Guest Speaker - Erik Hanberg

     Erik Hanberg came and spoke to us in class last Thursday. Like from Derek's presentation, I learned a great deal about the life of an entrepreneurship. Erik has experience in nonprofits, business, and government. He was elected on the Metro Parks of Tacoma. Erik's diverse background reminds me of how diverse I want to be in my career. I have interests in law, finance, and technology. I have to find a job/business that helps me experience all of these interests.

    One of the things that Erik said was something that I've heard many times in life was that it's better to finish something than to start that. He also said that when running a business, if you lose passion or have no excitement about it, that would be the time to leave. I forgot to ask him but I wanted to hear his perspective on how you balance these two ideas. What if you're about to launch/ship but you lose interest or you're in the middle of process of developing the idea. What my compromise was when pursuing an idea/having thoughts about do so, jot down why you want to pursue the idea - mini business plan - is there a market. is your product unique. And if that convinces you, take a shot at it and see what happens. You can always learn from failure.

    Another thing that Erik said was to know your audience. What I took away was that when I start a business, I will pay a lot of attention of attention to product forums. I would want my future business to be customer centric.

 

Extra Credit - Startup.Com

     Startup.com is about three men, Kaleil Tuzman, Tom Herman, and Chieh Cheung who come together and start a dot com company, Govworks.com. Govworks.com was a site where people can visit to pay city fines, taxes, and user fees. Like many other companies during the dotcom era, the company's pitch and aspirations were too over hyped. When Kaleil pitched the product to investors Kaleil often emphasized that this was a 600 million dollar market. Govworks.com reminded me of the 2011 NFL Eagles team whose own backup quarterback, Vince Young, declared a Dream Team

     Startup.com did have success. Govworks.com grew to 200 employees and 50 million in cash. Kaleil started becoming famous, appearing in magazines, and even meeting up with/ handing President Clinton a business card. However not everything was uphill. Kaleil had a battle with his co founder Tom about Tom wanting to be a CO-CEO. Tom was eventually forced out of the company. This really opened my eyes to the risks of starting a business with a friend. When I talk ideas with friends, my friends typically get excited about the idea and want to quickly implement. We never think about the possible damage getting a business can do to our personal relationship.

     The third partner walked away from the company after selling his shares. Andrew in class pointed how this was similar to the Winkelevoss twins and how they were able to get Facebook equity after a legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg. From the Winkelevoss story, if I were to get involved in a business idea with others, I should try to ensure good relations with the founders so if there's mutual agreement to leave, there won't be major disputes over equity.

Guest Speaker Post - Derek Young

       Derek Young was our guest speaker on Thursday. He talked a great deal about his entrepreneurial and work experience. After college Derek Young found a job, like a great deal of the rest of us, but still found a way to keep side projects going. This is definitely something that I thought over in the past few months - balancing a financially stable but time consuming 40 hour job with time to pursue ideas.

        Derek talked about having knowledge in IT, marketing, and finance. In my mind, I believe diversifying in general is a strength - whether its in the stock market, or basketball/football. Coaches value player's versatility in that they can play more than one position. Working in information technology, if you develop yourself in finance, you may find solutions that people in finance wouldn't(they don't have your perspective)

       I was the most interested when Derek spoke of the apps/businesses he created. One that accord struck with me is the website he was involved that helped organize workplace sports. I love watching/playing sports. This was definitely something that I want to do in the future - combining my passion for software development and sports(wish I was professional at this). Derek even mentioned a time when the site was down and their got paid $15,000 for fixing the issue. This helped resonate the opinion that if I combine my passions, I could a product that would have financial success.

      Derek also gave valuable advice on being an entrepreneur in general. One was that even if an idea wets the bed or isn't a hit, you can still learn from that experience and apply those lessons toward future ideas. Another one was coming up with a name for a business. Derek talked about he would create a mind map on a whiteboard of things that have to do with the business and start connecting words until he found something he liked.

     Derek also mentioned that some of the companies/ideas he pursued started off as problems he solved in everyday life. He didn't have the a goal of a business in the end.  He thought that people would find these tools helpful and would use them. This reminded me of Andrew Sutherland, Quizlet founder. Andrew created Quizlet initially as a way of studying for a French test. He later realized that Quizlet would be a tool/service that many people would use.

      Thanks Derek for coming and sharing your wisdom/experiences.

Three Business ideas

Three Business Ideas

1. Adoption app for cats/dogs that are about to be put down. (Tinder like app maybe) I was reading this one day - https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics and felt like 1.2 million was too many. If people knew that these animals were about to put down, perhaps more of them could be saved.  To implement this idea, I was thinking in the lines of having a Tinder like style where you could swipe through these pets. Or even perhaps, having all the pets in a grid that you can navigate through.


2. American Idol but for local artists. I did watch the show for a but thought that there must have been a lot of undiscovered talent in this nation - DJs, singers, etc. Only a handful of them make it big on Youtube/ win the American Idol. This would be a way to discover and see who your local artists are, support them etc, help them achieve their dreams. For monetization, I thought of Spotify's monthly membership subscription model but that should only be considered once we reach a certain user base.


3. When reading news, it's hard to get a sense of where something it happened. People are more invested in news that happen closer to them. This would be a news platform that aggregate stores/maybe get them users and displays them on a map with the user(Waze like). In terms of monetization, I was thinking maybe also have ads on the platform from different retailers when you get close to the store. For ads, you only receive ads from retailers you follow.