Elevator Speech

    I had a lot of fun with the elevator speech. It was cool to see how other students ideas have developed over the course of the quarter. You can really see how the business planning process has helped them shape their ideas.
   With my elevator speech, I wanted to get across the idea that my website can help every student in the world bridge the gap between education and a career. It is tough to convey the entirety of what I want to build in such a short time but I think it is important to show that my website can (1) help a lot of people and (2) make a decent amount of money if it is done right. While my elevator speech in class went ok, it is only a start to developing a decent pitch to help grow my business.

Guest Speaker: Jim Kastama

   Jim was a great presenter. I am currently working to get a group together to go view the Lamborghini museum in Seattle. I thought seeing someone face to face that worked in politics for such a long time. Sometimes it is easy to picture the state congress as a bunch of selfish people arguing for hours on end. Jim clearly is not this type of politician(I'm sure most aren't) as his reasons for joining the political world. He gave a lot of insight into his motivations which was cool to see.
   His work in strategic planning seems pretty vague. I wish we could have had more time to pick his brain on what makes a business successful so I could implement them if or when I  start a business. i think it is a great career for him cause he clearly cares about the work he does and has great connections in the Seattle area. Really, that is everything I would look for in a business partner.

Dot com to Dot bomb lecture

    The lecture on the dot com bust was pretty eye opening. I was pretty young when all of these events took place and I vaguely remember them happening. However, I was too young to really comprehend the amount of money that was moving around. Andrew Fry's first hand experience helped to show the blatant disregard for any sort of caution in investing at the time. I also find it interesting that the idea of what the internet was at the time was different. The idea of an internet that is not "world wide" seems strange and completely impractical.
    What worries me the most about the dot com bust is that there may be a similar bubble building in an industry in the current day. We all saw the real estate bubble of 2008 from which the country is recovering. But a current bubble I see building is the student loan bubble and the cost of college bubble. There are similar signs from the dot com bubble such as students "investing" in an education that they are not necessarily going to make their money back on. Copy this with the exponential increase of college costs, colleges investing in infrastructure, and the decreasing value of a bachelors degree, there is more and more risk to getting a college degree. I see the future of an education as being MOOC(massive open online course) based. They are relatively cheap and are becoming more recognized as a respected education. Georgia Tech offers an online masters degree in computer science that can be earned in 2 years for about $4,000, which is equal to the cost of one quarter at UW Tacoma.

Guest Speaker: Graham Evans

Graham’s presentation was probably my favorite so far. First, I like that he works with a non profit that is advocating for attention towards one of the biggest issues in the pacific northwest. From there, the group discussions that spurred from filling out his Business Model Canvas were beneficial to the group in a few ways. For a while, I have seen a non-profit as a way to get a job, but not a career. However, Graham showed us the impact a non-profit can have and if it was something I am passionate about, success would not be measured by a paycheck.

I have mostly considered success to be directly correlated with dollars and cents but this gave me a completely different perspective. However, Graham’s presentation did have a lot of benefits to every type of business. I have started using his Business Model Canvas to help flesh out my business ideas. As mentioned in other blog posts, I am not entirely confident in any of my ideas. The canvas is helping to drive these ideas forward as well as help me develop entirely new business ideas.

Guest Speaker: John Dimmer

John Dimmer was the first presentation where I got the “entrepreneur” vibe. Which I am not sure if that is a compliment or not, but for me it is simply an observation. My favorite part of the presentation was how he explained the “demographic” of the windstream customer, and how that was the driving force behind their business plan. I am in a Human Computer Interaction class that says product design is about the user, and no amount of mathematics can change that. It seemed he was getting at the same core rule, in that you can introduce the right product to the wrong customer base and be unsuccessful. In his case, the windstream was what the customers in the Northwest wanted, and it was wildly successful.

His presentation on funding was interesting. I never knew that businesses started on family and friends money, I thought that was just a rumor. But being able to see the life cycle of funding a business was a bit daunting. John had a lot of experience in this, and knew the process like the back of his hand. However, the idea of getting funding still is a bit intimidating. But, John made it seem like it was just part of the process, if you are willing to work for it.

Guest Speaker: Amy Sallin

I enjoyed Amy’s lecture. It was a sort of informal, which I thought was great and everyone was involved. The business plan competition was an interesting prospect and she acted as if we could all potentially win, which allowed me to daydream about all the “what-if” scenarios of joining the competition. However, I am not entirely passionate about any of my business ideas. Maybe at some point one of these ideas will be what I use to start my business, but for right now I am still trying to do the research and see where I stand.

I think the main benefit of her presentation was helping us visualize our business plans. Many students asked questions about the competition as if they were planning on joining. Also, I think she helped push a lot of us in the direction of starting our own business.

My goal is to have a business plan that I feel is a viable candidate for this competition next year.

Recruiting and Retention

Recruiting and retention.

A quick perusal of online career forums will show you there are a few rules to live by in today’s technology careers (my personal favorite is reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions).

1. Everyone has a degree, not everyone has relevant experience. Get relevant experience.
2. Network, network, network.
3. If you want a raise, you will have to switch companies.

Rule 3 is the most important aspect here. The general attitude is that a software engineer has a future vested in their skillset, not in their company. Since all of my business ideas are technology based and would require a solid group of software engineers, so I would like to create an environment where an engineer would see their future at my company, not elsewhere. I would do this by providing opportunities for promotion, so each employee would know that there is not a glass ceiling above their head. Second, I would offer stock options, so each employee would have a vested interest in the success of the company. The third, I would make sure we were always on the cutting edge of the tech world and would send as many employees as possible to tech conferences around the world. I want to inject ideas and knowledge into my company at every level and this would be a great way to accomplish this.

On the recruiting side, I think there are 2 elements: company image and benefits. I will of course offer competitive pay, as this is a basic need for any potential employee. Beyond this, employees generally want a job at a place they agree with on a moral level. An example of this is Google’s “don’t be evil” slogan as a slight against Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000s. It helped drive employees to Google and many would say Google has surpassed Microsoft in terms of brand recognition and quality of product. Second, I would offer competitive benefits to all employees. I would follow the German model, where employees take more vacation and work less hours but have a higher output in terms of product. I think work/life balance is key to building a quality product, as it helps lower the stress of the day to day grind.