Dot.com to Dot.bomb

This is a period of time when the Internet growing rapidly in the late 90s. Internet companies growing with an incredible speed. Which has lead market to the situations that internet companies are being overvalued and gained an abnormal attraction from the investors. During this period, many tech companies become giant in the market such as GovWorks.com, Yahoo!, Broadcast.com, AOL, Info 

Space, etc. Some of them has found a way to adapt with the market such as Yahoo!, but most of them have collapsed because they were failing to predict what is coming.

To illustrate this event, Andrew has used dinosaurs to explain how those companies experience the five stages of the dot.bomb, from ‘innocent beginning, boom, insanity, bust and finally ‘crawl back to sanity’. The dinosaurs were giant species and were dominated the world for a long time. They were strong and were a big part of the world, but they were not able to see what is coming to them. Finally, just like those giant companies during the dot.bomb, most of them were finished. Only a few species have adapted the changes and survive until today, such as crocodile, this reflects exactly Yahoo! and AOL during that period.

Another story about the dot bubble that Professor Andrew has shared in class is the story of AOL and Time Warner. During that time AOL was decided to merge with Time Warner, which was a huge acquisition in business history. However the merging did not give a great result and finally the AOL Time Warner decided to be separate from AOL and the company has changed its name back to ‘Time Warner’.

Guest Speaker - John Dimmer

Last Thursday we got John Dimmer has as our guest speaker. Mr. Dimmer has a B.S. in Finance from University of Oregon and after getting a degree, he started working at Puget Sound Bank. He shared that he took a job to after graduation to get experience and looking for opportunities. Then, he built the company named Free Range with Andrew Fry in 1994 and they had a happy exit in 1999 by selling it to Luminant Worldwide. When the new owner bought the company, they require Mr. Dimmer to have an employee agreement with them because they want to keep the company’s stability. However, after the short time, he was ‘sack in call’ due to the reason “we don’t use your talent appropriate”.

He became an angel investor in the technology area and build an air-streamed and Honda dealership. He talked about a lot of interesting experiences about this. One of an example, his using ‘golden cuff’ to keep talented people. Mr. Dimmer has a great employee named Ted and he was successful in using ‘golden cuff’ to keep and move him to air-stream business. Then he hired another great guy and he has another problem which is figuring out how to keep him. In another example, Mr. Dimmer shared that the leader must choose between gaining market share and being profitable. Gaining the market share is a great thing, but then due to the revenue is smaller to the expense, the company will have to face with the problem of being acquired by a larger company and the large company will enjoy that large market share. Therefore, firstly we must be profitable, which means keeping revenue larger than expense, so we could be in control and do a lot of things we want.

About funding, there are different types of funding. The first one is debt, which include commercial source, banks, SBA, relatives and investors. The second is equity, which is funding raised through selling an ownership interest in your business, which include hybrid, debt or preferred securities convertible into equity. Some other methods include price money from business plan competitors, government grants, etc. All of them are really helpful for us in order to look for a funding for our business.    

Guest Speaker - Amy Sallin

Last Thursday we had Amy Sallin, from Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship of Foster Business School in UW Seattle, as our guest speaker. She has introduce to our class the Entrepreneurship's Business Plan Competition that is held in UW Seattle every year.
About the Business Plan Competition, this is a $70,000 prizes competition for students from colleges in Washington States to have some experience in starting their businesses. First, there are resources to connect students with other students from different majors and the ability to form a strong team that people with different skills could work together. Students can start seriously from their ideas into a further step with valuable feedback from experienced entrepreneur such as judges or potential investors. Moreover, students also will learn a lot from other students. One of the most important benefit students in this competition is building networks of contacts. Lastly, they will also receive many coaching and mentoring on their skills to maintain their businesses well in the future. In general, this will be a great opportunity for all students from many colleges to learn and improve skills on business start-up, and the team that is good and lucky enough to win the completion will have some money to implement their ideas. For us, this is a chance to make a further step from our business plans that we will need to submit at the end of the quarter, which will help us to transform our plans into a real business. Obviously it is very difficult to win the completion, but even if we cannot go far in this competition, we still will gain a lot of things from this contest such as personal experiences or connections.

Mission Statement

“Lovely Pet Coffee provides the taste, quality coffee and pets are always available in our stores to give customers the most relax, comfortable and fun time after a hard working day. It is the mission of Lovely Pet Coffee to provide the top customer services, ethical standards and satisfied products for all of our customers.” 

I am creating a company which is a coffee shop for students and employees in the downtown Tacoma area. As described from the first blog post, the thing that makes we differentiate from other coffee shops is that we will provide the pets in our stores for customers to play with while they are enjoying their tasty cup of coffee. I am writing this mission statement with the purpose of covering the values and goal of our coffee shop. 

First, this statement emphasizes on the company main goal which is providing the top quality coffee with a great taste. It also shows that we are different from others by having pets in our stores, so I believe it will attract a lot of people because there are a lot of pet lovers in this city. Despite the amazing time customers will receive in playing with our pets, the price will be very reasonable to help us stay competitive with other coffee shops in the area. I will decide the exact number later, after doing further research, but I will make sure that the cost will be very reasonable.

Furthermore, the statement also clearly stated that we will put our customers experience to the top of our priority. All of our employees will satisfy our customers with a warm attitude, responsive in coffee making procedure and carefully consider customers' feedback. We understand that the company cannot successfully without customers. Thus, we will do everything in our ability to make our customers happy.

Logo, Company Name and Service

Last week the whole class has been presented individual business name and logo that we will use to create a business plan for this class. After that I decided to change my business plan back to my first idea in the first blog post which is opening a coffee pet shop in the downtown Tacoma area. 

I am very excited to introduce my company's service, which is to create a coffee shop which has available pets in the store. Customers will be able to enjoy the coffee and play with those cute pets at the same time. Our customers will have two ways to order a coffee and pets with us: in store like any other coffee shop, and order online with the type of coffee and time to make everything ready at the time they arrive. Customer will receive a catalog of dogs and cats available when they ordered in store or they can pick online to reserve their favorite pet for them at the time they coming.

About my company name, I have chosen my business name as “Lovely Pet Coffee”. The name will inform directly to customer what do we provide: pets and coffee. This is a famous time of coffee in many places around the world, but I have not seen this type of business in the United States so far. Thus, I have a big hope of success in this idea because I feel like there are many pet lovers in this area.

The logo I have sketched for my company is a coffee cup surrounded by pets. Although I have received several positive feedback about it, but I am still not very satisfied with this logo and I am still putting so much effort in to finish it as best as I could do.  

Guest Speaker - Brain Forth

Last Thursday we had Mr. Brain Forth, a CEO from SiteCrafting, as our guest speaker. My first impression is he has been with a same company for nearly two decades. 

Mr. Forth has told us his story about that he has graduated as a philosophy from a Gonzaga University. Then, he was hired as a contractor by Teacher Universe to build the learning management system. He had a chance to move to San Francisco, but because of the high cost of houses and a snake in a house he had visited, he finally decided to move to Tacoma and started SiteCrafting.

About SiteCrafting, it is a technology company that building and maintaining websites for businesses. The company is located in Tacoma and has 35 people hired. The SiteCrafting is working using PHP platform and has focused on varying fields such as Metro Park, health systems, transactions, mobile applications, and so on. It has also worked as many big corporations such as Dreamworks, Warner Bros, Disney and Sony.

He also shared that everything has happened when he was a kid brought him to a position today, such as he wants to take care of his clients to make them feel being taken cared. His first two employees still stay at SiteCrafting regardless receiving offers from big companies such as Google. His opinion after 18 years working at SiteCrafting is the business is “different every week, the only thing permanent is change”.

Lastly, he also founded the company named Gearbox, a company operated by few UW students, Gearbox is a company focusing on research to improve the software such as testing user interaction within prototyping. He said that he want to keep this company separated from SiteCrafting for several reasons, including it will be easier to sale if needed.

Guest Speaker - Erik Hanberg

Erik Hanberg was our guest speaker on last Thursday. Erik has been hired by a non-profit organization as a general manager, fundraising and special programs. Then, he got a full time job at the Grand Cinema in Tacoma as a director. After having some experiences he decided to start his own businesses. He has started several businesses such as Side x Side (with his wife Mary, a graphic designer), the Horatio, Exit133, and Suite133… He is also an author who has 32000 books sold.

Mr. Hanberg shared his opinion that no one will come to you and say you should start a business. Thus, you must start on your own and you will end up with two things: the job you did not expect and unintended revenue. To emphasize this idea, he has provided the quote of Thomas Edison: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”.

About Erik’s adventure in publishing, he has published several fictional and nonprofit books since 2009 such as The Little of Gold, The Saints Go dying, The Lead Cloak… Mr. Hanberg has talked his great idea about how to observe the market need, which is he has created a website for people to read a partial of his book. The website allowed the potential readers order for the book, which is always “out of stock” because in reality it has never been printed out. All of this process helped him to identify the chance of success and then he can see the reaction of the market to his book and then he could make an appropriate action. I think this is a great idea of entrepreneurship.

As a business student, a lesson I have learned from this speech is always research carefully the market before performing any action into it. Moreover, I should start a business on my own whenever I am ready. This is a great and really helpful speech.

Extra Blog: Startup.com

Startup.com is the movies telling story from the beginning to the failure of the technology company named GovWorks.com. Kaleil and Tom are longtime friend and they together with one another founder have executed their ideas of a company to help connect with government easier such as paying parking tickets online.  The film has described the development of the company from the small group of a few employees with the leading of Kaleil, a former worker of Goldman Sachs, and his close friend Tom Herman and the third founder who quit the company after a short time. The company gained some successes such as Kaleil can raise about 60 million dollars. Unfortunately, due to the main problem which is the website did not work well, plus the negative effect of the “dot-com bubble”, the company finally failed and have been sold to another owner.

This movie has provided many interesting aspects about starting the business with an idea that is “new” to the market. The film emphasizes the importance of being the pioneer in the game. GovWorks.com is well funded just because of its great idea with the intention to be the first one who uses internet to make the ticket paying process to government become easier. The film also focuses on the relationship of friends in the business, different people may have different point of views about Kaleil and Tom actions in their friendship. However, the division between personal relationship and business is something any entrepreneur should consider about.

In general, I think this is an excellent movie with a lot of lessons for people thinking start their own business. For me, I wish the film tell more about the role third founder of the company. I would like to know more how he began with this company and what he have done before he quit. At least he is the only one who got out with some money, but Kaleil and Tom also gained something after all. They had experienced a great entrepreneurial life!

Guest Speaker - Derek Young

Our guest speaker on Thursday was Mr. Derek Young, an experienced entrepreneur. Mr. Young earned a degree in politics and biology from the University of Puget Sound and a MBA degree focusing on finance and marketing from the University of Washington, Tacoma. Besides that, Mr. Young also has an IT background. He has created many businesses such as Suite133, Exit133, Tacoma Runners, Seasonal views…

Mr. Young has started a sport team management website which organizes workplace sport. The website has became popular because the Microsoft staff knew about it and used it for lunchtime sports. Unfortunately, one day the database of the website got crashed and they immediately received $15,000 from people to ask him to fix the website.

Later, he started Tacoma Runners, a large local running group. The income of this business is mainly based on the membership fee and sponsors. Then, Mr. Young was a publisher of the Exit133, a website focuses on politics, development and change of Tacoma. The website has been launched around 10 years ago and still keeping grow. He also has created a tool that track negative and positive comments and feedback from the internet and got attention from some other companies. However, because it was created for personal purpose, he will need to work more on it before it could be used by other companies.

Talking about himself as an entrepreneur, Mr. Young shared that he is not afraid of opening a new business, in other words, he does not mind risk. He also shared about some of his strengths and weaknesses, such as he is good at building relationships but bad at HR. He said that he has a lot of passions in creating new ideas, and his view about the entire career is learning from mistakes.

Three Business Ideas

1. Pet coffee shop
My first business idea is to open a pet coffee shop. Pet coffee shop is a coffee shop where there are a lot of pets such as dogs or cats, and customers can play with those pets while enjoying their cup of coffee at the shop. I have seen this type of business in many countries, but not yet in Seattle. Thus, I think this type of shop may attract people since this is a “coffee city” and there are a lot of pet lovers in this area. This could be a great chance for them to play with their favorite type of pets with the price of just a cup of coffee, especially for people who do not have their own pet yet.

2. Gemstone company
My second business idea is to open a gemstone business that produce and sell gemstone products. I see more and more people wearing gemstones as their jewelry, not just gold and silver like before. As a gemstone enthusiast, I know the price of gemstones quite well. Last summer I have travelled to Myanmar, a country that was just opened for tourism several years ago. I found out they have a lot of gemstones for sale, both materials and finished-products, with much cheaper price compared to any other place in the world within my knowledge. Thus, I would like to open a gemstone company with materials and products imported from Myanmar.

3. Speech prepared business
My next idea is to open an online business that help people preparing for their speech. I know there are a lot of brilliant people and could do amazing things, but they sometimes have problem with preparing a speech in front of public. I am thinking about a website where there are professional communicating speakers, and customers can chat with them, discussing the key points about what they want to say. Those professional communicating speakers will prepare a complete speech for those customers. All they need to do is memorize everything or simply bring the paper with them and read it while presenting.