Being an Entrepreneur - From the Tech Entrepreneurs' Guidebook

The guidebook for entrepreneurs actually provides a very motivating introduction about the importance in learning about entrepreneurship.  It’s like what Andrew Fry mentioned a lot in class: business and computer science go hand in hand.  Understanding the business side of development shows the process at which we work and really why we develop new technologies in the first place.

It seems that after reading, the most important skill that comes with being an entrepreneur is planning.  This sounds pretty broad, and it is: planning has to do with all the goals of business.  As an entrepreneur, one must determine how to make a business and how to make it make money.  In order to do so, one must seek funding.  But a lot of questions arise already, like how is said funding acquired and how long does it take to get it?  Even the business idea requires careful consideration as one must perform all the calculations surrounding how to make an idea profitable and how to project earnings.  It, however, made me feel that there are so many aspects of a business that I am not supposed to understand all of them.  By that, I mean that there are a lot of predictions that must be made about a business and a lot of studies/research that can support those predictions.  But I feel that despite most of the planning, a lot of the deep, specific details around making a business truly work is by going into the business yourself and finding out how it works.

South Sound Technology Conference

I visited the South Sound Technology Conference on Friday and it was far different than I had expected.  Although the roster allowed the revisiting of many of the major speakers I’ve seen on speaker days at the entrepreneurship class, the content that was covered was not particularly in my sector of interest.

The bulk of the presentations seemed to be geared toward increasing modern-day cybersecurity, with panels of other speakers presenting their opinions on the current state of cybersecurity.  I was very well baffled by the depth that they discussed the topic that I could not particularly feel one way or the other about it (rather, just kind of “absorb it”).  But, through the presentations, my understanding of cybersecurity was brought to knowing that systems were advancing and changing, which meant for new problems and loopholes in technology to appear.  This, of course raises the standard of security that must be met, but I feel like improving our security systems is at most like playing cat and mouse; it feels like we are mainly “chasing” the issue as it appears.

An interesting point was brought up early on in the conference: that the techies there are working to try to make the city of Tacoma the home of cybersecurity.  I’m not sure how or when this is going to take place, but I figured that I liked the idea: it made me wonder if one day I would be exposed to it enough that I could become a part of it. 

Speaker Day - John Dimmer

John Dimmer’s presentation gave me a lot of insight about how companies are funded.  He went over several types of funding and which would be the most appropriate for each stage of the business.  I learned that starting businesses often rely on personal funding to start off, or sometimes the founders ask their friends and family to build basic funds.  I also learned about angel investors (which I felt was the focus of the presentation).  It seems angel investors can be a major source of funding should the business have a successful-enough plan that the investor can get a substantial return, and that the founders have enough time to talk to enough angel investors to get his or her business funded (however I have the weird feeling that this process takes a long time, and may span several months or even a year).  I also learned about what John Dimmer thought himself as an angel investor, as he strategically funded businesses based on the potential returns so that he can come positive and make money.  The whole process looked a lot of like the stock market or gambling of some sort and ultimately it seemed interesting to work as an angel investor – it is highly based on personal knowledge and personal improvement will improve results.  However, I will not be following that path because it requires a lot of experience in the field to be successful (otherwise it would be far too risky).  But, it was nevertheless interesting pondering it.

Speaker Day - Jim Kastama

The most immediate realization that I had over the course of this presentation was that politicians were indeed entrepreneurs.  In order to run for office, politicians need to campaign and earn money in a similar way that new businesses need to seek funding or investors to offer funding.  This made me gain a lot of respect for politicians because it is improbable to get support and be well-liked; in fact, politicians have a great risk of bringing shame to their name (as was the case when someone made a caricature of Jim as a baby).   However, the way he deals with this fascinating because a mass public opinion (e.g. there is often a lot of hate towards major politicians, like presidents) can quickly grow to become threatening or life-changing.

Jim Kastama brought up several important points but I was more interested in the idea of a new, innovative microwave.  Microwaves are incredibly popular and easy cooking devices that are used widely around the world and especially among college students.  The introduction of a new powerful microwave in the area of Tacoma would be incredibly ground-breaking; if it became the type of invention that could be in every household, the way people live would be changed (everything would be faster!).  It kind of reminds me of the project I was doing for my business plan in this class because the goal of my company was to create new technologies to change the way daily activities are performed (and a new microwave would be just that).

Speaker Day - Bruce Kendall

I honestly was confused a lot by Bruce Kendall.  His presentation seemed very much geared towards those experienced as entrepreneurs or had background experience in business and knew about markets and the like.  I, being a computer science student, was oblivious to these types of things and could not relate with many of the topics he covered.  However, he did bring up some points that would help starting businesses.  For example, he mentioned that there are ways to decide if an organization is successful or not: every five years, one should review a business’s statistics and see how it has been doing.  This way, one would be able to identify if the business is moving in a successful direction and will be able to have many more money-making days for its employees, or if it is going to take a tragic downturn and cost a lot of jobs.  I found it interesting how he mentioned that when there are downturns, a lot of employees can actually gather together and form a business.  However, this seems very difficult because starting a business is by no means a short process and must be carefully thought through and executed in order to become successful.  Bruce also offered a small yet significant consideration for starting businesses: factoring in location.  The location in which a business starts has a heavy impact on its success because many businesses cater to the demographics of the area surrounding them.  Also, if a business is to grow, the type of potential employees that could be hired is also dependent on the area.  Considerations like this made me feel very uneasy about starting a business, but I suppose all businesses had to start somewhere. 

Dot Com to Dot Bomb

Oh, the power of dinosaurs to make class more exciting.  After viewing the Dot Com to Dot Bomb presentation, I learned a lot about the history that sparked the age of the internet, and it made sense that so much of what happened actually happened.  Firstly, businesses that began having websites early in the dot com boom were said to be successful because there were so few websites that you could actually list them out.  This made sense.  However, as more and more websites appeared and having a site became mainstream, those websites early were no longer special for the reason that they were (this is a possible factor contributing to their downturns).  Also, as more people learn to create websites, websites would have improved in terms of functionality, complexity (e.g. better use of HTML), and security.  Websites that did not keep up to those standards would also be put to shame, so this may have been a factor as well.

I found it interesting when Infospace, since it had gone public, was worth more than Boeing.  This was pretty shocking since a new company like Infospace could be worth so much; clearly something was wrong.  It seemed inevitable that all businesses would eventually have a website facing that websites had become so successful.  This, essentially, explained to me the dinosaur analogy: the dinosaurs became so powerful, that they would eventually eat everything the world had to offer and starve (despite the fact they died to a meteor, but this analogy still makes sense).

Speaker Day 1/28 (Graham)

This guest speaker day made me feel very uncomfortable about my knowledge of course-related material.  A majority of the time was spent taking a business and identifying its key partners and activities, customer relations, cost structure, revenue streams, and the like.  Although this provided a lot of insight on how to go about elaborating on a business idea (to find out how it may work), a lot of the material discussed was previously unfamiliar (for example, cost structures).  It made me understand the complexity about obtaining a good business idea, but I feel like I may expect to learn about those types of relations later in the course before being able to apply them better.

The speaker also discussed different “models,” for lack of a better term (I’m sure the term, model, refers to something else), of businesses.  The models would list whether the business concept was good or bad, whether the marketing was good or bad, and whether the cost was low or high, and would output the income level of the business.  I found it interesting how a bad idea with good marketing and a low cost could even take off, but then again, good marketing even can bring people to buy snake oil as a weight-loss tool.  To me, it seems the success of a business is almost solely dictated by how well it was marketed.  If a product targets the right audience, as determined through monetary expenditure on surveying, polling, and the like, then the product should be expected to sell (although a good idea of a product would likely sell better).

Speaker Day 1/23 (Erik)

It was a fascinating experience listening to the guest speaker today.  Judging by his presentation, it seemed that he has been an entrepreneur for most of his life and has been through many ups and downs in the process.  I learned that being an entrepreneur could mean a lot more than just starting your own business.  At one point, he talked about writing books and selling them.  This doesn’t look like a typical company, but it is essentially one in nature.  It was a business where he monitored which books sold and he made business decisions to try to promote further sales, such as by making a particular book “permanently free” for a temporary time.  I was moved by this idea and as it was essentially monetizing what may as well be a hobby and turning it into a business; I felt that I wanted to partake in doing so with my interests as well.

There was one particular statement the speaker made that made me feel uncertain.  He talked about starting a business with his wife called Side By Side, where the couple literally works side-by-side.  He mentioned that in doing so, the business worked well because it was easy to communicate as husband and wife.  However, I felt it would be exactly the opposite: by co-owning a business with one’s partner, one may delve into complicated business arguments which may impact the marriage, and would therefore harm the business.  The way I see it, his wife must assume the role of a business partner in the company, or the business might falter.  Other than that, I enjoyed the story of starting and growing a small business and would like to learn more about how the process works. 

3 Business Ideas

I’m not the savviest with the current state of the markets out there, but nonetheless here are my three business ideas.  The first is more or less an actual business, but it involves creating and selling mobile applications.  I found out that there are opportunities to create applications for mobile devices such as Android phones and as smart phones are becoming more and more prevalent in this age, it feels that starting a “business” creating apps might be a valuable time investment (and also, it’s very interesting).  Like other businesses, working on apps will require attention to audiences, and there’s a lot of competition and it’s more than likely that a new business in the application department would not grow well without extensive work.  But I feel this may be one of the more fun and flexible options out there and is worth including in this list.

Another idea was inspired by Amazon (I believe it was them, anyway), which introduced a flying robot (still in the prototype/testing phase) that delivers packages to users very quickly.  Seeing this made me feel that the process might be very complicated and prone to problems.  What if it was steered off-course by winds, or what if something happened to it during flight that caused it to not be able to make the trip (e.g. getting stuck in a tree or somehow dropping the package midflight).  It feels like creating a technology that could solve these problems could lead to starting a technology-based company (that would try to sell to Amazon), but getting such a company to work will require finding and inventing other technologies to accompany to expand the product line.

The third idea is the simplest and is starting a fast-food restaurant.  I’ve seen many restaurants that serve great burgers I’ve watched a lot of a show called “Restaurant Impossible” where an expert goes to failing restaurants to identify why they fail and rebuilds them by changing the way their business is run, their menu, practices, and also rebuilding the restaurant itself.  I feel that although running a company in the form of a small restaurant still relies on a lot of business practices such as appealing to the area the restaurant is located, and also competing with all the other restaurants in the area.  On an added bonus, having a restaurant as a business means being around food, which is always a plus.

Movie Day

Last Thursday I saw a movie that followed two friends as they started to build up a business from the ground up.  With limited experience and knowledge about the workings of businesses, I had naturally found this movie confusing.  I felt that through watching this movie, I was expected to understand the steps/process in building a business.  In the beginning, it felt like there were hints about this, such as when the Kaleil was deciding on what his company would do and furthermore, what he should call it.  It seemed like many meetings were required.  Also, everyone seemed to develop roles quickly.  It was apparent from the start that Kaleil would lead the company as CEO.  However, as the movie progressed, it was more and more difficult to follow along.  It seemed that there were many processes that needed to be considered in creating a company, such as dealing with legal issues.  The movie focused mainly on the conversation and arguments that occurred around those issues, and vaguely seemed to cover the actual problem and its resolution.  It seemed to me that this was because it was, after all, a movie (or perhaps I should call it a documentary), and there is entertainment value in showing dialogue.  But, I feel that overall, despite that much of the content showed speeches, arguments, and conflicts, the movie still gave valuable insight on some of inner-workings of a company and also showed that being an entrepreneur is a risky, but potentially rewarding experience.

My expectations from this class

Personally, I consider this class the unusual one from my schedule this quarter as it is the only class that doesn’t come directly from the computer science program (however, it is related).  Nonetheless, I feel that learning about entrepreneurship and business in general is highly valuable as all computer science work has business ties and being able to relate to both areas will benefit me.  This way, I will not end up becoming the developer who develops for the sake of itself and forgets about the customers and what they want.

In this class I hope to find out about what it takes to get a business started.  It is without a doubt that in the past I have considered starting a small business (or, what might seem to be a business) with a small team by working together to create simple apps, but in hindsight I am glad I did not proceed to start without a basic understanding of what makes a business work and not work.  It has become apparent that there are already simple details like determining an audience to market to and how revenue would be split that I would not have even considered.  I am also sure there are many more details to consider as the “Business Plan” that I will be creating later this quarter seems lengthy and comprehensive.  Thus, it is through taking this class that I hope to find this answer and be able to run my own business, or at least maintain business ideals in my future computer science work.