Accounting Basics

The reading from the guidebook was very easy to understand. Since I'm an accounting major, the reading was a great review.

Accounting is very important not only for entrepreneurs but for all businesses. It provides an account of how you spend your cash, how much revenues and expenses you had throughout the year and also a list of your assets and liabilities at the end of the year. It helps you discover any fraud which might be occurring.

Dot com to Dot Bomb

It was interesting listening to Andrew talk about his experience in the Dot com era. I didn't think about how the Internet had started and took everything for granted. Imagine being in a life with only 40-50 websites!! you could actually count back then.

This was the stages of how it started and where we are today:
1. An innocent beginning
2. Boom!!!
3. Insanity
4. Bust
5. The crawl back to insanity

The dinosaurs was a perfect example to represent all the different proprietary networks.

Michele Armstrong

Michele Armstrong’s presentation was one of the best this quarter.
I guess it’s because I’m looking for a job and her presentation regarding HR and recruiting really pertained to me.

She is a senior manager of Corporate Recruiting at Vulcan Inc which is Paul Allen’s company and has been there for about 8 years now.
She was very engaging and while I was thinking of questions to ask, she answered them right away. It was as if she read my mind.

One thing which I was very surprised by was that now most recruiting companies post their jobs on Craigslist and twitter. When I think of Craigslist; creepy, scary and phony comes to mind. I also just signed up to Linked In.
Her idea about approaching HR managers for coffee intimidates me. However, I think its not bad idea as it will help me network and land a job through referrals.
When she started talking about phone interviews, I knew exactly what she was saying because I had one the same morning. They asked me to walk them through my resume, asked me examples of prior work experience, salary expectation, a timeframe for when I’m available and lastly motivation for applying to position. One thing I learned is to research about salary and ask what they would like to offer before stating your range.

Lastly, for the closer, I liked how she gave ideas about what types of questions to ask “You have been working here for some time now, what do you like best about working in this environment.” It’s always important to ask questions as the end of an interview. Also, I think I asked one question to the guest speaker.

Derek Young

Derek Young visited us March 1st and gave a brief background of his experience. He worked at REI for about 10 years and left to get his MBA. He started small niche companies and bootstrapped every business which I thought was pretty cool. Derek talked about a couple web-based companies which he started like Exit 133, Suite 133 and Seasonal Views.

He ran Exit 133 for about 5 years. Suite 133 was started 3 years ago and it is where start-up weekend was held. Derek’s advice for Suite 133 was to learn how to make money before going to the Suite as they charge money and if you don’t have enough income coming in, going to the Suite would be a waste of money. His latest niche tech company is Seasonal View. The primary source of income for this company is through advertisements and this web-site is also his own primary source of income. He was saying that most of his clients found him through Google as they were getting a lot of hits. Spreading the word is important as they didn’t go out to advertise their company but people found them. What I liked about Seasonal View was that they don’t disclose their client’s information. Rather, they have code names for each client so the employees can openly talk about different information.

Derek’s presentation bored me a little. However, it gave me ideas about how I can fund my company through ads on my web page. I came up with a couple questions which were asked by my peers before I could raise my hand. Unfortunately, his presentation was cut short due to a fire drill. However, lucky for students as it was a nice day :)

Bruce Kendall

Bruce visited us last week Wednesday from Economic Development Board which is a non-profit corporation in Tacoma. I thought he was an interesting person with lots of ideas about the economy and he knew about all the different fields which makes up the economy. His ideas were about how to go about creating the economy. "Growing the Pie" to create jobs and wealth to provide economic opportunity for citizens by proactive retention and recruitment of primary jobs. I learned that 31% of Pierce County employment are in 15 different clusters. I enjoyed our discussion about aerospace engineering and Boeing. He talked about the different things the EDB have done to develop Tacoma and what other plans they are trying to create. Another interesting fact was the incubator; I didn't know that those people even exist to help start up a company. He was pretty cool to let our class get in for free at the meeting on March 26th.

John Dimmer

The guest speaker last Monday gave the class a couple insights about how to fund your company.

The first source is yourself. Invest as much money as you can afford. It will pay off in the future when you get your return.
Next source is family and friends. Then, angel investors and lastly venture capitals.

John also talked about company evolution which is started when you have your concept, start-up, growth phase and then expansion.

When we get investors in our company, we have to make sure they are accredited investors. That is, their net worth are in excess of $1m or have income in excess of $200,000 each year for the last 2 years.

I didn't know about Angel investors. It's cool we have a bunch out there who are willing to give people a chance to start their business. I esp like that the Seraph Capital funds only women's' businesses. When you reach Angel investors, it is a good idea to have your term sheet prepared.

Jon Goodman

Jon Goodman came to our class to speak about staring up a business last week. I thought she was very intelligent in the way she carried herself. She knew what she was talking about and was quick to answer everyone's questions. However, I also thought she was not too approachable as she looked very stern to me. Some of the thing she talked about were steps to starting a business, technology, using common sense, first time traps, venture capitalists and lastly defining a business.

Before business planning, you need to determine feasibility analysis and doing market research. What I liked was that she said to come up with ideas you can steal from many and it will be research. However, if you steal from one, it's plagiarism!!
Next step is to get really smart and experienced advisers on board like lawyers and accountants. Always plan for positive cash flows.

The best way to form a business through her perspective is by LLC. to define a business, the 100% total is made up of:
- 50% small business, the traditional businesses
- 25% edge business, like video arcades, which provide new technology and services
- 25% companies with no intention of staying small, like Boeing and Microsoft.

Strengths and Weaknesses

When we were discussing this in class, most of or strengths and weakness were built from our resumes. However, we have to try and look beyond that to match different skills in the business plans we are creating. For example, have a variety of skilled people in our company like marketing (advertising and creativity), HR (dealing with people), accounting (numbers and math) and so on.

Some of my strengths are:
- good in accounting as I’m a business major
- computer literate as I have a computer minor
- organized
- patient
- time management
- communication skills
- reliable
- good work ethic
- team builder and working cohesively with others
- meeting deadlines
Weakness:
- not a public speaker
- procrastinator
- not creative
- few leadership qualities
- shy
- not a quick decision maker
- dislike confrontation

I hope to overcome these weaknesses and turn them into my strengths!

Ron Kornfeld

phew at least my answer to where Ron currently works is correct on the quiz :)

Ron Kornfeld, from Nimblesource, was our guest speaker last Wednesday.

He talked about his business plan template and that business plans fall into two categories; operational plans, and plans designed to attract investors.
Business plans are choices you will make and have made.

He also discussed about the The Four Corners of the Plan which are:
- Describes the business and its opportunity
- Establishes performance plans, goals, and objectives and systematizes their evaluation
- Presents the management team and organizational design
- Documents the company’s message to management, employee prospects, and potential investors

Before reading the PowerPoint on which he presented on, i remember that there are five steps to making a business plan. first is to identify your audience. I think this is the most important step because if you don't have an audience, you won't be able to sell your product to anyone. The next step are to Outline the Business Plan, write the Plan, Review the Plan, and lastly Update the Plan.

Business Ideas

Finally I can type!!!! yay
however, its still taking me so super long as my cast is not letting me type properly.

last week we had to come up with 5 business ideas and here is mine:

1) A smart tooth brush. yes! this will make it so much easier to detect plague or any bacteria around your teeth. so every time you brush, this new and improved, plague detecting toothbrush will start to beep and vibrate more vigorously (of course not too much that it will tear your gums out). When it beeps, you will know you have some hidden surprises in your tooth.

2) smart cell phones. i know we already have enough cool ones out, but my idea of a smart cell is that it can record your blood pressure, heart beat, pulse rate at any time with just one touch. same as the device installed in treadmills where you just hold the bars and it can record all this information. this smart cell phone can be used anytime by just holding it for at least 2 minutes. it then stores about one weeks data which can be down loaded to your computer with a usb cable.

3) checking for diseases through a urine sample right at your home. this can be done by inventing a scanner in your toilet which displays your health conditions on the tank. i don't know how exactly this would be done but my market would be for people who have a history of family diseases like diabetes, kidney stone or high blood pressure. they can install the disease tracker in their toilet so it can display a reading of their urine.

4) tea cups/ mugs. create a new mug which gives you a reading of how hot a drink is. when you first purchase your mug, just lock the temperature at which you can drink your coffee without burning your tongue. so when you pour your drink, it reads on the outside, 'too hot' 'ready to drink' or 'cold'

5) automatizing all carts at the grocery store so you don't have push it your self. have a remote control which guides the cart at a very convenient speed so its not too fast or too slow.

What is an Entrepreneurship?

okay so I did the reading. Now what?? Wow, so only 1 in 6 million high-technology business ideas wind-up in an IPO? Like I stand a chance surviving this class! The class seems pretty easy so far. The reading was short and simple. I liked how it defined entrepreneurship and the three objectives they have. The authors, Reggie Aggarwal and Mark Esposito, were very clear about the fact that if you don't have any basic interest in these objective then you should not even think about being an entrepreneur WHOA...I thought that this was a little discouraging as there is very little chance of making it out there. But like we discussed in class, you should always try and fail even but you can at least say I tried my best. This chapter identifies some goals and characteristics which I could probably work one..For example creativitiy and passion?? hello..i'm not creative so coming up with 5...yes FIVE business ideas next week will be tough. I liked how the authors defined that entrepreneurs are concerned about creating long-term value and not just wealth. They are also willing to accept any risks :) but ohhh I can't risk my money being thrown into failure...the perks of being a college students with millions of tuition!!
Thats it for now..gotta read chapter 2 and brain storm about business plans