Steve's Enterprising Ideas

I asked Mr. Fry for 500,000 dollars. I am still not sure if he agreed to fund me. Talking about my fake business plan was strange. These last days spent writing a business plan about a beer company despite the fact that I don't drink beer have been very tiring. I used to share a bathroom with my dad as a kid. I remember how the bathroom used to smell after he came home from the bar. I have never understood why people drink all that beer in bars. Why drink if you will just urinate out all the beer when you get home. The class presentation proved easier than I expected because it was conversational. However I kept talking about kids and beer. I meant college students over the age of 21. I have always hated public speaking. I managed to go through six years of college without taking that dreaded speech class. Some people were only asking for 10,000 dollars. You could raise that on minimum wage in America. I must admit that pretty much all our businesses were unrealistic loss makers. I recall one plan was about some detective urgency that specializes in lie detection face reading. A perfect answer to all our plans should have been; “dude, its been done”. How did Sam Adams do it? There was a plan about hiring taxi drivers. Uber long killed the taxi industry. I have new found respect people who take risks and establish businesses. I guess apps are the future. A lot of the plans presented were about this app that was going to end all apps.

I wish I was around during the dot com dot bomb era. Actually I was around at the time; I was just too young to cash in. However I have a vivid memory and can recall that pets.com sock puppet super bowl commercial. I also remember the next year’s super bowl which mocked that sock puppets demise. But Mark Cuban cashed in his chips at the top of that boom while our instructor sold at the bottom of the market. It must have been a strange feeling watching TV and seeing yourself lose money you didn’t have anyway. I am old enough to have received one of those AOL CD ROMS. I believe I received the last batch that was ever mailed out. I still have the colorful metal case it was mailed in. That should be one of the wonder of the 20th century; that a company was able to mail that many CD ROMS. The lecture used dinosaurs to illustrate that ERA. Many companies started off ahead and lost it all. I still cannot believe AOL had 30 million subscribers paying 25 dollars a month. Instead of offering their subscribers more reasons to stay, they inexplicably did nothing. Most of the services AOL offered on their website were increasingly offered for free by other website. The early 1990s era is best described as fast lose and out of control. There was an innocent beginning, a boom, and then insanity, and ultimately everything went bust. However, there was a crawl back to sanity, and another more justified boom. I slaved away at Amazon in December 2011. I am still mad at how I was treated there. I was treated as a cog in some big gear. On Christmas Eve, my boss called to offer me a job. Later that same day, he called and told me to tell my services were no longer needed. It was fun being reminded of dearly departed companies like Netscape.

Is Jim Kastama another influence peddler? Is he just another lobbyist traipsing the halls of the state capitol in Olympia? He used to be state senator here in Washington State who once rand on a dad’s rights campaign platform after a bitter divorce. There are many former legislators all over America who have pivoted and made soft landings as late career lobbyists. Like Trent Lott. Mr. Kastama says he is a strategy and technology consultant. So that is what the cool kids call old fashioned lobbying these days. He has managed to land some cool clients though. Like Lamborghini. What does that Italian manufacturer want in the Puget Sound anyway? Is Kastama a carbon fiber materials expert? The UW does however have a state of the aeronautics wind tunnel. But the man knows his stuff. He said he attend a business conference called Start-up weekends where he and others were able to implement a real business plan overnight! I am still plodding through mine. The process has been draining. He talked about six thousand dollar start-ups. He also encouraged us to attend A Million Cups. Mr. Kastama was not clear on how his government experience influences his consulting. Does he help businesses navigate red tape in Olympia? Does he specifically lobby for his clients or does he try to change laws to benefit all businesses.

Amy Sallin gave us a lecture about business plan competition that is based out of the Seattle campus. In this competition, entrepreneurs build teams and pitch their business ideas. The most successful plan wins a top monetary prize of 20,000 dollars. The whole competition process plays out over 5 weeks. This gives teams enough time to go through the whole process of creating a detailed business plan and present it to judges who are experienced business professionals. This highly competitive process and the feedback that can be gotten from real business professionals is really helpful to students who want to one day start their own businesses. Losing competitors could also get tips from more successful one and restructure their own plans.

Pierce County based Brit Graham Evans gave us a talk that quickly took a radically different turn. I thought it was going to be another formulaic business talk about start-ups. This was the first talk given by someone from a non-profit organization. He works with the Federal Way Coalition of Trafficking (FWCAT). I cannot recall if he said that this is the only Job he does here in America. As someone who is familiar with the general Federal Way-Des Moines-SeaTac area, and more specifically has driven on Pacific Highway/International Blvd/Airport Way South at all hours countless times; I am sadly not blind to the child trafficking and modern day sexual slavery going on our streets daily in broad daylight. 2 weeks ago I saw a TV report about a girl from a middle class neighborhood in Spokane who ran away from home in the morning and by midday she had already been raped. By 5 pm, she was already on the streets getting sold for sex by a pimp. I commend people like Evans for doing something about it instead of just shaking his head in shame like me. Even though FWCAT is a non-profit organization, it has adopted a for profit model used by most businesses in order to serve its purpose more efficiently. FWCAT views its interactions though a business like prism. Like any organization it must balance it account and ensure that enough money is coming in. They use all the best practices that for profit businesses used. Graham surprised me when he say his organizations views trafficking victims, perpetrating pimps, parents, police, and community groups as its customers. The organization has like any other normal business, various departments that handle different matters. One department is concerned with maintaining revenue streams. FWCAT gets most of its money from donations, government funds, and freebies from corporations.

Make a boat load of money. That pretty much sums up life these days in America. Everyone wants to make a boat load of money, but only very few actually succeed at it. Mr. John Dimmer, it seems, has succeeded in this endeavor. A University of Oregon finance degree major, he has gone from slinging surety bonds to building industry companies from an office in Fife (of all places), to owning a Honda dealership in Wilsonville Or, cornering 40% of the sales of Airstream trailers nationwide, among other ventures. Ever since he talked about Airstream trailers, I am beginning to see them everywhere. I even saw Taylor Swift posing in one online with one of her look-alike celebrity friends. Mr. Dimmer, it turns out is a childhood friend and an old colleague of our instructor from his Free Range Media days. They both made money when they sold their company, but one of them seems to have invested better than the other. After a short-lived retirement at 39, he embarked on a second business life. This one was much more profitable than the first. After leaving the surety business with some savings he pondered his next step. He decided against both buying an insurance agency and starting a winery. Every successful business man, needs a bit of luck to fall their way. Mr. Dimmer happened to know a friend in the racing industry who was close to the head honchos at Honda. With his friend’s contacts and his (Dimmer) money, they landed a sweet Honda dealership deal in Wilsonville OR. He hired a salesman extraordinaire called Tedd who not only got the Honda dealership running smoothly and profitably, but he also landed them the deal with Airstream. Mr. Dimmer, because of his background in the financing and building industries insisted on owning his places of business to cut down on rent costs. Because he financed the premises together with the merchandise with the same lender, he was able to get a very borrowing rate. He has cleverly limited his liability by creating different holding companies for his dealerships and his buildings. This limits the spillover effect across business and property lines. However I detected a certain mean streak to him. Despite thoroughly dominating the Airstream sales industry, he is still obsessed with crushing competing small dealerships. . It is not enough to him that he has won; he wants his enemies to lose. Despite this, he is also an angel investor who has invested in 50 -60 ventures even while holding on to decades old family businesses that are still running. He also participates in the Choose Vets program which encourages employers to hire US Military veterans. The most important thing in a business plan according to him is having a firm entry and exit point.

To attract and maintain an employee base, I will use aggressive recruitment tactics which will offer selected potential employees a chance to be part of something big. Since I intend to engage in the craft brewing of beer locally, my plan is also to recruit locally. Nowadays, a lot of people brew beer in their backyards or garages. I will recruit some of these local brewers at local beer conventions and through craft brewery connoisseur websites. I will offer them an ownership stake in the business venture. The Samuel Adams Beer Company was started in someone’s kitchen using an old family recipe. On the administrative side, I will use technical analysis and growth projections to hire help. Traditional beer companies have been steadily losing market share to domestic upstarts and to esoteric foreign beer brands since the mid-90s. I can attest to this personally from my experiences walking the beer isle as a kid. Isles and isles were filled with Budweiser, Miller lite, and MGD. Today the beer isle is crowded with numerous foreign and local beers which have more appeal than Budweiser. The Budweiser NASCAR Dad image has long grown stale and lost appeal to the millennial generation. I will tell new hires of this potential for growth. I will focus my hiring on local recent college graduates who are will to take a chance on an upstart company. They will then have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a potentially future big thing versus being just another cog in the well oil gears of a large well established corporation. In the early years of the company I will reward loyal employees who stick with my upstart company decent paychecks even if it means getting little to no money personally. I believe this investment will be worth it in future when the revenue will be higher due to more sales. To maintain employees, I will furnish them with all the details of future business plans. Along with the craft beers, my future plans could include hard cider, wineries and even regular soft drinks.

Apparently having kids is detrimental to your bottom line. Everyone knows that. But still it was depressing to see the evidence presented in graph form. I would describe Eric Hanberg as the modern-day dad with interests vested in very different places. He describes himself in his website as an author and media entrepreneur. He is a member of the Metro Parks Board of Tacoma who also writes books, has dabbled in theatre management, and runs a graphic design business from home with his wife. They run a company called Side x Side Creative, a marketing firm for businesses and nonprofits. They help each client attract attention to their businesses through catchy beautiful magazine designs, creative social media campaigns, or developing a new brand for a business. They help customers navigate the rapidly changing media environment and reach new customers, new clients, and new sources of revenue. Eric also has a podcast called Media Carnivores where he talks about media trends, and local news and attractions. He probably has to adopt two different personas and world views to safely navigate daily the from his non-profit world consulting work to his profit making endeavors. I wonder what it takes to run so many businesses concurrently. Here in the computer science program, most students are barely able to take a full load of classes. Business partners would probably not like it if one of their colleagues had other businesses. I look forward to reading one of Eric’s books about business. He also wrote a series of mystery books.

I remember in the 2012 presidential election, former governor Mitt Romney got into trouble when he said he loved firing people. It confirmed a lot of people’s deepest darkest fears about him. He was stereotyped as venture capitalist and management consultant who only understood numbers, percentages, and bottom lines. That he couldn’t think twice letting go a dedicated long-term employee who had toiled for a failing company for very little pay and had nothing to show for it decades later. He parried by saying he meant firing people who provide poor services to him like cable companies, restaurants etc. But the damages was done, his opponent in the election used that to further alienate him from blue collar voters. I did not believe him because of the sneer on his face when he made the comment the first time. There is a fine line between being a venture capitalist and a vulture capitalist who only shows up to pick the bones. In the Startup movie, Khalil nonchalantly fired a child hood and had him escorted out of the building (Office Space style) when the going got tough. I could never do that to a longtime friend. If a longtime friend did that to me, our friendship would be irrevocably severed. Does a good entrepreneur need to have a heart of stone? In class, the instructor has mentioned numerous times that he has fired so many people in the course of his business career. He even walked them out of the building (Office Space style). That is something I would be very unwilling to do. Maybe this is why some people take risks and become employers, while most others like me just dream of well-paying jobs.

I have 3 business Ideas that I am still finalizing. My first idea is entering the craft brewery business. Millennials, research has shown, have turned their backs on traditional American beers like Budweiser and Miller Lite. One walk along the beer isle in any supermarket attests to this fact. Traditional beer brands have been forced to make room and share the isle with many beer brands unheard of just ten years ago. The Budweiser Clydesdales just got laid off last year. The NASCAR dad image is no longer relevant or appealing to young people today. My idea for a locally brewed craft beer to capture this emerging and rapidly growing market couldn't have been timed better. Startup costs are relatively low for craft beer brewery. There are numerous website that hawk start up kits. To get my product on the market I would need to link up with local bars and restaurants. Beer drinkers these days are more than willing to try new things. My other Idea for business is creating a video game that recreates and re-imagines epic battles fought centuries ago. Battles like Trafalgar, Antietam, the Battle of Vienna, Napoleon's disaster in Moscow, Waterloo etc. Costs for developing video games aren't that expensive. Most of the costs go to paying salaries for programmers and for specialized computer equipment. My final business idea is running a mobile food truck. These food trucks seem to be all the rage these days. Because competition in that industry is getting tight, my idea will involve a gimmick to make it stand out from the crowd. I could combine three or more ethnic themes, serve rotating rare esoteric dishes, and utilize edgy guerilla marketing tactics. Of course, most of my ideas, even potential brand names and logos, aren’t fully original. Nothing is these days.

I had never watched or even heard of this movie before. I had always thought Office Space was the only movie that captured the essence of the dot.com boom-bust era. These movie, unlike Office Space, shows us what was really going on in the back rooms of those companies which emerged overnight, were valued in billions, and then disappeared without a trace. While Office Space had better camera, lighting, and Jennifer Aniston, Startup.com was real. The documentary film follows the then e-commerce website govWorks and its founders Kaleil Tuzman and Tom Herman from 1999-2000 as they try to make their company successful amid an economy that had fallen out of love with internet start=up companies. Like in all business start-ups the founders took great risks when they left steady jobs with well paying companies like Goldman Sachs for the high risk high reward dot.com. In the end, they, like most entrepreneurs failed. Their friend who was least committed, and bailed out earliest got the most out of it.They were victims of timing and too much competition. Since the late 1990's, most court costs are indeed paid online just like Herman and Tuzman predicted. Every local court website in America accepts credit cards these days. Both of them gained a lot of experience and life lessons. They experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows. Kaleil go to rub shoulders with President Clinton and even slipped him a business card. Their friend who profited most from the venture, probably learnt the wrong life lesson from the whole ordeal. He may have come to view business ventures as mere pump and dump outfits.

Like everyone else who has had a job and worked under other people; i would prefer, in a perfect situation, to be my own boss. I want to have the privilege to make my own decisions, and succeed or fail own my own accord. It's is after all the, American dream.There are a lot of classes at the UW that teach how to build things or sell things, but in this class i expect to learn the process of setting up things to enable one to build and sell things.I expect from this course to learn and develop a step by step process of developing a business. From the inception of an idea to all the steps needed to bring that idea into the marketplace.