Don't Let Your Dreams Be Memes

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 ...

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 busine...

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 compan...