Extra Credit - Burn Rate

Burn Rate was a very interesting read for me, a guy who is making no money yet spending money on his business. Burn Rate chronicles Michael Wolff's short lived career as an entrepreneur during the .com boom. I thought it was really interesting when Wolff starts to describe how the internet went from a place where nerds congregated to talk to one another to when people realized the internet could be used to make huge profits. One thing I didn't appreciate too much about the book was that it seemed to be rather gossipy about the businesses it mentioned but then again Wolff is a writer. But I did appreciate the Wolff seems to be stating facts not opinions in his writer, so he's really letting the ready make the own interpretations about what was going on with internet businesses during the 90s. As I said earlier, Wolff didn't take a salary when he realized he didn't have enough money to continue day to day operations. But before everything is lost, he takes what is owed to him thus effectively bankrupting his business. It's hard to get behind what he did because of all the employees he screwed over by doing this. It takes a certain guy to write a book like this, and when you're done reading it you'll completely understand why running his company did not work out well for Wolff. 

Extra Credit--Amazon Catalyst

Amazon came to campus today to discuss a grant program they have through UW's comotion labs called Amazon Catalyst. This was a great talk to attend because Amazon is looking to give $100,000 to entrepreneurs  with a "novel idea." This is very exciting because I of course think my company is a novel idea trying to solve a very serious problem. Besides learning about the grant, I also had the opportunity to talk to some of the kids in class I don't normally get to interact with. This was a blessing in disguise for me because since talking to a classmate about the project I'm working, I've been offered a desk at UW's Startup Hall because of a simple introduction which was made on my behalf from Tarik. I'm not sure what will come of the grant process. I will need to look more into what rights I'd be giving away to Amazon by signing on with them if I were to win this award. But none the less coming to this talk has already had a huge impact on the direction of my business. The application is due on the 26th of March, so about two weeks from now, but the application was designed to be filled out in one sitting so I'm not too worried about getting it done. 

Extra Credit-- startup.com documentary

Well, what is there to say about the documentary, Startup.com? Alot. The movie follows govworks.com, a company that was started during the .com boom, whose focus was to let people pay their traffic tickets and other state/federal fines online. The documentary starts off at the very beginning of the company's formation when Kaleil Tuzman quits his job at Goldman Sachs to start a company with his high school buddy, Tom Herman. Starting a business with a friend, what could go wrong? At first, not much at all. The company took off and raised 60 million dollars. But the company was built on bad programming practices and was not able to hold up at all when users tried to get online and use the system to pay their fines. As a result, the company is one of the most famous casualties of the .com bust. But the most important thing to focus on in the documentary is the relationship between Kaliel and Tom. While Kaliel had all the passion in the world, Tom was a guy with a family trying to make things work to do right by them. The documentary showcased the stresses of starting up your own company and what kind of strains it can put on the relationships of the people who are closest to you. The two partners eventually have a falling out before the company collapses and Tom is forced out of the company. And today Kaleil Tuzman is in jail for tax evasion. This documentary solidified for me the importance of knowing your role and staying in that lane. 

dot.com to dot.bomb

Our guest lecturer for this week was the one and only Andrew Fry. This talk was especially interesting because Andrew found a way to cash out with his business while other companies tanked during this era of business. Andrew focused on the five stages of the .com to .bom era. Everything started off by people understanding the power of the internet and how they now had access to the entire world via the web. This was followed by the boom where companies started taking advantage of this and started popping up left and right because they were able to reach customers like never before. This of course leads to companies like InfoSpace getting an evaluation higher than Ford's and Boeings in an incredibly short amount of time. This then led to the bust in which company after company went bankrupt, because of bad business practices. And finally the fifth stage was when the dust started to settle and the the companies which had managed to survive kept things going and those who failed, the employees were able to gain employment at other companies. This lecture was important because it teaches the budding entrepreneur that if something is too good to be true, it likely is. And more importantly, this era is a clear example to would-be CEOs that if you don't have a viable and unique product, eventually it will catch up with you and your business will fail.

Shadrach White

Shadrach White was this week's guest speaker. Shadrach's message for the talk was simple, understand money and what your bottom line is. At the time of his lecture, White is currently running his fourth business. He said that in the past he wasn't focused on the revenue and that was his downfall, he says the most important thing an entrepreneur can do is to be a revenue hog and always be managing/making money. White said that in order to keep your mind on the money, it is necessary to do a SWAT analysis quarterly. I found this to be a great idea because this ensures you always have a good grasp of what is going on within the company and you are aware of what is coming up on the horizon. Keeping up the theme of money, Shad gave some insight on how to price your product: give enough information on your product so you're not leaving money on the table, sometimes less is more. Another point White made was that when starting a company, do not cut any corners and make sure you get the right legal time from the get go. He told us about how he had been screwed over in the past by not understanding the finer details as to what he was signing. This really resonated with me because I have been using online templates for preliminary legal work. Since his talk, I have looked into working with the UW's entrepreneurial Law Clinic in order to receive free legal help.  

Mission Statement

Handimap's mission statement is: To give our users the freedom to do what they want when they want by providing access to all.

John Dimmer

John Dimmer was our guest lecturer for this week. I was very excited to learn John would be speaking to the class because I worked on one of his funded businesses in the past but was never able to meet him personally. In his talk, John said that the main job of a CEO is to raise money. This resonated with me because that is exactly what I've been trying to do for my company for the past few months. John made it clear that when it comes to funding, the first round is on you. Outside investors want to know you have money in your company. This was good to hear because I've been putting all of my internship money I've earned in the past towards my company. John said that funding comes from three sources, giving away equity, taking on debt or other sources such as a business plan competition or grants. He made it clear that the most expensive thing a business can do is to sell equity. But if you must give away equity, there are two critical numbers to consider, first, what is your company worth and secondly how much money do you really need? This again was important for me to consider because right now I am in talks to give away some of the equity in my company. Another important takeaway from John was hearing when to go get money from outside sources and from who. In John's opinion, he said that when a product is in the design phase, go show angels, and when you're ready to expand go show VCs and make sure that you are already making money. This was good to hear because I wasn't sure of the difference between the angels and VCs but this cleared that up for me. Overall, John put on a great talk for our class and hearing what a successful man like him has to say is invaluable. 

Protecting my IP

Protecting IP is paramount to any successful business. In my situation it is tough because I am pulling code from Google Maps API which is open source. As such, I would like to keep my company as open source as possible because I believe what I'm working on has a social good aspect. As such, I want people to be able to access this information for free. But at the end of the day, money makes the world go round, so this is what I will do to protect my IP:

I will look to copyright my code. Copyright protects language/articles and software/code have been deemed extensions of language so that is how I will go about protecting my IP. Furthermore, I will look to trademark my company logo and name. As my company continues to grow, it is very important to establish and protect your brand, by trademarking, I will be able to do just that. Another way to protect company IP is through patents. The patent process will be crucial for me to understand because while I'm developing my own product, it's paramount I don't infringe on something someone else has already created. At the end of the day, a company must be able to protect its secret sauce and these are a few methods which I may use to get that job done. 

How Much Will I charge

For Handimaps, I have considered a number of different ways to charge for my services but for right now this is what i have decided on:

We plan to charge a one-time fee for affiliates we work with, as well as recurring costs if the need to re-map an area occurs.  For smaller venues, like Paramount Theater in Seattle that has a capacity of 2,800 people we would charge a fee of $5,000 to map out the entirety of their facilities and have them HandiMaps approved on our application.  For medium sized venues, such as Key Arena that seats 17,000 the fee would be $12,000.  For large venues such as CenturyLink that seats 67,000 or Disneyland that has an estimated capacity of 65,000 the fee would be anywhere from $20,000-$40,000 depending on the detail of the map desired, square footage of the facilities, and specific needs of the target company.

We plan to also work with sponsor companies such as resorts and travel destinations to provide extremely accessible activities while travelling.  These sponsors would be our partners in the area, and we would recommend their offerings to our users while they explore a new city.  These companies would receive much higher sales to users with disabilities or injuries by offering this extra value.  This is especially important for resorts that cater to many retired travelers.  This also saves their employees time and complaints from disabled customers that are having trouble navigating a new place. Our sponsored packages would be distinctive from our affiliate partnerships due to the fact that we would be advertising on behalf of these businesses.  We would charge a one-time fee to map out their facilities, ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 and collect a percentage of sales made through our app, ranging from 3%-8%.

Brian Forth

Brian Forth started off his lecture with answering an interesting question from Andrew, the question was, what is your opinion on firing employees? Brian answered by saying "The first employee and the last employee I fired were the hardest ones" meaning it is always difficult for him to fire an employee. This feeds into Brian's company culture. His company, sitecrafting.com is a web management/user research firm. Brian says that the most important thing to his company is company culture. He said by making sure his employees are happy, it would result in his business having success. After working at Costco where employee retention is through the roof, I noticed first hand how important it is to keep your employees happy. Interestingly enough, I recruited someone for my own company after telling them I want the people who are with me in the beginning to be there with me at the end.

Brian's entry into entrepreneurship was also interesting. He was always a curious guy and looked to create solutions rather than wait on someone to do it for him. As such, he fell into a technology head position at a private school. There he taught kids the basics of coding and would create websites for their parents companies. Brian story shows that opportunities are there to be seized, you just need to make sure you put yourself in the right position. 

Erik

Our first guest speaker of the quarter was Erik Hanburg. Erik was a very interesting guest lecturer because he's felt the highest highs and has also gone through the lowest lows. Erik started out as the director of the Grand Cinema of Tacoma, from working with that non-profit, he figured he could run his own theater. That ended up failing but from that experience, Erik could say that he attempted to run something that was completely his. Since then, Erik has become a successful author, he has had a number of books published. Erik went over his business model, which was very interesting. He has a couple of different series of books. He'll give the first book out for free so people will be more than willing to buy the next two. Erik gets royalty checks from book sales so he is still making money from books he published over ten years ago. An interesting thing Erik said was that "fear and emotional labor" are the biggest obstacle when starting a business or committing yourself to anything. I would have to agree with that statement. Often times it's the fear of failing which stops me from even attempting something. On the other side of the spectrum, Erik said the best part of owning his own business is when people he doesn't know reach out to him with praise. In addition, he has the flexibility to take days off and do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it. This is the freedom I crave as well.

3 Business Ideas

At the end of the day, a successful business knows exactly what it is:

1. The business I have created and am now working on is called HandiMaps. At its core, Handimaps is an indoor mapping company. However, HandiMaps focuses on the people with accessibility issues. Handimaps will show accessible entrances, walkways, ramps, elevators, phones, guest services and bathrooms and will guide users how to get to these landmarks based on their accessibility issue. Behind the maps is the data. I am seeking to build the first ever accessibility API with the database we create from marking all of these points of interest within venues. 

2. With the rise of VR, another interesting business prospect lies in connecting humans and their online avatars. I think it would be awesome for people's avatar's to be able to interact in a virtual world with the actual human being just sitting on his or her couch. For example, let's use something as simple as facebook. I want to create something that will let your avatar meet up with a friend's avatar and together you two would traverse Facebook, and instead of reading posts, you'd see other people's avatars and ask them about what was going on with their lives.

3. As someone who enjoys the Seattle nightlife, I've seen quite a few interactions between bouncers and very drunk people. I've seen people get kicked out of a bar, only to see them sneak back in when the bouncer disappears for a bit. I want to create a scanner that would scan a person's ID and if they had been kicked out of the bar, the bouncer would be notified and kick that person out without any struggles or before they get too drunk to cause any issues. 

What I Want to Learn about Entrepreneurship

As someone who is finishing up their last quarter of school, coming face to face with the "real world' is a scary prospect. I've had multiple internships throughout my undergraduate career so I know what the corporate world is like, and that's what scares me. I don't want to be controlled. I don't want to be bringing in millions of dollars worth of IP but me myself earning a fraction of that. I want to be somewhere where I'm valued and where my opinion matters. From my working experience, I can say that I'm a leader and I know what I'm worth, that's why I've started my own company. I'm taking this class so I can gain a simple understanding of what it'll take for my business to succeed. In this class I'm hoping to realize what it takes for an early stage startup to not fall apart. I accept and understand that I in no way have any idea what I'm doing. But one of my greatest strengths is my willingness to listen and get the job done no matter what it requires. I'm sure that as long as I keep my mind open and continue to absorb everything Andrew goes over, I'll be just fine. Having the opportunity to learn from Andrew is invaluable because he actually lived my dream. For the next 10 weeks I want to strengthen the idea which I've already began to build out, and hopefully earn the validation of my classmates and instructor along the way.