Skip to main content

Guest Speaker: Brian Forth


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 with their best effort as much as larger business clients. Another emphasis that Brian brought up was the importance of workplace values and cultures. These do not only come on paper, but also in practice for Brian’s company. For example: his company’s office does not divide people based on their titles or positions, but rather having everyone in the same big room to encourage teamwork, collaborations, and sharing of ideas.  I think for the size of his company (~36 people if I recall correctly), the culture is very creative and makes the workplace more interactive and exciting. There were two things that I mainly took from Brian’s visit: business besides from bringing in profits, is also about putting your best effort and delivering the best possible products that you can make; workplace culture is also important in bringing people that you want to work with and creating an environment in which everyone can contribute, feel being part of the team, and shape the company’s dynamics.

x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pricing The Product/Service

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mission and Vision Statement

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dot.com to Dot.Bomb

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 w...
Post a Comment
Read more