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.