Dot Com To Dot Bomb

We listened to a lecture on the dot com to dot bomb era in tech companies. From the early nineties to the late nineties there was an explosion in the tech industry, as the internet came into being. Basically, there was such a rapid expansion of the internet and computing technologies that people didn’t know how to assign value to the services that were being made available. Putting a dot com after your company name was essentially a money printing machine. There were no rules or regulations regarding the computing industry as nothing of its kind had ever been seen before. Small startup companies became massive near overnight, and huge established companies got bigger. Everyone was riding the bubble and no one saw an end to it. Alas, an end did come, as in early two thousand, the bubble burst, leading to a huge depression in the market. There were some survivors, but many many companies lost their proverbial shorts. The survivors did something that the other companies couldn’t do, adapt, and adapt quickly. Andrew used the analog of dinosaurs to describe the companies that met their end in the market when the crash happened. They were gigantic beasts, dominating the entire tech landscape. They owned the entire market, but since they were so big, they were also slow, and unable to adapt to change quickly enough. Because they were set in their ways and unable to adapt to the new, harsh landscape in which they suddenly found themselves, they all died out.

Guest Speaker: John Dimmer

We had the pleasure of having John Dimmer come speak to the class. John is an entrepreneur who knows quite a bit about finance. He currently runs the investment firm Firs Management, which invests in startup companies, as well as being an owner of a Honda dealership as well as several Airstream trailer dealerships all around the Northwest region. John Dimmer started out by getting a B.S. in finance from the Oregon State University, after which he moved into a job at Puget Sound Bank. After His job at Puget Sound Bank, he moved to a job working at Alliance Surety Bonds, where he learned a lot about accounting and learned skills which would become helpful with his businesses later on. He got his start in business with Andrew Fry and Free Range Media, which was sold in late 1999, before the dot com bust in early 2000. After that, he opened a Honda dealership in Oregon, then after that, he started branching out into other franchises. He opened his first Airstream trailer franchise in the Portland area in 2010, and that did so well that he opened another in Covington in 2011, and another in Boise in 2012. All this to say that John Dimmer has some serious experience operating companies. He talked to us about the different levels of funding, as well as the different types of funding. All in all it was a very helpful conversation to have and it cleared up a lot of points about funding of a startup company that we would not think about right out of the gate.

Guest Speaker: Amy Sallin

We had the pleasure of hearing from Amy Sallin. Amy works in the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, where she manages Business plan competitions.  She came to talk to the class about the 2016 UW Business Plan Competition. The competition is a tournament style competition where groups put together a business plan and try to secure funding for their idea. There are $70,000 worth of prizes awarded to the top teams in the competition. The competition is set up to help students of the university create a business plan for the intent of starting their business. The competition is basically three tiered. First, the teams send in executive summaries, where they are screened for eligibility into the contest. Then, the teams that pass the screening round go to the investment round. In the investment round, the teams set up booths akin to how a trade show is set up, then the judges walk around the booths and have an allotted amount of virtual money to invest in the teams. Of the 36 teams that make it to the investment round, the top 16 move on to the sweet 16 and final round of the competition. The final 16 then present to a new set of judges, and the top four teams are selected. The final four then present to a new set of judges and the other teams, and then the awards are given out to the top teams. The whole focus of the competition is to get people excited about their business ideas and expose them to the people that could help them actually launch their business ideas.

Mission and Vision

Our mission statement is “We must make medicine streamlined for the common person”. I find that a simple, concise, clear mission statement is the best thing for my company. I could make a mission statement that is long and drawn out and outlines the companies’ mission point by point for the next few years, but I think that there is something powerful in making a mission statement that is not hard to remember and embodies the spirit of the company. The whole idea behind the company is to make things easy on people having to deal with medical issues, using technology. I believe this mission statement portrays the idea of the company, and it is inspiring to anyone that may doubt the direction of the company, and can keep the company focused on its base premise.

The vision statement of the company is “Bringing healthcare into the 21^st century”. I think this is a solid vision statement because even more than the mission statement of the company, it explains the basic premise of the company and the entire point of creating the company in the first place. That is what I envisioned for the company from its conception in my mind. Having this is a powerful tool to guide the company in the long term. Once this vision is complete, it will be simply updated to “Bringing healthcare into the 22^nd century.” This is a broad, overarching idea that will guide the company and is a strong tool for setting the culture of the company.

Company Name & Logo

The name of my company is MeDeliver. I figured that the name would convey what the values of the company are. The company delivers for medical practices by giving them tools to help ease transition of new patients. Coming up with the name was especially tricky, as I wanted med or medi to be a prefix for the name, but almost every single idea I came up with had already been taken by a company. This was very eye opening for me, as I had not previously thought of a company name before, but as you explore options, the first, second, third and twentieth ideas that pop into your head were already thought of by someone else who made a company with that name. It is almost to the point where the domain of valid business names is almost exclusively going to be made up words. For my company logo, I wanted to create something that is easy to recognize and scale up or down, but also is a unique representation of the company and what it does. To accomplish this, I decided that a cross would be a good starting point, as my company will be operating in the medical field, but I decided to add a dashed line box pattern to evoke thoughts of organization and efficiency, which my database company will certainly provide. In the end, my logo will be recognizable, and easy to scale up or down, yet unique enough to stand out to the casual observer. Below is a rough sketch of my design.

Guest Speaker: Brian Forth

Last week we had the good fortune to have Brian Forth, of SiteCrafting come to the class to talk to us. Brian is unique among the guest speakers we've had talk to us in that he has owned his company for 18 years. While the other guest speakers we've had talk to us show an 'entrepreneurial lifestyle' starting multiple companies and moving from place to place, Brian started a company and stuck with it, which brings a unique perspective that we had not heard so far.
Brian started his company when he was a teacher, as the internet was growing rapidly at that time, and parents of his students would ask him to code websites for them. Once the work got to be too time consuming for him to do after school, he decided to quit his teaching job and work as a freelance website contractor, which was the start of his company, SiteCrafting.
Site Crafting has been running now for 18 years, which is very impressive considering the shifting landscape of the internet and technology. In Brian's experience, the key to staying afloat as a technology company in times of turmoil is to be diversified in the industries you work with, as well as provide an excellent service and excellent support for the clients you have, so they can support your company. Brian showed us that customer service is an essential part of keeping a company running over a length of time.
Overall, Having Brian come talk to the class was a delight as it was a new perspective on entrepreneurship that we have not heard before.

Guest Speaker: Erik Hanberg

    Last week we had the pleasure of having a guest speaker Erik Hanberg come visit the class. Erik Hanberg is a local author and entrepreneur who has done many projects in his life. Among his accomplishments are working as the Director of the Grand Cinema at a young age, which inspired him to start the Horatio, a live theatre company. After that, he started self-publishing books, and works with his wife at Sidexside, a marketing consulting firm, as well as running and being elected to be on the parks board of Tacoma.
    He offered some advice to the class, in the form of the ideas, be a starter, and practice shipping. By be a starter, he meant in order to be successful, you must go for it. If you have a good idea, do it. By practice shipping, he meant practice finishing something. He said the best way to practice for the ups and downs of starting a business is to do something on your own, start to finish. Whether it is writing a book or learning something new or whatever, getting through the rough times gives you the experience and the motivation to get through the rough times starting a business.
    An interesting tidbit he shared with us was that there are two basic kinds of income. There is income that you get for doing labor, such as a job or a career, and there is income you get from making things, like writing a book. In the example of writing a book, there is a certain amount of time you have to work on it, but once you are finished, any sales of the book makes your time more and more valuable, as you are spending no more time on it, yet you are gaining rewards. Conversely, there is the labor income, which is simply paying you for your time. He made the point that even the highest paid lawyers are still essentially being paid for their time, whereas famous authors simply reap the rewards of their previous work.
    Having Erik speak to the class was an informative and interesting experience, in which I personally learned a lot about his perspective as an entrepreneur.