Don't Let Your Dreams Be Memes

Although Mission Statement and Vision Statement are vital components of any company that often together, they are by themselves distinctly different. From a little research, what I’ve found is that a mission statement focuses on today and what the company is trying to achieve and how to achieve it. Vision statement on the other hand, should focus on where the organization sees itself in the future; what is the goal and ambitions of the company that will attract people and how will those contribute to society. Although both are quite abstract, mission statement is often more specific in talking about the do’s and how’s whereas vision statement is about hopes, goals, and changes. As I look at these two from these perspectives, I came up with some ideas for mission and vision statement for my business idea company. These ideas really have to do with thinking about what I really wanted the company to do, what kind of scope am I envisioning it, and what values are important to this type o

Being a service-based business, there aren’t that many things that are considered intellectual property that need to be protected. The only thing that I can come up as being closest to needing intellectual property is the copyrights to the business’s website code.   The code is used to create the business’s property and is part of the company’s property. Although not directly belonging to the intellectual property zone, securing a domain name that closely resembles the business name is also a must we are trying to run our service orders through online website. As far as the business model goes, it is a market full of similar service, hence similar business models. Getting a copyright to a business model that everyone knows about is not very beneficial. However, I think the business will have a good number of trade secrets including distribution methods, customer profiles, and advertising methods. As the business aims to gain reputation through advertising agreements with local stores

In class, we had a lecture and discussion about the history of the dot.com to dot.bomb era, where the market was full of a hype and rush of new tech companies that ended in a bust of   closures and bankruptcies. The lecture was a supplement to the ‘Startup.com’ documentary, which shows the story of two young entrepreneurs’ startup company during this era. Although funny yet interesting enough, Andrew the analogy of uh.. aging dinosaurs to represent the race between tech companies during the dot.com era, and their quest to be ahead of technology and the market. Dinosaurs CompuServe, Prodigy, Yahoo, and AOL, all of which were the big names during that time, who through how much do those names ring any bell (or at all) to us students, went through series of booms and bust in their developments. The era was full of insanity!! Investors were diving into throwing their money out there in hopes of making profits to companies full of (false/nonexistent) promises. As technology boom was n

Shadrach White is the CEO of CloudPWR, who we had the opportunity to hear from as our final guest speaker. Shadrach started his vision around the year of 2010-2011 when he saw cloud computing as the next generation emerging technology that will be used widely. Too much of his back then business partners’ disagreement, who did not see cloud computing the same way as he does, Shadrach  left his old company and started what is now CloudPWR. Not only did he prioritize something that not a lot of people see then, Shadrach also has a different targeted market than majority of tech companies—government sector. He believes that this market is approachable, despite the fact that the government sector did not buy into cloud computing due to security risks at the time, and that if he were able to make connections, then it’ll be easier in the future to continue expanding his business in this market. And it sure did, Shadrach’s company to this date is working with at least 100 clients around Wa

John Dimmer is a friend of Andrew, and also one of the original founders of Free Range Media. John started his talks with his background in finance (although he at first wanted to be a professional golfer), which was something he feels as being his best skill. He had experience working for a bank and finance person at businesses that he was part of.  Despite his strong background in finance, John also dealt with operations at Free Range Media. One of the two main advices that John gave for entrepreneurs was: learn basics of accounting and financing—work well when dealing with money especially in contracts and agreements. John mentioned the importance of hiring legal counsel so that you wouldn’t need to panic over legal matters. The other main advice that John gave was to choose investors wisely. He laid out the order of investors that a new startup business should go through: self-funding, family an friends, Angels, Venture Capital.  The most memorable thing that I could remember fro

To decide the prices for our business’s service, I looked at some of the popular nation-wide delivery services and their pricing. For example Amazon charges its members $15/month on top of a $8.25-$10.25/month Prime subscription, which eventually is a $23-$25 for their grocery delivery service. Assuming an average consumer spends 3-4 grocery trips every month, that’d be between $6.25-$8 per trip.   Vons is also another grocery delivery service, whose parent company is Safeway, offers same-day delivery. For purchases of $150 or more, Vons charges $9.95 for their delivery service. For purchases less than $150, the price goes up to $12.95. This company’s service pricing is obviously much higher than Amazon and what our business anticipated. However, it also proves that there are business models out there that can still profit off much higher pricing in exchange for the convenience that they offer. For being a local business with the advantage of time and place convenience (whi

Brian Forth is the CEO and Co-Founder of SiteCrafting, a web-based application development company that started right here in Tacoma.  Brian talked about how the idea of his startup started around the time when business websites were booming and the fact that he was one of the very few locals that were able to provide web development services, gave him the opportunity to start his company. The most surprising fact about Brian’s company throughout its 20 years so far in business is that he never had a marketing team—besides himself. This goes to prove that business can succeed through ear-to-ear networking based off the quality of the delivered products. As impressive as it is, we were also advised to not take the idea of not having a marketing team as part of our Business Plan. Additionally, one thing that impressed me the most was Brian’s genuine passion to help people through his company and what they do by providing high quality services and supporting local and small businesses

Mr. Rob Coons, who is the Co-founder & CEO of Scout Military Discounts, delivered a presentation about his life as an entrepreneur for our class. One of the very first things that Rob made is that: to be a successful entrepreneur, one needs to know how to play the home games—knowledge of self will take on further in their career. Learning that Rob was passionate about running businesses, I think that he really meant what he said: to really know what you are good and not good at, so that you can play the home field advantage and be successful by emphasizing on your specific skills. For me, Rob was the first guest speaker that really talked more in-depth about the obstacles that he had to face and overcome in order to be where he is now. He brought up the event where an investor pulled the plug right before their product was ready to go on the market. The lack of funding at the crucial moment was a heavy set back.  Although his current product is still in development, his company th

We had the opportunity to  have Mr. Erik Hanberg as a guest speaker, coming in to talk and share about his experience being an entrepreneur. He talked about how the idea of being an entrepreneur started when the idea of having a business running without him being there while working as the director at a local theater. Erik acknowledged as much as the idea was motivating his passion to become entrepreneur, it was also dangerous as it takes away one’s motivation to work for others. I think one of the most common asked question among us students was: how did he overcome the fear of failure should he failed to obtain success from being entrepreneur. His answer was obviously from his little idea while working at the theater; on top of that, around that same time, his wife was also having success earning income by being an entrepreneur, and that gave him inspiration as well as guidelines to start his journey. Mr. Hanberg’s first talking point is that to be an entrepreneur, we’d need to prac

Coding Review/Mentoring As a CS student who only started learning about coding since freshman year of college and had to mostly learn coding styles, standards, and conventions on my own through classes (which I also feel that majority of CS students go through the same process), I feel that aren’t many resources established around school campuses that are dedicated to helping students learn these useful fundamentals. When it comes to English writing classes, there are writing centers, tutoring, even paper review services that are available to help students improve their writing skills. In the same way for coding, I think a business that aims to help students improving their coding skills, reviewing their codes, and giving feedback can be something that’s extremely helpful at the same time profitable. Obviously, the business idea is limited to the marketplace of only college students and younger adults. On top of that, CS programs around the local area are very strict on academic int

Although I never had an intention to be an entrepreneur or starting my own business, I still wanted to take this class to explore this career path that many people have often found it successful enough to pursue.  Another reason why I chose this class is because it focuses on entrepreneurship opportunities through the tech industry. As a student in the field, I’d like to learn about how and when to take advantage of certain types of emerging technology, so that I can make better career path choice with better chance of success. I’d like to learn about the process of running a business: dealing with taxes, legal obligations, marketing, expanding business, etc. Although it is very unlikely that I’d need or use these skills, I’d still like to know them to better prepare my portfolio, to deal with situations in future work, and maintain professional life. Knowing the process of running a business does not only benefit the business owner, it can also benefit those who work in the business,