Guest Speaker: Jim Kastama

Jim came in to speak to our class with a focus on innovation.  He had been a senator for many of the last few years and just recently began his own business.  He explained how innovation (the term at least) has been overused in the last few years and should really be thought of as problem solving.  This kind of thought was somewhat new to me.  I had always thought of innovation as being close to invention.

One of the major things he discussed was the importance of networking.  As with our previous guest speakers we get reminded again and again and again that in order to be a successful business owner networking is a crucial element.  He also mentioned something i had never heard of, the balance scorecard.  This is essentially an evaluation tool for a company to help keep their focus balanced.  I would love to use this in my own company and will research it.

Guest Speaker: Kendall

Something that I had not considered when I started thinking of my company was where we will be and will I want to stay there.  Mr. Kendall helped me realize the importance of business location.  His focus was local economy and expanded that same theory out into our nations economy.  Since I am not a 7-11 or something that sells good exclusively to my county/city I found this talk particular interesting.

I am looking to go into the business of selling a product online and would assume the vast majority of my sales would come from out of the state.  Would my business keeping its roots in Washington make it a better place? would it make it more desirable to other business? do I need Washington to make my business better? I have no idea.  I love where I live (which is why I live here) but a large focus of my business is outdoors and we all know the weather isn't that favorable for that kind of activity.  Of course, I could find the silver lining in this and try and use the weather to my advantage, since not many people are doing what I do in the rain maybe I will find some kind of untapped market!  I doubt it, but it is a thought....

The Technology Entrepreneur’s Guidebook

This guidebook proved to have quite a few useful tidbits of information.  It gave some great insight on starting up a tech business and being a beginner entrepreneur.  Some of the more eye opening parts of it were how few high tech business end up in an IPO and how long it takes for those companies to succeed.  I suppose I still had the idea that you can get big over night (maybe remnants of the dot-com boom) and that if you had a good idea you could get the business going and succeed.

I am not too sure I agree with the guidebook in some aspects, like the longevity thing.  Of course, I see the benefit of having a business model that holds up long term but I think I could argue that in today's technology market it is not a bad idea to have a "one and done" type product.  A quick example would be an app, spend like 2-5 years doing apps and by that time it could become the case that apps are like websites.  super easy to create and there are so many options for templates that anyone could do it and make it look relatively unique.

Since we cannot predict the market (as much as we think we can)  I don't think it is fair to say that a tech business can have a long term plan that doesn't need to adapt and change over time.