Reading Reflection Week 3

In my third section of 100 Dollar Start Up, I read about a new side Guillebeau.  He wrote a lot about his experience as a traveler, instead of his work as a businessman.  He made sure to connect the stories of his travel back to the world of business, but I found this section was almost entirely unrelated to the rest of the book and the connection, although present, was definitely tenuous.  At the end of the section, he even said that travel was unimportant to many businesses, and that the idea of travel can often distract entrepreneurs from the true value of hard work.  Although almost entirely connected to what we're doing in class, I still found it very interesting.  His thesis was that wifi and other new communication devices allowed for small start-ups to be administered from outside the country.  He talked a lot about his experiences traveling in China and India and a guy who ran his piano lesson service company from South America, but both of them could have just as easily ran their company from back home.  It's awesome that it's less difficult to go on vacation, but for entrepreneurs who are supposed to be very tied to there start-ups, I think it's better to stay as geographically close as possible, especially if you need to have meetings with possible employees or other companies.  I love traveling, and the idea running a business from another country is fascinating. However, as we've learned through class, an entrepreneur should treat their business like a baby, and you don't leave your babies in another country.

In Class Reflection Week 3

This week in class was definitely a huge relief.  As I discussed earlier, last week we had a huge amount of inventory of calendars and some bad-looking predictions for our cafe.  This week was largely spent solving those problems.  We had some bumps in the rode, including the "advertising gone wrong" issue, but ultimately, last week was a huge success.  With a solid group effort, we are now 3 calendars away from breaking even and we were able to decrease some of our costs so that our coffee shop is expected to make slightly less than $90,000.00 a year.  This is a huge advancement from last weeks standing, but we can still do better.  We still have at least 50 more calendars we can sell and I still think we can cut costs on construction and employment.

Last week was good because we effectively divided up labor.  Ben and Clay worked on the calendar project, while Jacob, Yiorgos and I took on the problems we had with storefront.  I think it's very important that we continue this system, as it leads to a much greater understanding of individual role in a larger project.  Unfortunately, this means that it looks like we didn't do as much work in Trello (solely due to the way we organized our Trello page), but it is worth it so that we can produce a more in depth and complete final project.

Initially, I had worried about being in a group with 4 friends, as I had concerns that distractions would destroy productivity.  However, I've found that working with friends has actually made the workplace more pleasant, and has made communication much easier.  I'm extremely happy with that.

Reading Reflection Week 2

I actually found the second section of my reading of The $100 Startup to be strikingly similar to what we went over in the first quarter of class.  In this section Guillebeau talked about what value was and how to create it.  Like we did in class, he discussed how you want to solve a problem or better the conditions of something for the market.  He sited examples of guys who start companies to make air travel more simple, or young entrepreneurs who teach classes about how to use excel properly.  Unlike we did in class, however, Guillebeau separated the concept of the product and its value.  For example, the value of a pen is not that it is a writing utensil, but that it will help you in your job or in school.  The value of a vacation home is not that it has a pool, but rather that it allows you to escape the stress of the real world.  This caused me to rethink how we should be marketing our calendars for the 200$ project.  We shouldn't be advertising that it has tons of cool pictures.  Instead, we should be advertising that it helps you stay in touch with the Athletics community and the purchase allows you to support the high school.  Guillebeau's work forced me to look at business in a new way, and from this, I realized that we have to make the value of our product more clear to our customers.  This will hopefully help us sell more calendars in the near future.

C4E In Class Reflection Blog Week 2

This week was full of big steps forward for both of our projects.  In the 200$ project the calendars arrived and we have begun selling.  In the storefront project, we finally have official business documents that show the cost of goods and estimated profits.  Although these were big movements, they somewhat unsettled me.  It's awesome that the calendars came and that we have a good product that we can sell.  However, it makes me nervous that we have 100 calendars worth of inventory.  I don't want to let the school, or our investor Kamil down. I want to make sure we can get their money back.  In addition, in the store front project, I realized that we are going to have to cut our costs dramatically if we want to sustain profit.  I'm starting to get a sense of the enormous amount of work that is required to run a business properly.  The first couple weeks, our group was definitely over excited, and we kind of assumed that everything would be easy because we had really good ideas.  However, now I am coming to realize that even with good ideas, we have to work hard to turn the ideas into profitable companies. I'm nervous about the challenges that face our group in the next couple weeks, but I know that our group is full of hard workers who will do what it takes to preserver through it.

Reading Reflection Week 1

This week, I read my first section of The $100 Start-up by Chris Guillebeau.  Although it's about an entirely different subject, this book reminds me of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  Guillebeau weaves out of stories and analysis in a manner that is almost identical to the set up of Outliers, which is one of my favorite books.  I find the stories that Guillebeau tells as interesting as they are poignant.  He writes about guys who are fired and soon start their own companies by bicycling with mattresses on their backs or setting up planners for piano classes.  Overall, what really struck me about this book, is the total implausibility of some of these businesses.  These guys basically start businesses without even intending to start them.  It's almost like their hobby turned into a business in the middle of nowhere.  Although I agree with the authors point that some start ups do occur randomly, he is wrong in assuming that it takes no planning to start a business. The author claims that you don't need to plan, you just need to start doing stuff.  Of course, this is a very pleasant thought, but it isn't necessarily true.  Businesses are extremely risky, and start ups need to make sure to keep their costs low in order to avoid severe financial failure or bankruptcy.  You also need plan your market and plan of attack, you can't just start selling lightbulbs to the Amish.  There is definitely a flaw in Guillebeau's argument, but the overall message of his book is very interesting, and there is truth in the fact that sometimes you just need to get started.  I don't totally believe everything in this book, but it is very entertaining, and I'm happy I read it.

Reflection on Classroom Week 1

This week in class, our group was super efficient.  We made an initial order for almost 1,000 dollars worth of calendars, and our cafe idea is really starting to come together.  I've already worked with each kid in this group, so I'm somewhat confused as to why our group is so much more efficient right now.  In fact, I expected our group to be far less successful, because one of our group members was out with a fever all week long, and another was in Michigan for the second half of the week.  Yet, despite these absences, this was by far the most effective group I've been in yet.  I think that part of our improvement is simply a result of practice.  For most of us, this is our fifth project.  We're starting to get a feel and a sense of how to pace ourselves to obtain success in this class.  However, I think the drastic improvement is due to something more than that.  My theory is that Trello provides our group with a sense of organized achievement.  Everything is documented in Trello, so we know what has been done, and where the holes in our projects are.  As we documented what we did the previous day, it became evident what our next step was.  For example, the day after we got the pictures, it was clear the next day we had to assemble and order the calendars.  Last quarter, my groups suffered from a lack of any kind of system.  Group had minimal communication, and everything was done separately.  Trello fixes this.  Trello basically acts like an advanced Google Document, in which everybody can contribute to the final project, making groups more collaborative instead of individualistic.  I am very happy about how things went last week, and I am optimistic and hopeful that Trello will continue to benefit my groups.