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.