John Dimmer

John dimmer was the president of free range media in 1994. It was gone under IPO and was a successful business. He is also in airstream business. He is currently dealing the automobile business, but is looking into manufacturing trailers too.  He is also thinking of cornering the NW market in airstream dealership. On the other hand he is an entrepreneur on campus for the University of Oregon. He is also in the first stage of three-stage angel circles. 

The best advice he gave us was to follow your passion and money will follow. It is very simple advice, but he proved it to us through is presentation. He talked about funding rounds such as self, friend, family, crowd-sourcing, angel, venture capital and IPO.  He mentioned that crowd-sourcing is one of the newer phenomena and the laws are very vague.  The crowd-sourcing is best for the early stages of a company start-up.  The indigogo is one of the examples of crowd-sourcing. 

Next he talked about four different types of funding: debt, equity, hybrid and other.  The debt is the fund raised through borrowing from commercial sources, banks, SBA, private sources relatives and investors. The equity is raised by selling an ownership interest in your business.  The hybrid is debt or preferred securities convertible into equity. The other is the sources that do not qualify as debt or equity. Those are prize money from business plan competitions, government grants, money available under veterans’ programs, crowd-sourcing etc. 

He also gave us three fundraising strategies: one was to pitch to groups rather than individuals. That is because it is much more efficient. Second advice was to target groups that are per-disposed to your business.  In a sense, that they have specific business interest and/or demographic per-disposition. Third, only raise as much money as you need as equity is expensive to sell. In other words only fund yourself until the next major milestone is reached and the valuation is bumped up.

Jim Kastama

Let’s start with little bit of his background. He was a Senator in the Washington State Senate representing the Democratic Party. He chaired the Senate Economic Development, Trade and Innovation Committee, and participated on the Higher Education & Workforce Development and Transportation Committees. He represented since 1996 until 2012 was first elected to the Senate in 2000 after two terms in the House of Representatives.

Currently, Kastama is a part-time faculty member at the community college and university level where he teaches classes in Organizational Assessment, Strategic Planning, and Managing in a Political and Legislative Environment. He is also an examiner for the Washington State Quality Awards.

 Coming to the guest lecture, He mentioned he loved traveling when he was younger. He enjoyed going on bike tours and then travelling the world when older. His history of craving independence that put him in all kinds of industries and fields.  He described travel is directly related to growth in his case. When talking about entrepreneurship he gave an advice to build a solid base of clients and then venture on new ideas or business ideas.

Next he mentioned networking is one other tool to for growth. You can have the best idea but if you don’t go out and sell it is not worth much.  You need to reach your market and you have to talk to multiple people and fail sometimes and succeed sometimes. Network and building relationships are important because “you are not an old western cowboy who can do all by yourself”.

In the end, he gave us these pieces of Advice:

·        Tough must be part of character

·        Need to be agile/adaptive

·        Willing to invest in others and self

·        Partners are gold.

·        Need good support system (not a science)

Bruce Kendall

Bruce Kendall was one of my favorite guest speakers to listen to in class. He is president & CEO at Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County. In my opinion, I liked his talk the most because he talked from heart and with a lot of passion towards his work. His completely dedication to his work, shows when starts talking. He discussed two main points in his speech one of them was sustainable local ecosystem and other was clustering effect.

 Mr. Kendal mentioned the strong structure of local ecosystem of Tacoma-pierce County. There is a spread of different museums for people with different interests.  The setting of the hip and historic Tacoma area is designed for major restaurants. The biggest one of them all is the port of Tacoma which adds to the local ecosystem. These establishments attract resources for farther growth potentials. The Economic Development Board of Tacoma-Pierce County focuses on such establishments, which can attract and keep local sustainable ecosystem by keeping outsourcing to the minimum or not at all. Port of Tacoma is very important to the area as it provided the possibility of local and/or international business.

Next he talked about cluster effect in the Tacoma-Pierce county. Looking at the area, you can clearly point out some huge clusters of talent, resources, and opportunities. Some of the big clusters, which provide direct and multiplier economic impact in the area, are as following:

·         Joint Base Lewis-McCord

·         Amazon

·         StateFarm Headquarters

·         Topia ventures

·         Torey composites America

·         Boeing

·         Multicare health system

·         Bank of New York

·         Mellon Bradken Atlas

·         BPI medical

The area is a mix of major successful and well established companies. The combination of talent from military base and universities make Pierce County a hub of economic cluster. These are companies that give opportunity to others and themselves making the area economically sustained for many years to come. The location of the County is a major plus point. It is close to the major highway, military base, port of Tacoma.

Mr. Kendall lightheartedly spoke about some bigger picture economic concepts. He talked about the local ecosystem and how to sustain it. He talked about, how important it is to keep the developed companies. He strictly believed in having no turnover when comes to these companies. He talked about economic clusters and its effects. It was enjoyable to listen to him explain pierce county’s economic development in simple words. 

Dot.com to Dot.bomb

This is era is vaguely divided into five stages: An Innocent Beginning, Boom, Insanity, Bust, The Crawl Back to Sanity, and Bonus Stage.

The starting is in year 1992 with Prodigy, CompuServ, Genie, AOL, and Delphi. It started as humble service for academic exercises, hobbies and/or Obsession of few.  

In 1993, the beginning of internet took place. In which, Microsoft localization, spry Inc., and free range media were conceived along with World Wide Web and HTTP.

Then comes the beginning of the Web in 1994, during which Cole and Weber, DealerNet, Internet in the box, Robotic Arms, V3D and Coffee Pots, and Mosaic or Linx? immerged.

In 1995 the boom of the era begins. Couple of things that launched the ear was: WIRED and hotwired, MCI and Gramercy Press, Pathfinder Launched, Advertising Age magazine, RealAudio Launched, The NFL on the Web, and FreeZone Launched.

In 1996 the growth continued with CompuServ, Thomson Target Media, Baywatch, Nikkei, Super Bowl XXX (StarWave), Yahoo!, amazon.com, and USWeb.

In 1997, the ear reached the peek. It started to attract greed due to the hype of the industry. The industry starts seeing venture capitalists, public offerings, and AOL takes charge.

The calm before the storm hovers over the industry. In 1998 the insanity strikes when AOL buys CompuServ, InfoSpace goes public, and Burn Rate is written. It continues in 1999 with Yahoo acquires Broadcast.com for 5.7 Billion, Luminant Worldwide does an eight company simultaneous roll-up IPO, and The Internet Bubble is published.

The bust happens in years 2000 through 2003. The ear comes to the stand still and evitable end. A lot of companies close down due to the financial market taking a bad turn. The result of the bust left some strict rules for a company to enter public market. In year 2002 the stability stats showing up, the companies show sign of profitability and new big .com companies start establishing deep roots. By year 2005, the industry starts seeing more stability and brighter future.

Being an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is motivating force to face risk and work harder and faster for ultimate success. By definition, entrepreneur is risk-taking businessperson: somebody who initiates or finances new commercial enterprises. As risk and reword are directly related, there can be huge reward for entrepreneur at the end. There is always a chance of failure when you take risk. Some of the facts are as following:

1.      Only 1 in 6,000,000 high-technology business ideas wind-up in an IPO;

2.      Less than one percent of business plans received by venture capitalists get funded;

3.      Founder CEOs typically own less than 4 percent of their high tech companies after an IPO;

4.      60 percent of high tech companies that are funded by VCs go bankrupt; and

5.      Most high tech companies that succeed in having an IPO take between three and five years to get there.

In conclusion, there are very low odds of succeeding in this field. Many very successful entrepreneurs have also faced difficult times, frustrations, burnouts etc. due to the nature of the business. There are specific qualities of entrepreneurs. They need to be motivated, passionate, focused, courageous, futuristic, and leader like qualities.


This brings us to the BIG questions, then why be an entrepreneur? The answer is very simple. The risk that we talked about pays in the form of freedom, creation of something novel, and building long term value. Entrepreneurs crave freedom. They like the idea of being your own boss and having flexibility but it comes with have a lot of self-control and structure. Other reason for being entrepreneur is the passion for solving problems or creating something futuristic in general. This can give you a comparative advantage and build long term value which directly results in huge cash. 

Graham Evans

We got visited by Graham Evans today. He is a British man who moved to United States in 1996 but hasn’t lost is accent still. He is a great business person and an entrepreneur. He can also make you think in a way you will be amazed. He made us think in detail, to the skeleton of any business.

We started with introduction that went deep down and down every second. The introduction was name, hometown and something unusual about everybody in class. That little exercise showed us the diversity and talent in the room. Then came this quote from Mr. Graham

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We discussed how relevant this is in present time. It used to be that if you have a good idea or product, money will follow it but now-a-days that snot the case. In present time, you have to showcase and sell your idea or product. The table below explains how idea, marketing, cost and income comes in play.

Idea/Product	Marketing	Cost	Income
Good	Bad	Low	None
Bad	Good	Low	Short term
Good	Good	High	Long term

This is how the initial cost and income structure works. Depending on your idea/product, you can choose any combination of cost of marketing, cost time and energy spent on idea/product vs. Income.  Furthermore, Mr. Graham talked about the business canvas. In which we painted the picture of a specific business idea. In which, we saw how feasible the idea was and what were the negatives and positives. It also made us think what we can focus on and what we should cut out. It basically helped us see a snapshot of the whole business. As we all know it’s easier to fail on paper then in reality. It was very helpful to put an idea in perspective.

Last few pointers were that the price of anything is five times the cost of the product due to all that goes into making of anything. Always know how you make your idea of business work. Knowing your idea inside out and having enough feedback from your segment is the only way to have a realistic view. 

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Eric Henberg

Today we had guest speaker Eric Henberg, he is a writer, marketing person, nonprofit and entrepreneur. He talked about two basic things that every entrepreneur should keep in mind. One is the emotional labor part of the business and other is working for money.

Emotional labor: there are a number of things that go in a start up emotionally. There are times you can’t get your hands on any work at all. And there are others when there is too much work to handle.  Eric mentioned this amazing quote from Thomas A. Edison

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

In other words, working hard is important when comes to entrepreneurship. You have to get up and handle the situation and complications. You have to get up and make the phone calls that you need to make. You have to get up and send an email or phone call that you don’t want to do. Another quote Which Eric mentioned that goes along the same line is from Seth Godin

“But the new laziness has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with fear. If you're not going to make those sales calls or invent that innovation or push that insight, you're not avoiding it because you need physical rest. You're hiding out because you're afraid of expending emotional labor.”

Working for money: to explain it further, get paid for what you did, don’t undersell your abilities. He mentioned the three question criteria we should use when receiving a job.

1)      Do we want the job?

2)      Does it pay what you want it to pay?

3)      Will it help my career?

The piece of advice for any starting up entrepreneur is: enjoy your work because rewards are uncertain, be willing to fail, build networking, waste less time (on TV etc), and the last one get more done in night/morning/lunch. The last BIG piece of advice is: do it get it done, learn and move on to next.