Dot Com to Dot Bomb

Presentation by Andrew Fry was pretty awesome. Andrew sure knows how to keep the attention of his class. I like how he brings in a whole bag of plastic dinosaurs just to represent AOL, Prodigy, CompuServ, Genie, and Delphi. I pretty sure it would've been just as effective to draw it out but it wouldn't have been as fun as dinosaurs. Its funny how companies such as CompuServ (not sure) was first out of the gate but fell behind because of some stupid decisions. For example they tried to force consumers to buy proprietary hardware in order to use their service which is retarded. In a way it reminds me of Microsoft and their Xbox 360. They were out of the gate first but the reliability of their systems were horrible. Accessories such as hard drives, controllers, memory cards, wifi adapter and headsets were all proprietary. Not only that but they charged the consumers $200 for what was essentially a 120gb 2.5 laptop harddrive. $100 for a wifi adapter and $60 for a wireless headset. They also released a patch so all third party memory cards would not work. Mircosoft reminds me of the new CompuServ by trying to create a new standard with the propriety hardware. The Playstation 3 lets the consumer use what they have. Such accessories include ANY usb accessories used on pc. Want a webcam? sure use the one you bough for pc 5 years ago Want to upgrade your hard drive? sure go to best buy and pick up a 500gb for $80. As much as I like the xbox 360 I hope Microsoft strays away from this proprietary hard ware. If not I hope they fail like CompuServ.

Accounting Basics

The chapter just covered the most basic aspects of accounting. These general operational activities are accounts payable, accounts, receivable, payroll, depreciation/amortization. I used to take accounting classes for my business major but after two quarters of it I found out I hated accounting. Reading this chapter I felt various emotions. First I was stressed out, then tired, lost, and then zombie. Zombie in my opinion is when you are awake but not mentally there. In other words turning on auto pilot. In zombie mode you can respond to simple questions that require only one or two word answers, such as yes, no, go away, and thank you. After I awoke from my zombie phase I realized I didn't learn much besides what I have typed at the beginning of the post.

I don't see myself crunching numbers all day which is why I switched to communications as a major. As much as I feel that accounting is horrible I know that it is an important part of every company. It is the backbone of the company financially and every company needs accountants.

However I did not have the energy nor the motivation to try to reread and understand this chapter. Which is why it took me so long to write this OPTIONAL blog. I hope one day I will be able to sit down focus and learn accounting. Maybe when I get a little older and my attention span to boring things increase while my attention span to everything else decreases. One thing I do know now is that if I ever start a business an accountant would be one of my first set of hires.

Armstrong

Michele Armstrong was the guest speaker in class today. Out of all the speakers I feel that she provided the most useful information. A good portion of her time in class was spent giving us a lecture on what to say, how to dress and other necessities one would need to do in an interview. One of the tips she gave about dressing a step up but do not over dress really stuck with me. In all the interviews I have gone to I would always wear black slacks, a dress shirt and a matching tie along with dress shoes. I did this for every interview. In a way I believe that was why I never was able to get a job at Mc Donalds or any fast food place. However I was able to get a job at The News Tribune, West Coast Grocery, and at Rushforth Construction.

Another thing that stuck with me was how she mentioned businesses looking for employees. I initially thought that posting a resume on Monster would be the best possible way to find employment however Armstrong stated that the company would have to spend lots of money for a Monster account. She then mentioned that most companies turn to craigslist, and twitter because it is free to use.

Overall I learned a lot from her presentation and I will begin to build my resume online. I figure I might as well as hide my personal pictures on Facebook since I don't want possible employers to see drunken pictures of me. It scares me that she mentioned how employers looking into these social networking sites. Everyone is on a social networking site. It is almost impossible to hide everything about yourself. How will I prevent protecting myself against this? As technology progresses I feel that we are losing more and more of our privacy and information about anyone can be easily found on the web.

Derek Young

Today Derek Young gave a quick presentation in class. I enjoyed his presentation because it inspired the web designer inside me. I liked how he mentioned exit 133 started as a website for his friends for fun and almost accidentally blew up and turned into a popular site. He explained how Google and other search engines helped the site tremendously because of how they worked. Exit133 wrote their articles in a way that will help Google list their site on the top of the list. Therefore more people will click on it. Although he mentioned that this year is the first year the profited off the site it showed me how important the site was to him. He wasn't getting enormous revenue for running the site but he worked on it and kept it updated for his audience. He also mentioned that the writers were paid but money was given to their selected charity. He also mentioned how the old model didn't work because the quality of writing dropped and the quantities of writing increased. This was because in the old model writers were paid for each piece they wrote therefore when there was a need for money more and more articles were written however quality suffered. He also explained how ads would work and how they would create a more professional view to your site. Also ad will bring in some sort of revenue to help you pay for updates to the site. Knowing this I hope that one day I will be able to create a successful site and keep it running for the locals. At the same time I feel that if I have a successful website like Derek Young it will open different opportunities for me in life. Overall I thought this was a great presentation.

Kendall

Kendall was the next speaker to come to our class. He started the discussion off with who our high school mascot which was quite interesting. He then explained how certain mascots needed to be change because there were people complaining that certain mascots were discriminating against certain groups of minorities. After the first 30 minutes of his presentation my mind began to wander. I usually give presenters my full attention but not today. I felt that his presentation was very dry and more of a lecture then anything. I know that there was probably a good deal of information however I was not able to stay focused for it. The only thing I remember him mentioning is pipeline, funnel, chance to sell and some other stuff. However I can tell that he was passionate about what he does. He answered a lot of questions the class had and I feel that the class in general got a lot out of his presentation. I did not ask him any questions because I mentally checked out. I did not want to ask a question that was answered previously or didn't have anything to do with his presentation. I am aware of the slides being emailed to us so maybe when I have time I can go back and review the slides. If a quiz is given on his presentation I would probably fail haha. I hope I will be focused when the next presenter comes in

Dimmer

I enjoyed John Dimmers presentation quite a bit.His presentation got me thinking about my own business plan for class a little bit deeper. I now have a better understanding of what is involved in the process of getting money for business. John provided a simple outline of where these funds should come from when starting up a business.

You!
This is the first source of money. I remember one of the guest speakers mentioned saving 20% of your paycheck and putting it in a savings account as this is your first source for funding your business.

Friends and Family
The second source is friends and family which is estimated to provide 25 to 150 thousand dollars. Although I can't picture myself asking my family for money. It haven't ask for anything not even a loan ever since I was 16 and got my first job. Also if things don't go as planned and I lose all that money it would probably hurt the relationship of my family.

Angel Investor
Next is the Angel Investor. I never heard of this name however I am familiar with what they do. They are private individuals who invest money in start-up businesses

Venture capital
The last source is Venture capital that could provide 4 million dollars

With this information and the reading given to me in class, I now have a better understanding of how to get funding for my ideas. As of right now I will probably use my own funds to support my business (buying from various sources and selling on ebay)

Goodman

I didn't know what to expect when I first walked into the room. First thing I did was grab a danish, a yogurt and a bottle of milk. What I thought was most useful is the length of her presentation. The presentation was pretty short and sweet but she had a question and answer portion that cleared up a lot of my questions. I agree with her on how there is NO TEMPLATE when it comes to creating a business. Each business plan is different from another. One may have more elements then the other and there is no way to guarantee success just because there is a well written business plan. I like how she just casually says "you won't sleep well at night if you know you owe thousands of dollars." Although I am worried about this statement (I hate being in debt) I feel that it is an experience every entrepreneur must go through. At the end of the day I still want to pursue the long, dangerous, stressful path of the entrepreneur.

Strengths and Weakness

strengths
- sales experience. I used to work for The News Tribune so I know how to communicate and close a sale.
- communication skills. As stated before I have experience speaking with people from my sales job as well as my current job at the convenient store at UWT.
- Always have ideas to throw out there.
- Dependable always on time

weakness
- without someone pushing me or a due date to look forward to I easily lose focus.
- without a set schedule or focus I lose motivation.
- without a schedule or motivation I procrastinate.
- have no idea or experience of starting a business.

Ron class presentation

I didn't know what to expect when I came in for class. The presentation was pretty overwhelming. A lot of information was thrown around although a lot of the information was a slight review on what was covered in class. As I took notes on what he was presenting about thoughts began to pour into my head. A lot of questions that I had were answered such as where to find employees how to find funds and how to protect your ideas. I think that presentation was beneficial to me however because I did not actually start writing my business plan I didn't have that many questions. Overall I learned a lot more from the questions and answer portion of class versus the power point. I will probably write more as the day goes on but for now I have to eat lunch

5 ideas

1. Inferred keyboard in cell phone

I thought of this idea when I was trying to write this blog entry on my cell phone. Long story short it sucked. Punctuation was horrible because I had to go through multiple menus to put in parenthesis and other punctuation marks to express my frustration in using a touch screen QWERTY keyboard. The main problem is that cellphones are small therefore the touchscreen keyboards on them are small and many keys you find on a keyboard cannot be included. In the end it took me about 20 minutes to write half a paragraph. I tried to post and somehow closed the browser on my cellphone without hitting "post" on blogger.

This idea will require such as the picture below and will be integrated within a phone.



This will solve the problem of frustrating on screen keyboards and create a nice alternative. A journalist can type up his story with a full sized infrared keyboard with the same phone he uses to set up an interview with another client. A student can type up his/her blog before class without the frustrations of going through sub menus for punctuations.

2.USB powered credit card machine



As we all know people are carrying less and less cash in their pockets. In my group of friends we use nothing but debit/credit cards and carry almost no cash. I am lucky to even have 5 dollars in my wallet. Therefore my second idea would be integrating credit cards into existing technologies. We already know that soda machines now take cards. To make things easier we can have a USB credit card machine. Lets say I want to buy something from Ebay. I click by now and then plug in my USB Powered credit card machine to pay for the goods. This eliminates the use of Paypal. I would not need to wait 3 days for my money to transfer from my bank account to my Paypal account. Casinos will also benefit with this by having slot machines accept credit cards. Many people like myself will loose all the money and wish that I always brought more.

3. Iphone, android app. Voice Movie finder.

Certain phones or services have the ability to identify songs and gives the consumers the ability to buy the song. So if you don't know the song a portion of it can be played and the phone will recognize the song and provide the artist and title. My idea is a movie version of this. One would have to recite a line or catch phrase from a movie into their phone and the name of the movie or show will pop up and the consumer will be given the option to purchase that clip, show, and or movie.

4. PDF highlighter.

I just want to say that I hate PDF files. At UWT much of the reading is in PDF format which can't be highlighted or written on digitally. Therefore I am unable to take small notes or make sense of what I am reading. The solution to this is to print out pages and pages of E reserves and then highlighting and marking the physical copies. There should be a modified version of the Windows 7 snippet tool. One that does not need to cut and save just to highlight a certain portion of a PDF file.

5. Touch charge for business offices and school desks



This is a much needed idea that needs to be put into action. Many times in class my laptop would die and that would be the end of my internet brow...err I mean note taking in class. These plates should be integrated in all classrooms so that electronics such as laptops and phones can stay charged without using power outlets that are too far away. It will reduce clutter in the room as well as prevent people tripping on your power cord.

Entrepreneurship

While reading the first page of "The Technology Entrepreneur's Guidebook," the five facts two of them immediately popped out at me. "Less then 1 percent of business plans get funding," "60 percent of companies funded go bankrupt." Being someone that is dreams about starting a real business, reading those two facts brought me back to reality.

Because I am just a broke college student with a low paying job at school I always looked for different ways to earn money. What is most profitable to me at the moment is buying goods such as electronics and car parts off sites such as Craigslist or Honda-Tech and reselling on Ebay. Prices for goods are much lower on Craigslist and Honda-Tech forums because of two reasons. People are in desperate need of money for other things so they sell what they feel is no longer needed. Secondly meeting with a seller I can negotiate "hustle" for a lower price.

The reason I bring this up is because I thought that business was just that simple. I felt that what I have been doing is business and for me to obtain more profits I would just have to have more money to buy and sell at a larger scale.

In the end of the article a few lines brought my confidence back. "Entrepreneurs always have passion. Entrepreneurs live and breathe their business enterprises." "To understand the odds against success and still forge ahead, knowing that many battles will be lost along the way, requires a certain amount of fearlessness." I agree completely with this line. Yes the odds are against me but I am passionate about what I do. I enjoy hunting for deals and I enjoy the hustle. I like selling things to people and convincing them that they need it.