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.