Guest Speaker: Graham

We had the pleasure of having Graham speak to us about building a business.  His focus was on how to develop a business model canvas.  We went through the process during a demonstration.  I was not familiar with this practice and was skeptical at first.  Once he explained its usefulness and we began filling it out I saw that it could be a very powerful tool for evaluating your business.

The part of the demonstration that I found most useful was evaluating where your money is coming from and where you cost is.  When you try and break that down it gives you a great sense of how difficult it will be to make significant profit.  I know it sounds simple but simply thinking about cost/revenue and actually trying to write down what it will be are two very different things.

He also gave some advice that really stuck with me, he said that everyone underestimates their cost and overestimates their profit.  That is something I will certainly keep in mind.

Guest Speaker: Erik Hanberg

Erik spoke about being an entrepreneur recently and gave a ton of great advice.  I felt like the most valuable info he gave was how he (and his wife) decide on whether or not to take a job.  He said they put it through a set of three questions, if the answer is yes for 2/3 then they go ahead and do it.  Those questions were:

1. Is it something you want to do? (will you enjoy doing it)
2. Will you be compensated how you want? (is the pay good)
3. Will it better your career? (will it improve the standing of the company)

He also had some good advice on how to deal with running a physical business vs an online one.  since I am considering both I found that particularly helpful.  It was also good to hear that I am not alone in my struggle with procrastination, haha.

Startup.com... Whoa!

This was a very interesting documentary, a real must see for anyone looking to start a business.  The biggest thing I took away from it was how relationships can change when you go into business with others, especially with friends.  I know that I am considering going into business with 2 of my friends (similar to the film, ha) and could see a lot of the problems that came up with them a potential problem for us.

Overall they seemed to adapt pretty well to how quickly they grew, so I believe there are some good lessons to be learned there.  Ultimately they could not keep up with the competition and deliver a solid (up to date) product and crumbled down into nothingness.  A good lesson in putting the right people in the right spots

Finally, what the heck was up with the break in?

3 Business Ideas

1.)  YouTube Media Group

    I like this idea for many reasons, the main one being that I already make a profit from posting YouTube videos.  There is very little up front cost on this project, since I already have camera equipment and editing software.  The idea would be to make a few different channels; fitness, gaming, math, programming, nature, extreme sports, music.  The basic plan for each is education.  The majority of videos that would be put up would be "How To" videos or reviews of products.  There is always a market out there for education the main issue will be how to make our videos better than the other ones that are already out there since there are a lot.

2.) Indoor Skate Park

    This is something I have always wanted to do.  This would be a labor of love with little (if any) profit.  The major pros that this idea has going for it is the competition.  The closest indoor skate park is in Bellevue, over an hour away from Olympia.  I have been skateboarding for most of my life and know I could set one up better than any I have seen, that includes the business model and actual layout of the skate park.Since there is a pretty large skateboarding community in Olympia Crowd-funding would be my obvious choice to get the project going.

3.) Fitness App with Unique Equipment

    I really like this idea and I think it would be really fun to develop and create.  The basic idea for the app is a video game that require you to exercise to level your character. Lets say you want an agile character like a rogue or archer or something, well then you better start running/biking/rowing (anything cardio).  If you want a warrior or tank? better start pumping that iron.  We would track all of their exercise through GPS or with a special weight that would have a motion sensor(or whatever it would take to track movement) embedded in it.  Funding for this could be the biggest issue.

Class Expectations

Before signing up for the class I had very few expectations.  I assumed we would maybe get some insight on building a website or starting the foundation for a company all of which would be based on a template out of some book.  After the first day of class, my expectations have certainly changed.  The professor's experience is much greater than I expected.  The man has truly been there and done that.

Do I think I have what it takes to build my own empire?  Maybe. One of my expectations is to gain the knowledge on how to begin the process.  I am hoping to learn some things that can not be easily found online about starting your own business.  I expect to learn some good information on funding, like dealing with investors and other alternative funding methods (crowd-funding/family/loans).  I am also expecting to get some feedback on why or why not my ideas are good/bad.

I am expecting to have a plan set in place for how to structure my company and how to move forward with starting it.  I want to have the model for the company finished and have the people I am interested in working with make a decision on whether or not they are on board. It would also be great if we had a couple different funding options/plans laid out by the end of the quarter.