lew McMurran

Lew McMurran is a  lobbyist. What is a lobbyist? Honestly when he first came in to talk I had no idea. He is responsible for persuading members of the government to enact legislation that would benefit the Washington Technology Industry Association. The WTIA promotes and works with Washington industries that involve technology. It is like a social network for technology industries where they can contact and share information with each other. WTIA also offers a wide variety of business services, holds events, and does advocacy/lobbying.  The WTIA has approximately 600 members and has 11 employees. They focus on starting up new companies as well as helping other grow and become successful. Many major companies are currently members such as Verison, Microsoft, Google, HTC, and Facebook. This is a good place for companies in the technology industry to get their company noticed by others.

Jeff Goodwin

Unlike most teenagers, Jeff Goodwin wanted to be an entrepreneur. Though only being 17 he came up with an idea to start a business power washing roofs. This idea came to him when he realized how much people were paying professionals to do it. He watched other people do it and said told himself he could do that. So he rented a power washer and went house to house offering his services. But with him being only a young teenager he went through many rejections before he could finally get a yes. After he got his first job though the neighbors around began to take notice and realized that Jeff could actually do a good job for less cost.

After college Jeff worked for Boeing while also taking night classes learning basic computer languages. Then while on his honeymoon he was offered a job. He had two choices to choose from but instead of choosing the higher paying (and what seemed like a more successful job at the time) he chose to do what he thought he would love doing which is writing assembly code. With this new found expertise he then got a job at IBM. While working there he started pitching business ideas but received no interest from the company which lead to him quitting his job. He started another company building fixed price device drives in Texas and managed the company for 10 years. Eventually he was put into the position where he needed to sell his company. His customers were starting to feel skeptical and worried about relying on a small company for their device drivers. So Jeff sold his company to Cisco then continued to work for them as part of the contract. As soon as that contract was over however, Jeff returned to Washington where he would start his next venture.

Lynette Claire

Lynette Claire is the first female entrepreneur for me to meet. She told us her favorite thing to do was start a company, but did not care for the work needed to maintain one. She went to University of California Davis and received her bachelors in English. From there she interned for Horticulture Magazine but instead of moving to Boston to continue working for them she decided to move to the Puget Sound. This is where she helped start Simply Seafood Magazine. She later accidentally ended up running a business by herself that involved association management and event planning. She also helped start the 6th ave farmers market in Tacoma. Believing that entrepreneurships can be used to build communities lead her to creating an entrepreneurship network that could do this. She is working on a project called Tacoma Entrepreneurs Network. TEN focuses on building entrepreneurial careers and is a supportive organization to Tacoma college students.

Startup.com

Startup.com is a movie that is a documentary of an entrepreneurship journey. They chose found three guys whom were starting up a service company that allows people to pay for taxes and tickets online. Though the company ended up sinking, at first it was a great success. Though there were three co founders, one was bought out for a great sum of money and from there the story focused on Kaleil Tuzman and Tom Herman. Kaleil was the financial/business savy guy and Tom was the programming savy guy. The company they started was called govWorks.com. The idea of it took off and they were able to get funding that kept them expanding. They even got to the point of VC funding and after visiting a few VCs they received funding. Which only a small amount of companys ever get.
The film was well documented capturing the ups and downs of the company's life. The camera men seemed to have eventually became invisible to the entrepreneurs because they didn't hold back what they said in front of the cameras. The path to completing the website puts a lot of stress on the founders and they hit a lot of rough patches. Finding secure funding was not as easy as they had hoped and they did not always see eye to eye about how they should present themselves to potential investors. After they secured funding and started to grow they were able to about 300 people. The negative thing with funding from VCs comes the chance that they will want to change something about your company. They wanted just one person running govWords and made Tom resign. This was the final straw in Kaleil and Toms friendship. They ended up patching their friendship but not till after govWorks went bankrupt. They learned a valuable lesson, don't let business get in the way of friendship.

John Dimmer

John Dimmer came in on a day I was sick, so I did not hear what he had to say. But from what I have gathered from other people he lived a very interesting entrepreneurship lifestyle. His talk focused on the topic of financing for entrepreneurs. He called it the financing life cycle and it follows these steps:
1. Self funding
2. Friends and Family
3. Government grants or loans
4. Angel Investors
5. Venture Capitalists
John Dimmer also said another powerful VC is the use of your own visa credit card to fund your business. However my professor disagrees with this and believes that you should only go this route if there is a very high chance for success of your business.
He became this financially savy through perusing a degree in finance at University of Oregon. After college he worked for Reliance Insurance handling surety bonds. Many years later he left working with bonds and jumped into the life of an entrepreneur. He co founded Free Range Media, which later sold allowing John to retire.
Retirements wasn't the life for John, he is now co-founder of the Tacoma Angel Network. As an angel investor he told us what attracts investors attention. Venture Capitalists funding is hard to receive and cannot always be trusted. While angels are more trusting towards small businesses and do not demand as much from them.

Ron Kornfeld

From the start of class my professor has stressed the importance of a well written business plan. This next guest speaker was just the guy to help explain why. Kornfeld is one of the authors of the business plan template and is himself a very successful entrepreneur. He has founded many companies throughout his career as an entrepreneur and attempted to solve many problems. When he started telling us about how he started out, he brought up that he went to college in pursuit of a music degree. How he went from studying the theory of music to starting his career with MCI is beyond me, but I think he found his calling. He eventually left MCI to start his own internet start-up business NimbleSource and then continued on co founding Dream box, Personal Grid, Normany Partners, Harmonetrix and more.

When he began his talk about why we should write a business plan he leveled with us and admitted that it can be a drag to many people. But he explained how important it is for someone who really wants their business to succeed. Having a business plan template creates a standard format for writing business plans which can make for ease of writing, as well as allowing it to be consumed much more efficiently, and making sure everything gets covered. Having a template that presents your plan in a neat fashion is more appealing to the person who is about to read it. If a busy potential investor or Venture Capitalist looks at a messy unorganized business plan, they may think twice about spending their time to read it. Possibly resulting in your business plan being set aside or even trashed. Thinking about this really stressed the importance of a nice clean business plan.

Bruce Kendall

A few weeks ago another inspiring entrepreneur by the name of Bruce Kendall came to speak to my class. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Economic Development Board of Tacoma-Pierce County, which helps businesses expand as well as focusing on attracting outside businesses to Pierce County. They will not work with just any company though, he told us that they focus on companies that will bring outside money into pierce county rather then circulating the money that is already here. This is why the board only works with producer companies and not service companies. They try to pipeline a large number of companies because they know the chance that they will come here is low. 204 companies were visited in 2011 alone. Kendall's track record from 2007-2011 created 7,815 jobs, $408 million in wages, $360 million in private capital investment, and $11 million in industrial revenue bonds. Currently their major focus in five core clusters of businesses within the pierce county that they hope will bring attention to our area. These clusters are attempting to solve some of today's current world problems. These include clean water technology, logistics and trade, cyber security, medical services, and aerospace.

Brian Forth

Sic Parvis Magna

"Greatness from small beginnings."

This is what I thought would be a good motto for Brian Forth after he came in to give a guest speech about his life as an entrepreneur. Brian currently owns a very successful web design company called SiteCrafting. But this great accomplishment did not come over night, like many success stories he started off small. When Brian was in high school he dreamed of playing first base for the Dodgers. Playing pitcher for his high school team he played hard chasing his dream. He later earned a scholarship to attend Maramount College to play baseball for them while taking film studies. It was during these years that he realized there are many good players out there that are better than himself.

                Maramount ended up not working out for him and he was sent to Gonzaga where he played baseball for them and switched his studies to theology and philosophy. After Gonzaga, Brian became a teacher at St Charles elementary school. Wanting to create an entrepreneurship spirit in his 5th grade students he taught them how to develop simple websites. This is where he says SiteCrafting was born. At a salary of 17,500 dollars he was not earning a huge amount from his job, but he enjoyed it. His work at the elementary was noticed and in 1998 he was hired on by Knowledge Universe in San Francisco for a year. In 2001 he opened up his first office for SiteCrafting in Tacoma.

                Over the years his team began to grow and grow. Hiring only people he felt could really benefit his company and whom he felt he could trust. He cares so much about his team that he even opened up new offices to meet their needs. When one of his lead designers had to move away to Spokane with his wife, Brian decided he could not lose this guy as it would hurt his business. So in 2009 he opened up a new office there, despite the criticism he received for doing it. Then in 2010 he opened up a branch in Seattle to accommodate the many employees he had commuting everyday for hours just to come into work in Tacoma. Being a web design business there really is no need to have more than one office, but he did it to keep up the moral of his employees. Plus in the end adding new branches did not hurt business.

                With today’s upcoming technology, he is expanding his website development to mobile devices. He figured it was a good market seeing how mobile devices are the new upcoming thing and mobile browsing has surpassed desktop browsing. One of his proud projects that he demonstrated in class was his mobile app for MultiCare. This app allows the user to view all the MultiCare facilities current urgent care wait times from their mobile device at once. Allowing them to make the best decision about which urgent care center to go to, by looking at the distance and current wait time. His team also made a wine tour app that connects every winery in the United States.

                Brain has come a long ways from starting in the 5th grade elementary class he taught to running a successful business that works with many well known companies. During his presentation he revealed his secrets to being a successful entrepreneur. 1. Take risks. You can’t accomplish something if you don’t first attempt it. 2. Invest yourself in the project. If you don’t take the necessary time to accomplish something how will it ever be finished? 3. Trust your team. Brian doesn’t just hire anyone off the street. He wants to be able to trust his employees to finish their work and do their best. 4. Deliver more. Show the client more then what is expected. 5. Make and keep bigger promises.   If you make a promise make sure it is one you can stick with to keep the trust of your client. Most of these secrets are well known to be general keys to success for entrepreneurs but I liked his idea of making and keeping big promises. Show the client that you are a unique developer and offer something that will offer them that wow factor.

New Business Idea and the Technology That Makes It Unique

The other day, while I was riding on the bus to school, I came up with a new business plan. I was sitting there wanting to do some programming on my laptop, but had little arm room to do so due to a packed bus. That’s when it came to me, you should be able to program on the iPad or some other tablet. A tablet is light, small, and able to be used in confined places. So when I got home I began researching. I found out that programming cannot be done right now on the iPad. It lacks the software needed to compile code. And since the iOS doesn’t let you look into its software, there are no apps that can simulate this. The closest apps there are to a programming one are a few text editors that aim towards programming languages.

                My vision is to create an app that simplifies coding on a tablet as well as offer IDE functionality that programmers love on their desktop and laptop counterparts. My app will solve the problem of using a touch keyboard to type by having customizable hot keys that will set up templates of code segments. Making it easy for the programmer to add a for loop by only having to worry about filling in the initial values, test case, and increment. The variable gets initialized and named according to what is already being used on automatically as well as the structure of the for loop. I will also give the app real time error detection for syntax errors. Programmers often forget to add a semicolon here or enter in a different punctuation mark without realizing it.

                Currently it seems that my biggest competitor is an app called Textastic. They offer an advanced code editor for the iPad that supports more than 80 languages, speedy and responsive editing, some forms of easy code auto-filling, and the ability to connect to a DropBox account as well as your PC or Mac. It is a lot to compete against, but my app will first focus directly on one language, most likely Java, at first making it less complex then their app and simpler to use. I hope by focusing on one language and not cluttering my app will appeal to those new to programming and those that don’t want to be confused by other languages. Textastic offers many neat features but they do not offer real time error detection like my app will. I believe this will give my app an advantage as even the most well developed programmer sometimes forgets to add a semicolon or hit a wrong key.

Visit from Erik Hanberg

Last week an Entrepreneur by the name of Erik Hanberg gave a guest speech in my Entrepreneurship class. His presentation touched on everything my last post about "what is an entrepreneur" talked about. This guy is a true entrepreneur. He was unhappy with his salary job so he left it in pursuit of running his own business. His wife quit her salary job at the same time to start her own design business. Erik then became a managing director of the Grand Cinema, which is a non profit theater. During his work their he came up with the dream of opening up his own for profit theater called the Horatio. Sadly, this dream ended up crashing down on him. But like a true entrepreneur, he did not let this stop him. He decided to, for the time being, help his wife with her business and in his free time started writing. He said he was happy with where he is right now as he is away from the stress of always being monitored and also being able to "sleep in on Tuesdays." They have been on many vacations in the past few years and seem to be enjoying their freedom to stop work when they want and then pick it back up later.  Writing seems to be a passion of Erik's as he has written 3 novels so far. At first sales of his first book were not taking off, but as he published the one more book after another he noticed that when one was bought the buyer often found their way to his other books. This caused his book sales to increase making it a decent amount of his total income. By not giving up he is proving to be a successful writer and at the rate his sales are going the more books he publishes the more money he will pull in. Listening to his story made me realize being an Entrepreneur is not for me, at least for right now. But I did start thinking about finishing the stories I started a year ago. Probably working on them in my free time away from my salary job. The idea of a secure income sounds more to my taste as I don't have any extreme dreams I want to chase at the moment.

What is an entrepreneur?

I read an article on Entrepreneurship today by the authors Reggie

Aggarwal and Mark Esposito. It was very enlightening to what an

Entrepreneurship has to deal with. They explain that being an

Entrepreneur is more then a job title, it is a way of life. They

describe it as a very risky job path but very rewarding to the

individual.They say it is especially hard to be a technology

entrepreneur and that many successful entrepreneurs have failed at one

time. They give out some interesting facts that may discourage many

that have dreams of being an entrepreneur. This is not to scare people

out of being an entrepreneur but more to prepare them for chance of

failure. A true entrepreneur will face this risk head on because they

are motivated for some reason or another. The idea of creating

something useful out of nothing is a strong desire for many people.

Especially if it is something that will solve a currect problem in the

market. This may not always strike the entrepreneur rich but it often

will build long-term value which is important too. The freedom to

freely conduct your business and be your own boss is also a strong

desire by many entrepreneurs. Not having someone watching over your

shoulder monitoring your work is a great stress relief to some people.

But if you are going to be your own boss, you have to be strongly self

motivated so work actually gets done. As I said earlier failure is

something that is often faced and an Entrepreneur must not be afraid

of it, be prepared for it, and able to move past it. The authors say

this ability to face challenges without fear enables success where

others would actually fail. So from this reading iv learned that an

entrepreneur must have the courage to start a project, self motivation

to continue with it and finish it, and be able to face failure if it

happens and move on towards success in the future.

Three General Business Ideas

My first business idea is creating a way to bring back players who have quit Massively Multiplayer Online games back to their favorite MMOs. MMOs are a big gaming industry and there are thousands upon thousands of different games.Each game can have thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of players and are constantly gaining new people. Each person whom plays a particular MMO adds the revenue of that games company, especially if it is a pay to play game. And vice versa for every person who quits causes that company to loose money. I propose the idea of
bringing those who have quit a particular MMO back to the game by employing an nostalgia factor. In todays advertisements only focus on basic details about the game that dont really bring back memories of why the person used to play that particular game. My services would be to figure
out the unique or special aspects of a particular game that keep the players coming back to it. Then using graphics, music, clips, and videos combining all these aspects into a visual advertisement that brings nostalgia to the watcher and makes them want to pick up playing that MMO again thus increasing the Companies revenue.

My second business idea is MMORPG consultation. Thousands of companies are jumping on the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game bandwagon but most have the same feel when it comes to game play. You slay monsters, do quests, work with other players, and collect game money. Because of this many people who love MMOs get bored fast and go from game to game looking for that WOW factor. My services will include gathering information on all current MMORPGs and figuring out what makes them unique. This could be the graphics, leveling system, quests, cinematics, etc. Then offer to consult with companies before they make their game using this information to build upon their current ideas to create a successful game that offers that WOW factor.

My third business idea is a bakery based around todays internet fads. With the use of the internet many videos, funny pictures, and other things get spread around all over on image boards, social networks, emails. Just the meantion of some of these icons in a crowd of people who frequently use the internet will be recognized. They are being used as puns in jokes, ice breakers in conversations, and even ways of meeting strangers. Merchandise of these internet fads are already all over hiting malls, online shops, and even convenience stores. My services would be to customize bakery orders for people around these internet fads as well as have an open bakery that sells a certain amount of these icons on cookies, cakes, brownies, and other pastry and baked goods which makes them unique as well as aiming towards current fads.