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!