John Dimmer

John Dimmer was a longtime friend of to instructor so it was interesting to see what kind of people he hangs out with. He was involved with the Free Range Media, Freezone and Lariat Software with Andrew Fry, or our instructor. He later then retired and started a business with his dad. So he has a massive experience in entrepreneurial ventures and successful ones at that.

Some interesting things that I learned from him are carving out areas where your business dominates, a bit about angel investors and crowd sourcing.

Starting from the last topic as I was the most excited to check that out, crowd sourcing is the bomb.com right at this moment. Websites like gofundme.com and indiegogo.com are being used as platforms to crowd fund things like business ventures to charities. So that got me a nice place that if I do decide to start a business use if I need the funding.

Next he gave us a personal look at angel investors as he is one himself. That was very interesting to me because receiving the information from the person who is actually in the business himself is more beneficial than reading 100 books that cover the theory about the business. His highlights were the amount that angels were generally able to fund, the amount that they wanted to know they can get back and lastly the importance of an exit strategy to the angel investors.

And more on a personal level he told us about his strategy that he used to carve out the NW corner that he dominates with his sales of AirStream trailers and a few potential exit strategies.

He is definitely someone you would want on an advisory board for your business, his knowledge and experience are hard to overlook.

Bruce Kendall

Bruce Kendall is President  and CEO at Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County. And a buddy of our instructor otherwise he would not be visiting us. Actually I learned that our instructor has some of the coolest friends around, lucky for his kids since that means some cool job opportunities.

Anyway his company is a nonprofit that looks to develop Tacoma and the Pierce County to make them more successful. Which is awesome and I hope that they continue to thrive.

But aside from that I learned a few interesting things. One I had no idea that companies like his exist, and that they are nonprofit. And by like that I mean companies that work on improving local economies for NO PROFIT. That is very amazing. The people who start those companies, the people who work there have forever earned my respect. Another thing I learned is once again the importance of clusters and how their company is focusing on expanding a cluster or two here in Tacoma. As a student in not such great economic times the idea of possible jobs is inspiring. And lastly he finally said that business education is important, yay for me (finance major me). I feel like it’s not stressed enough that if you want to have a business venture you need some research or education in business because that is what you are staring, a business.

Overall his visit was a feel good and uplifting one. Anytime you hear that bad situations can be fixed and there are people dedicated to fix them you feel better about tomorrow.

Jim Kastema

Was a pretty awesome person to have as guest speaker. I loved his approach in politics as a problem solver and not a promoter of personal interests. If all the politicians were like this imagine the world that we would live in. A totally appropriate time to insert "Imagine" by John Lennon.

The main take away that I got from his visit were about the characteristics of entrepreneurs, the importance of self-assessment and clusters.

The characteristics that entrepreneurs must have according to Kastema is being tough, being agile or adaptive, being willing to invest in self and others, having partners, having a good support system and a way to get out. All are pretty self-explanatory except for the fifth one. It is self-explanatory but interesting, from all the other speakers we learned about the company and finances, and how it’s not easy time or money wise in the beginning but they never touched the most human aspect of entrepreneurship, what happens after the work. I think it is brilliant that he pointed out that its important to have a support system of people who will lift you up and are willing to stay by your side while you have to battle through in your entrepreneurial venture.

Kastema also spoke about self-assessment. His idea was to encourage us to think out ourselves as a resource. So that in our business or when we apply for a job we looked at the way we would contribute to something rather than what we gain from it. So when applying to a job not to simply think that you just need the money you can earn but that you can contribute to that job something that they do not have. That way I feel a person would have a more positive outlook on their career in general.

Lastly he spoke about economic clusters. He said it’s important to find locations that are have your economic cluster so that it’s easier on you financially, partnership wise and customer base. If you decide to start a business in the aerospace industry here in Washington space lenders would be more interested in financing you than anywhere else in the country because we have a major aerospace cluster. Same thing with partners there are more people interested in working in that field here.

Overall his visit was very informative and fun. He is a really interesting person to interact with and I feel like a gained a better understanding of the entrepreneurial spirit.

My vision and mission...

The mission statement for Shippie:

Our mission is to provide an efficient and simple transportation service to all car shippers. We are committed to serving our customers, providing a quality service and respecting the environment

Our commitments:

To the customer…

We are passionate about utilizing the latest tracking technology and customer support team that makes the transportation process fast, easy and stress free.

To the environment…

We work hard to utilize all possible technology to increase transport efficiency, decrease waste and paper use from our operation in respect to our environment and to provide a better future for the next generation.

My vision for this company is a shipping company that works almost fully online and is a leader in car shipment/brokerage technology. I want to utilize as much technology to operate the company practically paperless. As currently there is a lot of paper work that goes into the process, and the process is not that efficient, I feel like having apps and paperless forms would reduce the fees for the company in the long run and make it easy for customers to ship their cars.

I also wish to provide a service that gives instant quotes and offers fair prices for the brokerage service it provides. As currently the brokerage service is a muddy pit of rip-offs for both the customers and the actual shippers, I want Shippie to unite customers and the shippers at a fair middle ground, to result in lasting business from the customers and best service from the shippers.

Graham Evans

 Graham Evans was awesome enough to come talk to us about the actual process of starting a business. His approach to the presenting his ideas was very different from the past visitors that spoke to us about entrepreneurial ventures. He focused more on having us work out the ideas that we have, rather than talking about his own experiences. I thought it was awesome because that was a breath of fresh air from the past speakers who mostly focused on their personal experiences and success rather than involving the audience to work on their business ideas.

The main exercise that we did was of great help to me as the business plan writing is not always a smooth sailing. This exercise was focused on drawing out your idea on paper, and seeing if that idea was feasible to achieve. We had to go into details pertaining to our business idea and concept to see what direction to take with that idea.  By doing so we got to analyze important factor of whether the business venture was going to bring in any income, and that is a big wake up call. Because we all are dreamers in our heads anything we do as far as business, we expect to have an income from it, but that is far from the truth in today’s very competitive world.

Of the things that we covered the main points that I felt were most relevant or undiscovered for me were the key partner, cost structure and channels of distribution. I know having partners makes it simpler to get exposure, but I never considered any partners for my business. Also the costs are known but not structures and lastly I have only one channel of distribution which is not enough to gain a large volume of sales.

Dot.com to dot.bomb

This presentation was fast and furious. I think it was my favorite! Absolutely happy that this class is actually being taught by a person who went thru all the nonsense that was happening during that period.

So a quick summery: a lot of stuff happened. Tah dah, I think this blog is complete.

Okay but on a serious note, the presentation delivered two important ideas : jump on the train early and get off in time. Now the reason I say that is because people made good money and they lost even more money. There is a reason why people who save money have it better, they have something to live off if things go south. So basically take risks and participate in new trends but be thoughtful in the way you do it, invest and spend wisely. Sounds easy and redundant but practice of it is harder than it seems, example of that is all the fabulous companies that failed for those same reasons. I feel like if we were to go back to the startup.com documentary I would be the Kenneth in the drama, as I would rather take the money then risk having nothing at the end.

Overall I think it's incredible how fast some technology companies rose and fell, it's startling really. And not just that but what ripple effect this short time period had on other professions as well. In general I always find it interesting to find out the reasons behind some trends in the economy world. And a very interesting fact was brought up about outsourcing certain common work positions after the boom happened that totally blew my mind. When he said that the demand for certain decent positions rose dramatically in a short time, I knew that the salaries would also rise, and they did, but when the boom happened no one was willing to pay that money anymore and so they outsourced. So in a sense it was pretty much the workers fault for having greedy demands for rather common positions which led to some major outsourcing. At least in my mind.

Being a technological entrepreneur.

The technology entrepreneur guidebook, is a pretty substantial  starting point in research for searching hearts in the technology world. The guidebook is a rather easy but information packed read. On my own I would not have ever cared to read it, but since it's assigned I had to.  

My first impression was that it had a lot of things that I would consider to be rather common sense, but as I progressed I found a few very helpful bits of information that I can apply to my business plan. The two main things that stood out to me were the possible competition and management needed for a technological company.

 Competition to me was the most alarming, as I have minimal knowledge in the technology world,  I am a finance. So competition to me would be something that I need to do some serious research on in order to feel comfortable with the business venture I am considering.

Management was also a sore spot as I am very much like my mom in the sense that I always feel like I need to be managing everything in order for it to succeed, which is mostly true but also very taxing on me. So another aspect I am considering is researching well functioning technology companies and seeing what they are doing as far as management goes.  

With all that said I have a few things that I feel very confident when it comes to my business plan and a few items I need to do some work on, so reading this did give me some food for thought and work to ponder on.

Startup.com

startup.com was an interesting documentary about a new business venture that was happening during the dot.com boom. It was not an educational documentary more like a documentary for people interested in the inside world of entrepreneurs of that time period. The documentary itself was ok in content nothing to exciting but I hated the filming style period. It was terrible, distracting and unprofessional and I just did not enjoy it. I did learn three things from the documentary, regarding the people, corporate nature and success.

The documentary highlighted just how important it is to have committed and like minded people in order to succeed. Also an important part is ownership distribution early on int the company and the terms for that distribution. As it turned out Keleil and Tom did not think that too much thru and ended up having to bail out the portion that belonged to Kenneth.

As a Russian immigrant I am no stranger to corruption and questionable practices among businesses, but a naive part of me thinks that America should be different. Now there are major differences in the culture of business that is native to me and the USA, however USA is not except from its bad apples either. And the documentary showcased that classless corporate theft.

Lastly the lesson of success, or more the definition of success. From the documentary we saw that Tom and Keleil had the hardest time and the funniest time with all the glamour of parties and VIP status but ended up with little to nothing when the bust happened. Whole Kenneth walked away with a good chunk of money without even compromising his daily career. Who was more successful in the end then? Well that all depends on who is looking for what, of you are looking for fame and glamour, they got it, not for long but still had it. If you are looking for stability and some easy cash Kenneth got that as well. So basically success if measured based on what you desire it to be.

Overall the documentary was an interesting look at interactions of entrepreneurs during a very interesting time period in the technology world.  

Erik Hanberg came around

And here is what I thought about it...
His presentation focused on talking about entrepreneurship (surprise!) but he had a very personal approach. I liked the fact that he provided his story of business expansion and ventures, his involvement with his wife's ideas and a lot of personal information and data.

My favorite part was probably him sharing their financial breakdown in the peak type of graphic. It said a story with only numbers, and as finance student that speaks to me more. It gave me an opportunity to see a real progress of a business financially, thus setting realistic expectations for me as a person who want to make money from a new business.  That gave me a chance to set my hopes of millions of dollars in a few years down, and realistically evaluate how this new business game will actually go down.

A lesson that I learned is not to fully depend on one thing and be flexible with my possible ventures. He did that with becoming more involved with his wife's business venture and still continuing writing his books. Another lesson in that was that I truly need to tune myself in with what business I want to pursue, to make sure that I am passionate in anything that I get involved with, that way I could actually contribute my best towards that.

Overall his presentation was best in that he gave a real and on going example of what entrepreneurship is.

3 business ideas

Online car shipping.
 My idea is to create a car shipping  website that will offer no brainier, fair car shipping rates with a broker service. Currently there are two types of service in the competition, one is a straight up broker who the customer contacts straight on, gets an estimate for shipping with additional broker fee and then the broker does all the scheduling and contact with the transport companies. That service is very expensive and unfair in pricing, as the brokers give very high estimates, pay drivers dirt cheap and keep the difference along with brokerage fees. The second type is online brokerage where companies either allow you to bid your price or they have shipping companies to post their prices, both of which are not price or time effective, because cheaper or more reasonable bids are ignored.
 So my model is to calculate fair prices to both the shipper companies and the customers based on distance mileage and a pre calculated brokerage fee. So service price will be fair not cheap.

Online language tutors
Online chatting with students of all ages, for a preset price for packaging and finance options. Benefits include having international teachers, or native speakers and available for younger people to teach and make extra after taking qualification test.

Online store of sustainably made merchandise.
 Idea of uniting non profits and other organizations that help women of developing countries sell their  handmade work, like haitibabi and many more. On their own, the websites get limited traffic but uniting them would help raise traffic to all of the causes. As some websites get more traffic and others don't, this will help provide all the possible merchandise to consumers.

What I want from this class...

When I was looking through the classes that were available for my minor, this one stood out to me like a sore thumb. The reason for that is, when my family came to America and worked odd jobs, they decided to start their own trucking company. So basically I was raised and fed off a entrepreneurship venture that my parents took. So what I want is to get some knowledge on other people's entrepreneurial ventures. I am also curious to learn tools and services that would help a starter. Also I wanted to know a "formal" way to start a business. And also a live example business plan, as I know what it is and made mock ones but making a business plan for my idea and getting feedback would be very helpful. Most importantly I would like to know some insider tips of people who started, had or have a business. As this is a institute of technology class I want to learn some technology that is related to my idea for a new business. Maybe as I go on with the quarter than I will find out something else that I am interested in.