filed under 'never'" (p. 6).  The rest of the section about writing a business plan involves a company description, the market size, technology description, competition, sales/revenue generation, finances, and management.

But one of the most important bits of information i found in this guidebook is the legal part.  It seemed like professor Fry couldn't emphasize how important getting an LLC is to a company.  Also it is important to protect your intellectual property as well as your physical property.  The guidebook explains all about copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and protection by private contract.

Oh and taxes are a bitch.

Jim Kastama Visit

When Jim Kastama visited the class the other day, i got a real sense of the politics involved in a business.  Besides the fact that Kastama is a politician, when he was showing us his slide show with all the images, i was curious as to how many elbows he rubbed to get where he is.  I imagine that is how he became a politician.  Then afterwards, used his contacts to fund/grow his business.  Don't get me wrong, it is a smart move and it sounds like he knows what he is doing with his life.  But i felt like it was a little odd for him to speak to the class because not everyone is going to get the opportunities he got.

More about his lecture, he gave some great advice and he did a lot of cool things.  So he does strategic planning for other business to grow.  One of the businesses he did planning for was the 3 second microwave.  I thought the product was genius, and it was pretty neat to hear about.  Imagine if i could cook my ramen noodles in 3 seconds!  oh the possibilities could be endless with 3 second noods.

Bruce Kendal Lecture

When Bruce Kendal came to the class to guest lecture, he discussed how bringing in foreign business, or exporting, is helping the economy.  One example he gave was Amazon.  The state of Washington wants their business and wants them to open a distribution center in Seattle because they bring in money from other countries.  Same as Boeing.  We want them to stay in Washington so bad because, besides being close to the number one name in transportation besides Pakcar, they bring in business and outside money from foreign countries.

Kendal also explained why it is important to bring in the foreign money.  It helps our economy grow.  If everything was internal, all that is occurring is circulation of current money with no growth.  When we introduce foreign money, new currency is coming in and bolstering the economy.  Likewise, small businesses that don't get international business stunt growth and don't help the economy as much.

I suppose If i were to run a video production service, like many other service companies in general, finding a way to help the economy grow would be tough.  I suppose one would have to get foreign contacts that extends the service internationally.  Like most airlines, they are a service, but serve many countries.

dot com to dot bomb to dot blogpost

The dot com boom certainly was a something.  I honestly don't entirely know how to feel about it.  on one hand it was scary as crap and caused alot of people to lose alot of money, but on the other hand, it makes me want to invent a time machine and cybersquat some domain names like walmart.com and google.com.

Like the whole thing of it was that the web was invented by a man named Tim Burners-Lee and everyone used it to market the hell out of it and made a shit ton of money.  Naturally there were a few large conglomerates in the beginning that hosted the service, now there are fewer.  Since it became a huge thing when it did, like anything else, it over inflated and collapsed upon itself.  The websites, the dot coms, took on too much venture capital and ceased to turn a profit, so when the market crashed in 2001 the dot coms turned into dot bombs.  Like Amazon dipped from a stock price of 107 to 7 after the crash but they are still around.  Some companies like Pets. com failed entirely.

Startup.com the Documentary, Thoughts... dot com.

No doubt the documentary was enjoyable. I mean, it is hard as hell to get a classroom of students to stay for a whole doco even when the professor leaves.  I personally enjoyed it because it gave me insights as to how a business operates on a more human level and the hardships that will undoubtedly occur.  Like the third founder, though a huge vaginal cleaning product, was smart to sell his stock when he did.  Though he should've gotten more money.

I think that Kaleil lost sight of the things that really mattered in life.  sure the business brings in the money, but he just neglected his woman the whole time and didn't give, not one, but two shits.  I really don't like the man he became and I'm kind of glad his business failed in the end.

Tom douched it up as well.  When it comes to technology, you got to keep improving.  If your site stays the same, then you surely will fail in the end.  He lived in denial thinking it was all perfect when it wasn't.  I think at some point he should've taken a back seat and let some proper CS people taken over.

But my overall impressions of the film are much more grimm.  To be honest, i really dont think i want to own a business anymore, at least not a large one.  If you you are an emotionless person and don't give a shit about the people you love, go ahead.  But quite frankly, there are things out there that are way more important to me than beaucoup bucks.

Graham Evans Lecture Thoughts

I found Graham Evans' visit to be useful to me.  The thing i found most useful was the business model with the sticky notes he presented to us.  it seemed like the model covered most to all the aspects of owning a business and forces you to think about everything as well.  Informing us of websites that offer the business model generator as a service was pretty handy as well.  i took a look at businessmodelgeneration.com (without buying it of course) and it seems like a decently user friendly way to plan your business.  When we were going over it in class, i couldn't help but think of more ideas after the sticky notes went on the board.  The only thing i wish was discussed more was how to market your business.  Evans was heavy into saying it is really important, but never told us how to do it.