Janeen Terrano - High Tech VS Low Tech

Janeen Terrano, the founder of Topia Technology visited our class on Tuesday.  Her achievement in technology industry is extremely impressive.  A small software development company moved from 0 to 3 million dollars in 18 month with government contract and survive from the Dot Com bubble impact.  A 37 employee company created a cutting edge technology product that out beat hundreds of IBM software engineers, and earned federal contract from US Army intelligence Security Command.  More surprising is that Janeen does not have any technology education background to start her enterprise.  Instead, she is humble and open minded person with great vision.  Which is probably what bring her success. 

Topia is a "High Tech" company.  I was very surprise to hear her definition of "Low Tech"- anything withing browser.  Moving beyond browser is whats define "High Tech" and cutting edge technology.  It is a very interesting concept and is quite simple yet complicate at the same time.  From what I understand, she and her company is trying to create a brand new infrastructure whiten cloud to solved network computing problems.  She also mentioned the simplicity for user is their focus.  I also really like the advice she gave to as on creating business model "Speak to your customer directly to find out your business model, not your investor"  I admire this kind of attitude, and I believe this is what bring Topia success.                                                               
         

STARTUP.COM - The Dot Com Bubble

Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and In May of 1999, they made their dream a reality and opened Govworks.com, a Web-based firm devoted to helping people deal more efficiently with local governments (it began as a notion to pay parking tickets online). Govworks.com soon exploded, going from a one ...Tom Herman, 2 business college student and good friend started their dream together in May 1999 to create a web based company call GovWorks.com.  The company was designed to target $600 billion market space in providing online access to help people deal with governments.  In less than one year,  govWorks going from one room office with few staffs to over 200 employee and over $50 million company value.  In April 2000, the competitor EzGov launched its website ahead based on the same business model.  By end of the year 2000, company had nearly layoff all its employee.  Finally, in January 2001, govWorks was sold to First Data and the dot com bubble for govWorks has burst and came to its end.

This documentary was not so much about business development and strategy, neither includes any technical development process as I was hoping to see and find out how Dot Com Boom impact small start up technology companies, and how business survive or what caused its failure.  However, looking at two main characters' story, I can certainly feel the enthusiast and craziness of technology entrepreneurs at that time.  It was almost can be called 19th century gold rush, and the Dot Com boom was that gold Mine.  Many people like Tom and Kaleil, spent all they have to pursue their dream and do whatever it takes to find that gold.  Unfortunately, this gold rush didn't last long enough, and before you know it, the Dot Com bobble burst.

Aside of govWorks.com, looking at Kaleil and Tom's story makes me wondering if partnering with friend for business is a good idea.  Every time when there is money involved, it's always end up business only.  Look at their third partner Keith, he basically didn't do anything for company and end up good return from the company.  He said it loud and clear, its all about money.  Kaleil and Tome had express their friendship and love to each other almost through out entire movie until the end when the company went side way.  Their story brings out my memory about the business experience of my grand father, my father and my uncle.  Each of them had their own business and all of them involved with their friends.  Not surprising, non of those "friends" are still maintaining contact before or after their business partnership.  If you really serious about your friendship, don't go in to a business with them

Dot.com to Dot.bomb

Professor Andrew Fry using his own experience to talk about the history of Dot Com Boom from beginning to its end. There are five stages through out the whole dot com period.  1. An innocent beginning. 2. Boom. 3. Insanity. 4. Bust. 5. The crawl back to sanity and Bonus stage.  During the 15 years of dot com period, there are huge amount of new technology companies starts its business and failed at the end when dot com busted.  Many new company founders and investors had made them rich by following this dot com train ride.  And many of them also end up losing business and bankruptcy.
In Andrew's speech, he used plastic dinosaurs to visualize major technology companies that plays important role of leading this dot com revolution.  During the year 1992 to 1995, there was only abut 40 web sites on the Internet and most of them are government and research related message board like web pages.  When Internet started to take off around 1993, company like Microsoft, CompuServ, Spry INC, and free Range Media captured the opportunities of the power of the Internet to start the dot com market and revolution.  Professor Andrew Fry, the founder of the Free Range Media, presented Internet market potential in the 2nd annual conference of the World Wide Web project.  At the time, HTTP is only 2 years old.  By the year of 1995, many companies has follow the Internet market to create all kinds of web access.  In 1996, the dot com boom has began.  From 1996 to 1999,  AOL took charge and bought CompuServ.  The Infospace went to public, and it worth more than Boeing at the time.  However, it all comes to the end during the year of 2000 and 2001.  Many big companies such as Exodus Communication, DrKoop.com, FreeZone, Luminant Worldwide closed it's door and declares bankruptcy.  In year 2002, after Amazon posted a profit report, Internet job market starts to rebound. Google went public in year 2005, and Venture capital also rebounds.
Dot Com period was a crazy and exciting time for technology industry.  What will be the next technology revolution is the question to many people.                      

Congressman Adam Smith - The Rise of The Rest

Congressman Adam Smith came to class to talk about global economic and technology industry.  It was very interesting and informative to hear from political point of view.  He pointed out the critical issue we are facing with global economic changing dramatically in the past 20 years, and raise the sense of urgency for American to be ready to compete with the rest of world.  American has strong capital market and stable government as foundation to compete with other countries in global economic.  However, we are so used to the way we dominated the world economic in the past, and not realize that we are no longer dominate technology industry.  He purpose that changing government policy will be the key to prepare US market to be ready to compete.  The policies includes Education, Energy, and Stability for people. He specifically mentioned that in order to create stability for people, we will need to reform our health care and retirement policy, changing our "Old" Tax code to be more suitable for currently economic, and finally, continue to improve education policy to create higher education opportunities for everyone.  It is a long and difficult road.  However, we all need to realize that the change must be made in order to compete with the rest of the world.                           

A Sensible Approach To Writing A Good Business Plan

Mark Jauquet clearly explain the format and contents of a good business plan should include several pars; Executive Summary, Company Description, Market Size, Technology Description, Competition, Sales/Revenue generation, Finances, and Management. It is very important to capture investors attention and interest before going into any detail about your business, which makes executive summary a very critical part of your business plan.  I guess "short and sweet" is the key to a good executive summary.  If investor like the short and sweet idea, then we can start to talk about what the company does and another most important key point- where is the money market for them.  After all, the business plan is a sales proposal for your idea.  Investor need to know how much your idea cost and how much it is worth.  No one will buy anything that does not have price or value attach to it.  In order to increase the value of your business idea and make it more appeal, the supporting point such as Technology Description, Competition and Management plays important roll here.  Investor like to know what exactly your company do and what type of technology you invent or apply.  Mark also point out that in the Management description, it is important to show investor that how enthusiastic you and your team are for the new business, and how much will you be willing to sacrifice for the success.  If a investor is welling to gamble on you, I am sure they want to know if you are willing to take risk as they are and be on the same boat with them.  The last, money talk is probably the most important fact for the success of the business plan.  Your sales and revenue prediction has direct impact of investor's decision.  No money no talk, the golden rule of the business.   

John Dimmer - Where can you get money for your business

John Dimmer came to class to talk about how to raise funding for business.  As a angle investor with finance education background and lots of banking industrious and business investing experience, John has shared many valuable knowledge with us on how to seek your funding for creating a new business.  He basically narrowed it down to 3 main resource for collecting funding, yourself or family and friend, Venture Capital and Angle investor.  It is not a surprise to hear that we should start with ourselves and people who relay to or close to us because they are the people who more than likely to really care about you and not just their own pocket.  It is also very interesting to know some difference between V C and Angle investor, and some "dark site" about them.  Of course, it is all about business, and business world can be brutal sometimes.  I am really glade that we have chance to hear the voice from real investors such as John Dimmer about what they think and how they work to invest a new created business.  Another thing I learn from John's speech and his own experience is that all investors regardless of VC, Angle investor or your rich uncle Bob, they all started from presenting their own business idea and raise their funding form other investors.  Everybody had their turned to ask for money to make them success, and eventually they become investor for others.  Maybe now is our turn to ask for the money.          

Business Funding

Where can I get money to start my business? Well, $ 5,000 from my own pocket is probably how much I can put into my investment to start.  Of course, its probably not going to last long.  Other than myself, first person who pop into my mind is my father.  My father is some what wealthy.  As long as I can convince him with my business idea, he should be able to help me out or at least "loan" me the money.  Also, since my business idea involves with software and system design, the beginning funding does not require whole lot.  However,  I will need to find at least two partners who has skills in either software developing or marketing and are welling to invest their time, knowledge and money into this newly created business together because the project idea is defiantly require a team with multiple strength to accomplish it.  Of course, my partners will have their share of the company depends on how much they can invest.  Overall, combine with my $5,000, my father's $20,000 to 30,000 and another $5,000 from each of my partners together, total will probably be around $35.000 to $45.000 more or less.  I will still owns more than 50% of the company.  This will probably be the best scenario to start for me.               

Brian Forth - Employees Are Your Family

Brian Forth, technology business founder and owner of consistence growing company, gave us a different example of entrepreneurship.  He jumped into his field with the vision of web developing technology at the right time in late 90s.  Even though web and application development are compliantly different from his education background, with his vision, courage and help form others, he started a successful web design company.  Which once again proof the importance of acquiring help and using people well.  Then he continue growing his company and stay in the market through .com bust and economic recession.  The 2 most important key points I learn from him are Service Oriented and Company Culture.  I believe these two key points played important roll of staying alive through difficult time and continue growing.  A simple " We will answer your call" as a advertising title says it all.  Offering a great product is one thing, without good customer service and support, customer will not stay.  In his company, everyone is sales and customer service representative.  Everybody is involve with company's growth.  This quality not only attract customers, it also creates a great moment of market developing for company's growth.  Company Culture is also an unique and important quality of his management concept.  Company takes care of employee and employee takes care of company.  Like one big family, everyone doing his part to make sure family stays strong.  This kind of company culture really creates a bound between employee and organization.  Although, I am not sure if I will totally agree with his open book policy.  Even within family, money seems to always be the toughest subject to deal with. When money issue is involved, it could still tear a family a part.  He also gave us a couple of advice from examples of the mistake they made in the past.  " Don't see star in your eyes" and "Stay focus with what you know".  Over confident could really lead to a painful price.  Good advice.                             

Ron Kornfeld - Need money to make more money

Our second guess speaker Ron Kornfeld gave us a first taste about what the business plan about.  I narrow it down to 3 categories from his presentation.  1. How to create your business idea.  2. How to make plans for your business idea.  3.  How to sale your idea.  About creating a business idea, he mentioned that people need to be a little crazy.  The word "crazy" refer to creativity, thinking out side of the box with lots of courage.  It is true that many things we have nowadays people used to believe that it is impossible.  He also present great guidelines of how to make a business plan and using many different techniques such as 5 steps program to create a business proposal.  Then he used many examples to describe pros and cons on how to sale your idea and plan to potential investors.  With strong marketing and business developing background, Ron is all about business.  For any entrepreneur, unless you are already very wealthy, before you can sale your products or services, you will need to give what it takes to sale your business plan first, because you will need money to make more money.

5 Business Ideas

1. IT consulting and computer repair.  I do this everyday.
2. Online sales on eBay and Craigslist.  Turning garbage into gold.  Example: refurbished furniture, computers.
3. Wedding photographer and video.  Create my own website for advertising.
4. Roof and gutter cleaning business.  It's a pain for most people.  I will do it for you.
5. Senior citizen service.  Include grocery delivery, transportation, house care and pet care.

Erik Hanborg - Good Example for Beginner

Erik Hanborg is a great example for people who want to become an entrepreneur.  As he described, he didn't start as an entrepreneur in his career.  In fact, he taught himself to become an entrepreneur through his earlier career in Grand Cinema.  Although, he had to pay for some painful price, and once again, he proved that being your own boss in technology world is not an easy task, he then learned from mistakes and become a successful entrepreneur doing things he enjoy to do.  This is a good motivation for me especially after reading the Entrepreneur Guide Book about the successful rate and its price to be an entrepreneur.  In his speech, he presented many great key points as definitions and guide lines for becoming an entrepreneur, such as, be a starter, enjoy the work, making connections, acquiring help and always be a student.  These key points, really doesn't sounds too complicate or hard to do.  However, for many people include me, while in pursuing goals, we just don't realize these key points, or simply just forget to do it.  Over all, I think the most important message I got from Erik's speech is that no matter what you like to do and how you want to do for your career, just do it.               

 

Entrepreneurship

After reading the first paragraph about the five failure facts, my first impression about entrepreneurship is like someone who walks into a casino with only a few changes in the pocket, and expecting to walk out there with big bags of cash in a very short time.  You know the odds are against you, and resource is very limited.  To me, as a non gambler, it just doesn’t seem to be logical.  However, I missed a big point.  The first sentence in the article, “Entrepreneurship is a way of life” says it all.  Becoming an entrepreneur requires certain personalities and believes which makes it unique from ordinary business owner and gives them a bigger advantage to achieve greater success.  Every business has risks, sometimes great success comes with greater responsibilities and bigger risk.  As author described, the outcome is important, however, being an entrepreneur is not just about the results.  The process of achieving gals is what’s defining Entrepreneurship.  This process reminds me one of my former employers, a crab boat captain on Bering Sea once told me that “People knows fish taste good, but not everyone can be a fishing man.  A true fishing man calls his boat “Home”.  It is not just a job; it is a way of life”.  Of course, I am not talking about how to be a fishing man.  The important point is that his attitude and believe makes him a successful person in his career.  In my humble opinion, I think this is a same kind of attitude and believe we should carry to learn how to become a true entrepreneur.                

Expectation from TINST 475

After being in the IT industry for a little over 3 years, experience has taught me that information technology is crucial to the majority of business.  Almost all companies use IT to some extent.  Employers rely on IT to make their business more effective and profitable. Most job functions require employees know the basics of IT.  In my opinion, as long as business is competitive there will be a need for IT. With that thought, I am hoping to learn the fundamental concepts of the relationship between information technology and the business market, and gain skills in creating IT business opportunities.  Hopefully in the near future, I can apply the knowledge I learn from TINST 475 to the real business world and create my own IT company.