10. The .com bust

Last Monday, Andrew Fry presented the dot com bust which, very much affected our area of the Puget Sound. I have heard of this before but never truthfully have known what happened. It was interesting to find out what had happened, especially after having all this new knowledge of business and actually being able to understand it. How the businesses got investors for being a dot com seemed way to easy... it was like they were asking for the bust. I guess that I really don't understand why people were investing so much money in it... I guess that it could be since the Internet was new and it was a new idea that a person across the world could see this website and that it might get more attention and sales than just being a normal store on the street because the store can only reach the people in the area. My parents were one of those people who had AOL with that dial up and the "you got mail". Till a few months ago my parents were still paying for this and they have had Comcast cable Internet for years now... After I had found out that they were still paying for AOL it took me forever to explain to them that they didn't have to pay just to have an email account through AOL and that they are actually paying for the dial up that they were not using anymore.
I liked the dinosaur representations of the different Internet providers, made it a little more interesting.

9. A visit from Michele Armstrong

Michele Armstrong is a Sr. Manager of corporate Recruiting at Vulcan Inc. On the recruiting side of things she talked about how to build your team. This was probably one of my favorite speeches from this class because she mainly discussed how to approach getting a job. One thing that I found that was interesting is that she said to weigh all the factors like benefits, not just pay. But it seems that most jobs that I have found online in my job hunting is they basically make sure that the pay range is out in the open and if you want to find out the benefits, if any, you may need to contact them. She also gave us a kind of cool trick where if you are looking for an internship and a company is looking to hire a similar, higher up position as a job, they will most likely be looking to hire within the company but they still put the post up and check a few interviews first. If that is the case, I should contact them and say that if they hire within the company and if they will be looking for an intern to contact me. I have also never thought to check crags list for jobs, I have always thought of it as a place to find used stuff but after checking they have quite a few listings. I never thought that online job places charged so much to businesses to put job postings... ten thousand a year... Well, when I go job hunting this spring I feel that I have some good tools to use.

--Business Plan update--

A little over half done at the moment, I will update about what my plan is when I have more time.

8. A visit from Derek Young

Derek Young is a pretty interesting entrepreneur who really likes to start company's. In fact, every time that Andrew Fry sees him, he is on the way to starting a new company. Everything that he seems to start doesn't really seem that it connects together in the since that he probably just enjoys starting businesses.
One thing that I thought that was kind of interesting is when one of his businesses is not doing well that he just lets it go. This is in a bit of contradiction of one of our previous speakers who said that if you want investors, you need a bit of skin in the game so that when the going gets tough that you don't just drop the business. Although, I think that he tries to put most of the money into the business. But also I guess that he does deal with difficult times if he has only started to be in to positive side for exit133 after putting tens of thousands into it.
When he tried to explain the business "Seasonal View" I felt so confused. I think that I started to understand it at one point which it is something to do with helping different departments of the same company link together to communicate. I want to quote him on one part because it made the most sense about that company Seasonal View(probably not exact to his words but close)- "If you have to ask us what we do you will never hire us, you come to us because you know what we do and need our services".
I liked the idea of suite 133 in the since that if I want to start a company that it would be a place to go if I need office space. The site is pretty simple for it though, I guess that there isn't too much to say about it but at least it isn't difficult to figure out what the price is. I also noticed that his business of Seasonal View was in the bottom portion of it where it tells you who the members are.
I was a little confused on Exit 133 about how he was paying people for the articles they would write before the site had any ads or anything that would show profit. I guess that I was also confused about why would people have a deadline to write a blog post unless the people who are blogging are more of employees instead of people blogging.

7. A visit from Bruce Kendall

I loved hearing this guy talk. His voice was well projected and it felt that he had a lot of information to share. Based on this I would say that he does a lot of public speaking. He works at pierce county's Economic Development Bored as the CEO. I guess that what the board does is try to grow jobs and wealth but I believe what their main concentration here is to try and get more money from out of area to come into the Puget Sound area. They do this because they want to increase the economic opportunity for the citizens and businesses of the area. He talked about all the different clusters of jobs in Washington where some of the information was kinda cool to know. The map that he showed us displayed how quickly the job is advancing in the area with the amount of people that they are taking as well as the size of how many people are currently in that field. There are probably a few other aspects to that map but I can't think of them for the life of me. I guess that I would like to know the more current standings on this job since it is a pretty different ballpark nowadays with the bad economy. The big five clusters of jobs are Aerospace (mainly from Boeing but I think that he mentioned that there are possibly a few other small company's in the area), Clean Tech (I am actually glad to see that this is one of the big five because it is something that businesses should strive for), Information Tech.(good that this is up here since this is the field that I will be in), Life Sciences, and Logistics and informational trade. Don't forget the plus two(guess that they really wanted more than five) Defence contractors and corporate Headquarters.

6. A visit from John Dimmer

The other day we had John Dimmer visit our class and discussed financial issues about a business. I could do without the 20 minute background story but I guess that it was partially important to the presentation to show his background supports his facts. I could tell that he liked to talk, but I wish that he would make his stories and facts a bit more interesting to listen to, I guess glad that I didn't fall asleep. He did have some interesting information to share though, especially about how to present to an angel investor group and what not to do. I wish that he would have gone more into alternative routes, such as if you don't have much money and you don't know anyone who has that much either. I am pretty sure that isn't the only way that you can obtain the money. One thing that I really liked that he shared is that if you are an angel investor, make sure that the company your investing in has some skin in the game, otherwise they might just give up when the going gets tough.
As I see it, his presentation nearly knocked the wind out of me... I hate to ask for money, I always try to earn it on my own. I even work two jobs during the summer to pay for the following year of tuition for school. The problem with that is that I don't see myself saving the amount of money that is required for all of these different stages so as I see it right now... my chances for trying to start a business are pretty slim.

5. A visit from Jon Goodman

This last Wednesday, my class had a visitor named Jon Goodman. She had talked to us about the lifetime of a business, which is from getting it started to however long it last. She had brought up some interesting subjects as well as what she has seen as being an observer of businesses as well as starting a few of her own. As a student I should actually be starting research now if I want to start a business such as trying to contact similar businesses by email for student research or working in one of these company's as a low wage employee to gain ideas. By doing this you are able to get a lot more info since you can use the student card instead of saying that you are a rival business. As a business I guess that you do one of two things if you plan to grow which is sell your business, or go public with it(It has been mentioned a few times in this class about going public but I feel a bit unclear about what that exactly means). One thing that I took from being a small business is that you are either expecting to be successful with the business or you just want a small business to live off of such as a Mom and Pops diner that you don't really expect to expand and just pay the bills. One thing that she brought up that I thought was interesting is that entrepreneurs deal with a lot of stress and ambiguity. She brought up that she is a stressoholic and lives off of it, being her way of life. Last I would like to bring up that I thought that it was interesting about how the government views whether a business is successful or not is very subjective since it is if it closes compared to a persons opinion of if they did what they set out to do and the business accomplished what it is suppose to.

4. Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths:
1. Time Management
2. working well with others
3. perfectionist
4. Leader
5. Patience
6. Listening
7. Creating

Weaknesses:
1. Quiet
2. Can loose focus easily
3. stressful situations
4. nothing can be imperfect
5. don't have the ability to react quickly

-For some reason, I am not able to think of 10 strengths and weaknesses, I am sure that I have more, I guess that this must relate to loosing focus(weakness).
-As being a perfectionist which people usually like in company's I often have the problem that I don't like to see things be imperfect which to some people is kind of annoying. for example, I would be the person that, if I went to a friends house I would be fixing all the pictures that are not squared off on the walls.
-My mind tends to wonder at times when I am trying to focus on something so I try to fix this by doing multiple tasks at the same time and switch off on them so I can continue to work.
-I feel that one of my biggest strengths is patience because we live in a busy world where everything just seems to be getting faster and faster but the moment that we come across something that doesn't work at our usual pace, that we start to either get frustrated or angry at that device.
-To the opposite of this I feel that my biggest weakness is being quiet. I am not exactly sure why but it does seem to bother some people. A bit of a contradiction to this is that when I am leading a group of people(as in a group or as my job as a manager) I am able to speak up quite a bit and make sure that all the task get done in an orderly fashion.

3. A visit from Ron Kornfeld

Ron came to our class and talked about business plans. He starts company's for a living and his current project is Nimble source. Overall I think that he gave us some interesting incite from beginning a business plan to the finish(even though you are never done with your business plan updates).
One thing that I didn't know about busness plans is that you will need diffrent ones depending on who you are dealing with, being either investors or internally with partners or employees but I guess that I could see the diffrences as not wanting to share company secrets with outside people that could possibly steal your idea. Another thing that I thought that was interesting about this is that you keep track of each copy and put the name of the person that your giving it to on the page.
From his visit, one thing that I took away from this is that you need to have an excellent presentation with your business plan. It can't be too short or else the investor will not take you seriously. It needs to look appealing to the reader, such as being bounded like a book. Last but not least, you need to make sure that there is proper use of grammar and spelling through out your business plan and make sure that you prof read it, even read it backwards!
I had really liked his presentation and I thought that he was very informative about business plans, starting businesses, and presented himself very well.

2. Five Business Ideas

1. When you go to a restaurant and you are seated, wait a while until the waiter finally shows up to ask for your drink orders(and possibly meal orders) which he takes and leaves. A few minutes later he will show up with your drinks and ask for your meal orders, if you are not ready he gives you a few more minutes. After you have eaten your meal, where you haven't seen your waiter since so you could have a refill on your drink, need to either wait for him or hunt him down so you can have desert or get your check.
The point is that it is that sometime you get an awesome waiter who is always there when you need him(or her) or you get the waiter who takes a smoke break every 5 minutes and see them rarely which can be a big waste of your time. My idea is to start a restaurant business that has a touchscreen computer at each booth that you can place all your orders on(drinks, appetizers, meal, and desert) where you can add special comments to, can request for a refill, request for a check, or even call the waiter to your table. this means that the waiter works on your time and you don't have to go hunting down for him(or her).
2. When I was a painter in a painting company, one of the problems that we would come across quite often is that the extension ladders were very difficult to control, especially using a 40 foot ladder fully extended. so what I propose is to make a lighter ladder that is made of composite materials of plastic and metals that is just as strong and has a wider base to it that would give the user more control over the ladder.
3. after using my mouse for extended periods of time, especially in my job of computer science, I start to get pain in my wrist. truthfully I think the idea of the mouse needs to be completely redesigned. My Idea for a mouse is basically designed around the hand, basically a glove that has sensors on the fingertips. this way it can work on any solid surface. you would do the different buttons of the mouse by having different combinations of fingers down on the surface.
4. The other day when I was driving to work one of my speakers in my car came unpluged, and instead instead of me thinking o crap, I have to replace one of my speakers(because I didn't know that it had just came unpluged at the time) my first thought was that you notice the sound coming from the 4 directions tward you. My idea is to advance on surround sound by instead of just having right and left from stereo sound to increase this to front left, back left, front right, back right. This would bring a whole new level to music(being a musician myself) by bringing sound from 4 diffrent drections than just 2. Few possible problems with this is it could possibly be difficult to apply this to headphones since they are dual but with 2 speakers on each side that are slightly angled, this could possibly be done. The other possible flaw with this is that there is no music written to this and may be difficult to convence artist to switch since it would require more work for them.
5. My last idea is to start a painting company since I really enjoy painting and it is something that I am good at.

1. Entrepreneurship

This shared some interesting facts about the rate of success with entrepreneurs and actually was about right with what I would guess that the success would be with trying to start your own bussiness. From the article, I had also liked the line saying that entrepreneurs are not lone wolves but are more of leaders because this is basicly how my opinion changed after my first attempt at a bussiness. Just reciently, I had my first attempt at trying to be an entrepreneur which was running a painting bussiness. So as an under the table job with four years of expierience and a crew of fellow painters that I had worked with, I had painted a victorian house. Aside from the excrucating pain from trying to paint the enormious amout of detail and dealing with the customor which tried to nickel and dime me for everything, I really enjoyed the feeling of being my own boss and having control of the situation. As being a very good learning expierience, expecially for how well contracts need to be written out, this was basicly a trial run for a painting bussiness that I am thing about starting this next summer.