The Dream of Entrepreneur’s

                The American dream is alive and well.  If you don’t believe it just look to all the successful entrepreneurs that are making their dreams come true.  These people are creating ways to be their own boss.  Working when and how they wish, providing for their families and some becoming rather wealthy along the way.

                Sure there is a lot of risk involved.  Many people fail trying to live an entrepreneurial type of life style.  It can be very stressful when what you have been building is on the brink of collapse, but it is the true entrepreneurial that keeps pushing until the last minute to see it through.  Looking failure in the face and denying it another victim.  That is just part of the dream, to struggle to make it happen while holding onto the faith you have in yourself to succeed, to keep fighting through all adversities to come out on top without losing your integrity along the way.

                It would not be a dream if people succeeded every time they attempted to take a chance and put a little of themselves on the line.  It is the opportunity that is available to build a successful business in America that brings people to the reality that they can do whatever they desire.  Not a company built out of need, but from the existence of the possibilities that exist in America and the ability to take advantage of what is available.  All it takes is an idea and the strength of character to see it through while learning all you can along the way.

Lew McMurran technology lobbyist

                Lew McMurran is the vice president of government internal affairs.  He is a registered lobbyist and advocates for businesses that is a fortune 500 company.  He manages loans including giving and collecting them.  He has worked for King County Council as a lobbyist for the county as a go between to the state legislator.  He has also worked as a public utilities district company at the county level until Sept 2000.  At this time he stated working for working for the Washington software alliance which is now called Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA).  The WTIA has approximately 600 companies as members today.

                Lew works as 501c6 nonprofits with members paying annual dues.  He works for a trade association with unions for companies.  He provides services and products people want to buy.  The WTIA provides business services providing cash flow and other resource outlets, events and programs such as professional development, IT certification and networking programs, and advocacy and lobbying.  As an advocacy and lobbying he acts as a go between for businesses and politicians.  There is no real carrier path to what he does; he simply was in the right place at the right time with the right skill set to fall into the job.

                He works with legislation between two sides as bipartisan.  He represents the technology industry in Olympia helping to shape how this industry should be handled since software development is such a different industry being so unregulated.  He helps to define how taxes should apply since Washington does not have an Income tax like California does.  He has helped connect producers with the IRS to help decide how taxable digital goods such as downloadable software games should be taxed.

Jeff Goodwin with Taking Chances

Jeff Goodwin was a business major who also took CES classes as electives for fun at the U of Washington.  He lives on Fox Island with his wife.  He has worked for Boeing while taking night classes when he learned the language FORTRAN.  He contracted work with IBM doing image processing and image recognition using 8086 Assembly language.  At this time he decided to make his own software.  He had a great idea but when he submitted it to IBM he got no backing and someone else ended up producing his idea.  Jeff created a service provider business that turned into a product business after getting the proper revenue and resources.  He started by building device drivers with IBM now as his customer.  He bootstrapped the company in this way.

                Jeff next went to Austin to the OEM Company creating software to bridge new hardware with real time operating systems.  He needed to raise money through angel investors and he had heavy competitors in this market.  At this time he partnered with another company who became their client.  He had to make a choice to either become a bigger company or branch out by making a move towards open source so he chose a third path which was to sell the company as his exit plan.

                Through SWAT analysis helped him make his decision and so he really sold his Intellectual Property.  He sold to cisco not because they were the highest bidder but because he thought it was the right thing to do for the people who worked for him.  He wouldn’t leave their building until a deal was struck.  The hardest lesson he said was to “know when to sell you company.”

Networking with Lynnette Claire

                Lynnette Claire went to the University of Oregon where she received her PhD and works at the University of Puget Sound.  Lynette started her career with a Gardening Magazine in Boston.  When this fell through she started a job in Seattle called Seafood trade.  At this time she felt she was not much more than a glorified secretary.  She then had an opportunity to start a magazine called Simply Seafood.  After starting this business, which is still running she accidently fell into starting a business of tree care with an arborist.  She then moved on to event planning with “Freelance” where she helped start the 6^th avenue public market. 

                Lynette started Entrepreneurial Network and believes that she needs to keep college graduates in the local area of Tacoma.  She believes she can achieve this act by developing a strong local network.  Building a local network will help raise the awareness of the politicians.  This will also give entrepreneurs more access to resources, will help companies grow faster, allow knowledge to be more available and help develop more innovative products.  She pointed out that there are 2 types of networks which are cohesive ties and structural holes.  Cohesive ties have the strengths that everyone knows everyone, the quality of information is good and there is a self-correcting mechanism.  Structural holes allows for more branching out to different pools of people which in turn allows for a lot of new types of knowledge to be brought into the network.  She believes that people should decide what kind of network they typically reside in and make attempts to branch out into the opposite to allow for greater networking abilities.

The Higher They Rise The Farther They Fall (Startup.com)

                GovWORKS.com is the name of the company started up by Tom Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman on the movie “Startup.com” which is a documentary following the successes and failures of the company.  Kaleil is the CEO of the company and does most of the raising of the funds needed to get the company off the grounds.  Tom handles the Development side of creating the website to handle online transactions from individuals to the government.

                These two have known each other since high school and decide to create a startup business together.  The company starts out with only about 10 employees and expands to at one point having 233 employees.  Their largest competitor is ezGov.com which is another startup attempting to do the same thing as govWork.com is.  EzGov.com is able to launch their site first, but with the amount of funding Kaleil is able to acquisition allows them to have a superior product upon their release.

                Many relationships are damages or even ended along the way.  Kaleil goes through a few relationships along the way and even Tom and Kaleil end up finding themselves at opposite ends on how the company should be ran.  This leads Tom to say that he lost his trust in Kaleil which prompts Kaleil to fire Tom.  This is when the company reaches its lowest point because at this same time the .com bubble bursts and the company infrastructure becomes bloated and mass downsizing is required.  In the end they are left with only 50 out of the 233 employees they had at their highest point.  I thought this was a great example of how startups are started, maintained and brought down.

John Dimmer – The finance Guy

                John Dimmer focused most of his discussion on financing a business.  He is an entrepreneur that has been involved in many tens of companies.  He explained how even though money is not the primary goal of starting a company as an entrepreneur it is one of the primary concerned when trying to get a startup off the ground.  He is currently involved with Angel Network and this company helps as an angle investment company for startup companies looking for that extra financial push.

                One of the first ways he suggested getting funding is through friends and family or by personal credit cards.  Another way and probably the second step you want to take if you need more money is to talk with angel investors.  This is probably the best option for startup companies since they look to invest smaller amounts compared to the $10s of millions that VC’s would like to invest.  Last is Ventures Capitalists because IPO’s are unobtainable by most.  VC’s although have tons of money they will want to have much more control over the workings of the business and will look for reasons not to invest in your idea.

                He did focus on Angel investments since these are the more friendly types of investors and what he does currently.  He pointed out that there are a few options when obtaining a loan from an angel investor.  One is a loan option another is a stock option and finally there is a combination which is the smallest gamble on the side of the angel investor.

Ron Kornfeld – The Business Plan Professional

                Ron Kornfeld worked for MCI while they were developing the internet.  He got a degree in classic music playing the piano and composing music, but quickly decided there were not a lot of opportunities within that field.  This company could not figure out how to make this product profitable so he moved on to an internet startup to make money.  He used low end band width of dial up as his startups focus.  He used business plans to help test the idea itself along the way. 

                Ron described the way eyeballs are worth something to websites that use a lot of advertisement by investors through the metadata that can be gathered from the user’s preferences and navigation.  He had a tech business with hard problems solving, but in 2008 he went from almost going bankrupt to liquidated and ended up 100k in the good.  He made this push for his company’s shareholders.  He developed a website for kid learning with an adaptive learning algorithm.  This idea came to him when his son was struggling to learn through other types of learning software.  This was the Dreambox and he brought teachers in to help in the development process along with experts to give opinions and he gave his research out for free to not have to compete with other big companies.

                Ron learned a lot from each of his ventures.  While creating Dreambox he learned when you bring in experts in a field that you don’t want to generalize them.  In analyzing them you want to first see how extensible they are and how flexible.   Then you give higher correction and then you make sure you are not stepping on others within your team by bringing someone new in that specializes in the field you are trying to solve a problem within.

Bruce Kendall and the basketball references

Bruce Kendall is in the business of assisting other businesses get the most out of moving or setting up a branch within the city of Tacoma.  His biggest obstacle with trying to get businesses interested in Tacoma is the special tax imposed on businesses within the city.  He competes with many cities throughout the states of Oregon, Idaho, California and others in finding a home where they can bring commerce to the city they choose.

Bruce believes that this city is worth his time and effort in facilitating its growth.  He pointed out that JBLM is the largest employer within this area, but this also includes the military personal actively residing within these two bases.  Some of the EDB Cluster Acceleration teams that he pointed out were Aerospace, Clearwater, Logistics and Trade, Cyber Security and Medical Services and he gave much emphasis to Clearwater because he like many others believe that keeping our water resources clean for the future is the way to go. 

Bruce’s company gets funding from both the government sector as well as from big businesses that wish to see Tacoma grow because these companies know that this growth will help their business in return.  This funding is split about 50/50 coming from each of these two contributing factors.  Since there is a fixed income there is no real room for growth within his company.  He also pointed out that the shipping industry setting up a distribution within the port of Tacoma brings many new revenues worth exploring for the city’s growth.

Brian Forth, CEO of SiteCrafting (Compiled from barrowed notes and online research)

Brian Forth is the CEO of SiteCrafting a company that is involved in website design and web application development.  He developed a website for KBTC to help give them a new look and focused on developing a healthy website that kids can navigate through. He was awarded Small Business Leader of the Year by the UW Tacoma Milgard School of Business for excellence in leadership.

In high school he played basketball and during these years he had high hopes of being first baseman for the LA Dodgers.  He has been developing websites since 1995.  He went to Maramount college on a scholarship and won the college world series.  While attending Maramount he had asperations of being a film maker.  Brian graduated from Gonzaga University.  At this time he switched to theology and philosophy and he decided to teach at St Charles elementary school’s 5^th grade.  After this he worked as an intern at Disney  during his first year attending Gonzaga.

Brian worked on the development of one of the first widely distributed Learning Management Systems for Knowledge Universe during the late nineties for which the project was nominated the Codie Award for Best Online Product in 2000.  He founded SiteCrafting while Technology Coordinator at St. Charles Borromeo School in Tacoma where he made only $17,500.  SiteCrafting has chosen Spokane as its new expansion site.  In 2010 they expanded into Seattle.  The company opened more offices to meet employee’s needs.  His company was named one of Puget Sound Business Journal’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies in 2011.

His secrets to success are: the risk, invest yourself in the current project, trust your team, deliver more, make and keep bigger promises and leverage your experiences and connections.

How technology differentiates my business from my competitors

My business focusses on developing websites that allows users no matter what type of impairment is to be able to navigate through the website.  This means that all websites built by my business will be ADA compliant.  Most website developers do not worry about making their sites ADA compliant and so people with physical impairments are forced to use software on their computers to help them navigate through websites.

            My business will then be able competing with other website developers in a standard sense because I will be essentially be creating a website developing company.  I will also be competing with software manufacturers who develop website navigational tools and so my sites will allow for cutting out the middle man so to speak.  The one big issue my company will have is deciding how much ADA compliance I will incorporate within the websites my business develops.  There is endless research and techniques that have been fashioned to help generate ADA compliant websites.  While in the gathering requirements phase of the web development it will be very important to decide exactly how in depth my clients are going to need their website to incorporate these techniques.

Much of the research I will be needing to do before launching my company is what are the most popular software tools that are being used and what has made these in particular so highly in demand.  I will also need to look into what other companies are currently constructing websites focusing on meeting ADA compliance.  Having done this research will allow me to fully inform my clients on what are the most important areas to incorporate when meeting not only ADA compliance but also any individual that may wish to navigate their website.

Entrepreneur: Staying the Course with Laser Focus

What it means to be an entrepreneur is being on the cutting edge of technology.  Finding a problem and filling it with a viable solution.  This can be either creating a company around a new product that provides a solution to an old or newly emerging problem. 

Being your own boss is one of the great perks of being an entrepreneur.  Motivated by what they do and not the paycheck they hope to receive for the work they put into their business.  To be a leader and instilling pride in all those that work for the business.  The flip side to being an entrepreneur is that there is no steady income which may be a problem when unforeseen bumps in the road occur.  But the true entrepreneur uses their confidence in their problem solving skills and focus on what is coming to not let the stresses of having everything on the line bog them down.

This requires great self-discipline and single minded focus on accomplishing the task at hand.  They need to be starters and finishers and not let themselves be distracted by other possible ventures that may come along while trying to complete what they have started.  They also need to be believers in their business to push through the many obstacles that will inevitably try to block the company’s success.  If an entrepreneur does not believe in their abilities to develop and maintain a great company they set themselves up to fail right from the start.

Erik Hanberg Shoots the Breeze

Erik Hanberg is a personal achiever.  He sets goals for himself whether large or small and sees them through as far as he is able.  From the large success of his web development business he shares with his wife to the large flop of his attempt to set up a theater he has been through a plethora of experiences in his pursuit of the entrepreneurial lifestyle. 

Erik is a prime example of someone that has been able to completely change from a 9 to 5 lifestyle to sleeping in weekday mornings and traveling the world at his leisure.  He has also effectively turned his wife into a believer in his dream and now she would not have her life any other way.  After solidifying his home business he has been able to branch out and successfully run for a position in a political office.  He has a child on the way which will of course bring many joys into his life as well as many unforeseen stresses.

Mr. Hanberg has successfully molded his life into the types of stresses he feels comfortable dealing with.  He may not have a steady income, but he is someone that seems to think on his feet and is ready to take on any new challenge that presents itself.  The success of his other ventures has given him the ability to take time to write and publish some novels as his hobby.  Of course he would not be a true entrepreneur if he did not also turn this hobby into a money making opportunity.  Even with his minimal gains in the beginning he has stuck to his guns and managed to see great growth within the purchases of his novels.

The Trigger to my Company's Startup!

One business idea I have is to start up a company that develops websites for any client willing to money for this service.  The leveraging of technology is clear in this idea since it is taking a well-developed scheme as well as clearly thoroughly developed logic and using them for my company.  My main focus would be creating user friendly web sites and insuring ADA compliance for any special needs users may have when attempting to navigate my developed sites.  This idea could also end up tying into my second idea with possibilities of a partner company and my company joining forces to help strengthen each other’s products and services.

My second idea is to create a company that is devoted to database and data storage.  I would not create the database just use the techniques I have learned in my degree program to insure fast look ups and that there will be no data losses due to unsuccessful rollbacks upon unsuccessful saves to the storage.  Creating helpful information for new clients would be a good starting point, but I think most of this would just be links to helpful sites that I have compiled because I found them useful and insightful.

A third idea is to create a company that designs video games.  This would require a strong development team and advertisement to get the knowledge of my games existence out to the masses.  I do not intend to develop new concepts only try to perfect one or two popular game styles that I personally enjoy!