John Dimmer Visit

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 from his visit was that every time your business raises capital, you essentially are losing equity. To think about it, I think it is very reasonable as investors look to gain profit from their investments, hence the more you try to raise capital, the more investors you’ll have taking away your equity. This further reenact the importance of finding the right investors as well as working partners. Another takeaway that I’d definitely keep in mind was John’s advise to file new startup companies as LLC. He recommended against S-corporation and C-corporation as those’d often be taxed more as well as requiring a bigger and more structured business. I think his presentation was incredibly informative, giving somewhat of a "be realistic" side of running a business (especially with finances) and technical terms that new entrepreneurs should be aware of.