Elevator Pitch

My elevator pitch went well I think, since the ghosts of the elevator said yes.  Listening to all the other elevator pitches helped me to realize that i wasn't thinking big enough and that I hadn't thought about what my possible profits were or how much money I needed to start the business.  I decided on needing $400,000 to start the first restaurant.  After doing a few calculations based on a number of bowls that I can expect to sell per day, I came up with a total income of $680,000 per year.  I think that during my pitch I showed how much research on the market I had done, as Andrew Fry commented on it when I brought it up in response to his question of how much of a market there actually is for authentic ramen.  I realized after my presentation that I should have presented my business model as an aspiring franchise from the start instead of towards the end like I did.  The elevator pitches as a whole helped me to understand how much money I should be asking for from investors, as well as how much money I can expect to be making each year, and how I should be presenting my business in my business plan.  As a last word about the class as a whole, it turned out to be my favorite class that I've ever taken on campus, and was the only reason I wanted to come to classes this quarter.

Jim Kastama Presentation

The presentation by Jim Kastama was about stories from his life as both an ex-senator and an entrepreneur.  He said he doesn't miss being a senator at all because it was no fun.  He told us some interesting information that hadn't really been mentioned by the other guest speakers in their presentations.  He said that venture capitalists and angel investors want you to fail around 5 times before they really want to fund you because by that point you would have been able to build on the mistakes of the failed attempts to learn how to hopefully succeed in doing a start up.  He also said the biggest risk in entrepreneurship is the question of "can I/you make money" from whatever you are trying to do for a business.  He mentioned the d.i.s.c. personality analysis test and that you should consider diversifying your team with different personality types.  Another quote he gave us was "You're not like everybody else" in regards to personalities, which means to think about how not everyone will think the same as you about decisions.  By using personalities to assist in assembling a team it is more possible to create a successful business.

Andrew Fry Dot Boom to Dot Bomb

The presentation by Andrew Fry was about the dot.bomb collapse of 2000, using plastic dinosaurs to represent different large internet communities during different times between 1992 and 2005.  During the years leading up to the bust where companies started to go under left and right, many companies were being named with something ending in ".com" because it would lead to it being worth more by name alone.  Companies were being created with such names with the sole purpose of getting to the IPO stage, and because of the time it was happening at record pace.  The problem with this however was that the companies weren't being created out of a want to solve some sort of problem for a consumer, they were being created with the sole purpose of being sold for large sums of money.  Some people had taken notice that this abnormal growth rate was going to lead to a collapse in the near future, and just before the bust started the book "The Internet Bubble" was published, but the big companies at the time disregarded it.  The bust was so large that a website at the time called "fuckedcompany.com" was listing which companies were going under.  After the dust settled, in 2002 Amazon posted that they had a profit, and companies such as Ebay and Yahoo were growing at a healthy pace, signaling the end of the bust.  During the bust many people went from filthy rich to dirt poor overnight.  A large problem during the boom time was that the average person couldn't figure out what was fact and fiction from the way the internet was being portrayed in movies at the time.  With movies such as "The Matrix" portraying the internet as this magical domain, people didn't know what to believe.

Gram Evans Presentation

The presentation and exercise by Gram Evans was a very interesting hands-on team based approach to understanding various aspects of a business plan.  We were introduced to FWCAT (the Federal Way Coalition Against Human Trafficking), a non profit business, and had to make a mock business plan/canvas around their business based on a short description of how their business works.  He introduced us to the business model canvas, which is a chart containing nine boxes (Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources, Value Propositions, Customer Relationships, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure, and Revenue Streams) that are filled in to help expand and create your
business plan.  What we found during the exercise is that creating a business plan for a non profit organization is even more challenging than creating one for a for profit company.  The point of the exercise was to help us to do something more difficult so that when applied to our own business idea it would be much easier.
After this exercise I started thinking about how my business idea would fit into this template and got hungry for ramen, and decided to change my business idea to a ramen shop in Graham, as the nearest one to my house is over half an hour drive away.  The location could be in the Safeway parking lot on the corner of 224th and Meridian, as there are many small shops in the strip malls in the area that could be used.  The materials needed would be all the materials needed to produce the ramen, including the appliances to cook it, and the food handler's card to be allowed to sell it, as well as the utensils to eat it with such as bowls, forks, and chopsticks.  There would also be costs associated with renting the property, and paying for the heat, water, and electricity bills if not included in the renting cost.

John Dimmer Presentation

The presentation by John Dimmer was very informative in learning about how finances work in a business.  He mentioned the 3 'C's of business, which are character, capacity, and capital.  He also a point to be sure to understand accounting before you start a business because of how important it is to a business that you at least understand what's going on with your money.  He said to be sure that if you start a business that you need to at least know the basics for each area of business so that you're able to know when your employee's aren't cut out for their position based on what they tell you.  For funding your business, he said to prefer to take "smart" money over "dumb" money, where smart money is money that comes with advice with the investor and dumb money comes from people who just invest and leave it at that.  The five steps of business are concept, start up, expansion, mezzanine, and exit, and you need money for each step.  He went over the types of funding a business can get, and what they entail.  Debt is funding from commercial sources such as banks or SBAs (but until you have something that's been profitable for at least 3 years you won't be able to get these) or private sources such as relatives or investors.  Equity is selling ownership interest in the business.  Hybrid is debt of preferred securities convertible to equity.  Other is things such as government grants, prize money, crowd sources, money from veteran's programs, and other sources.  He also talked about different types of businesses, such as Sub-Chapter S companies, Limited Liability Companies, and "C" corporations.

Amy Sallin Presentation

The presentation done by Amy Sallin was very informative for anyone in the class who wants to actually start their own business.  For most of the presentation she informed us about the 2015 University of Washington Business Plan Competition and what is required to enter and how each of the steps of the competition is done.  The competition has been running for 18 years now, and around 1800 teams have participated in the competition.  Teams have until April 6th to submit a 5 to 7 page executive summary online to be able to compete this year.
She also gave us some useful information about how a team(board) should be constructed, saying that its important to have a diverse team and that 1 person teams are not a recommended way to do a start up.  An important point she made that applies to both the competition and to starting up a real business and attempting to get funded, is that investors will in the team and not because of the idea.  Investors would rather fund an A grade team with a C grade idea than a C grade team with an A grade idea, because the A grade team is more likely to succeed with their idea and therefor has a better chance of paying returns.  Another small point she made was that if you are offering a solution to a problem, the solution has to be practical cost-wise (she said don't throw 5,000 dollars at a 500 dollar problem).

Erik Hanberg Presentation

The presentation done by guest speaker Erik Hanberg was very entertaining to attend.  The most important thing I think that he wanted us to take away from his presentation was to work on actually delivering something if you are going to be attempting to be an entrepreneur, meaning that to start a business you better be working on delivering a product or service soon or you aren't going to be in business long.  He told us about how his wife and him run a design business and how he is also an author with books branching into three different genres.  So in his case, being both an author and helping the design business, he has to constantly be sure he's trying to provide the consumer with the product of his books and with the design business giving good advice to the customers as part of the service.  He also suggested some books to read, such as "the $100 startup", "outliers", "the 4 hour work week", "the E-Myth revisted", and "turning pro", as well as his mystery novel "the marinara murders".  He also suggested checking out "Smartpassiveincome", a podcast where Pat Flynn talks with entrepreneurs.  In summary, from listening about how he makes his money it's clear that to make your own business you need to have a product or service that people want, as well as being sure that it is a sustainable business plan or it won't succeed, like his theater.

Business Ideas

My first business idea is to create a gaming company, with its first project being
to create a retro role playing game in the style of the 16 bit era classics such as Final
Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 6, and Chrono Trigger.  In recent years companies have shy'd away
from creating rpg's in this style in favor of attempting to draw people in with games that
current generation gamers think look nice, but spend so much time doing so the overall
story and characters are bland and boring.  I think there is a large market for this retro
style of rpg because of the success of Square Enix's "Bravely Default", which was their
first new retro final fantasy style rpg since the original final fantasy 6 on SNES.
I watch quite a bit of anime in my spare time, and what I've noticed over the
years is that a good amount of it is never translated into English for American audiences
in either Japanese audio English subbed or English audio formats.  There are a lot of
sites that currently stream anime, but many of them do so without the consent of the
copyright owners, and can end up in some legal trouble with take down notices on the
copyrighted content.  I propose to create a company that works with the Japanese publishers
on making official English subbed versions of their anime to either host on a site we
create or on their own site.  The audience for Japanese audio English subbed is very large
here in America, with many fans (myself included) refusing to watch the English audio
translations of anything besides ones from their childhood that possibly sparked their
interest in anime.  Besides English subs, the market for European languages is large as
well.
My last idea is to create a gaming news website.  Currently there are a few large
gaming news sites, and most of them have a similar content, with the differenciating
factor being the quality of writing.  Many of the large sites (Kotaku for example) rush to
put out a story, and often do so without simple grammar and spell checks being done before
publishing a story to their site, while others (the Escapist) take the time to ensure the
quality of the writing before publishing stories, but aren't worried about doing immediate
up to date news, instead prefering to write detailed articles that are (in my opinion)
actually worth reading.  I enjoy informative writing, and would like to make a website
about getting detailed informative stories out to the public in a quick manor, so in a
sense attempting to blend the two styles together.  I feel there is a large enough market
to support this style of journalism, since both the quick bare bones style of Kotaku and
the slower informative style of the Escapist are hugely successful.

Startup.com

First off, I thought the movie was a good watch, as seeing the rise and fall of a real company is something I never thought I would get to experience.  I thought that Kaleil was a rather arrogant and headstrong person, but after seeing the entire film I realize that sometimes you need people like that to keep the company on track and focused on its goal of making money and continuing to exist.  I also thought that Kaleil was being rude and shouldn't fire Tom, but after the discussion we had in class it was clear to me that he should have been gone long before then.  His attitude towards running the company was not a very productive one, with little worry about how quickly the company could suddenly go under if they weren't careful.  After our discussions Tom seems like the kind of person that would be good to start a business with, but not keep in a high level of power like he had in GovWorks.com.  The third founder, George, I initially thought to be kinda selfish, suddenly backing out and demanding compensation for what he currently owned of GovWorks Inc., but after discussing it more during class, I realize there are two ways to think of the reason for his actions now.  The first is that he thought that GovWorks.com could fail, and wanted to be sure he got money out of it before it collapsed, and the other is he had no intention of sticking with GovWorks Inc. in the first place, and once it had made a reasonable amount of money he wanted to get out with it secured.  Either way he ended up being the only person to walk away from the company with any money, so he made the correct decision in this case to walk away, but the argument could be made that he was making a bad business move backing out of a growing company.

Startup.com is a movie I'd recommend to anyone considering starting up a company, as there are many lessons to be learned that could help keep a business afloat.

What I want out of this class

I would like to get a few things out of this class.  First, I would like to learn more about how the field of computer science relates to starting up a business and what parts of it can be influenced by technology.  I'm interested in how technology has changed how a business is run and started.  Second, I would like to understand what it actually means to run a business, since I have never had a job and have never tried to start up a business.  I don't understand how high ranking employee's, like managers and owners, are able to run the business without directly working like lower level employee's.
I personally have never had the drive to start my own business, and other than what we have gone over in the first 2 class meetings and from what I learned from watching startup.com I have no idea how to.  Since I haven't ever considered starting a business I don't have any ideas on what kind of business I would want to run, so I'm hoping that we will go over a few basic ideas as examples for starting ideas other businesses have used.