Dot.com and Dot.bomb

The mid to late 90's saw a rise in various technology companies. Investors scrambling and dashing out money to get in on the technology boom. Any company branded as an internet company already seemed like a success even when they weren't and so investors were putting in their money into companies that looked more solid than they actually were.

Within the tech industries, there was huge acquisitions, and fierce competitions and in a technology industry, companies have to adapt speedily to stay alive; something several companies failed to do. Andrew Fry illustrated this idea with dinosaurs representing some very prominent companies including Compserv, yahoo, AOL etc. Just like the dinosaurs, the companies that did not adapt to the changes were wiped. Unlike yahoo! the crocodile lol.

Anyway, on a more serious note, i love crocodiles because they always look like they are smiling and happy to see you. Check this out:



GENIUS.

This serves as a note to tech company founders like us the students, technology is always evolving and we should always be quick to change and adapt as required..

John Dimmer Visit

Our class was introduced to funding by guest speaker John Dimmer. John Dimmer is an investor, entrepreneur and serves on the board of directors of several companies and a Managing member of FIRS management. John Dimmer attended clover park high school with our instructor Andrew Fry.

John Dimmer got a baseball scholarship at the University of Oregon where he studied accounting. After graduation, he returned to Washington to work for Puget sound bank. After that, he worked a couple of jobs and later started free range media with Andrew Fry in 1994. In 1999 he had a happy exit after selling the company to Luminant Worldwide.

After free range media, he also built up and sold another company. Prior to selling his company, he gave us tips on how to use Accounting principles to our advantage. His company had quite a bit of dept and that scared every buyer but he was able to transfer that dept to the equity and suddenly his company was very attractive to potential buyers. He went into a temporary retirement after selling his company but later got out of retirement to start a Honda dealership in Oregon.

Regarding funding, he was able to give us the different steps to funding your business.
1. Self funding - this comes from the founders savings.
2. Friends and families - the comes from the founders relatives and wealthy uncles.
3. Crowdfunding - Kick starter, indiegogo
4. Anger - this are investors willing to put in thousands of dollars into a business. They usually have networks of them like the Tacoma Angel Networks, Angels Alliance in Seattle etc.
5. First Round - this is the first series of funding the company has to take part in to grow.
6. Capital Round - this is the next round that involves raising capital to start the business.
7. Second Round - this is when the company has already started but needs to expand or just keep running.
8. Mezzanine - this is the pre IPO round.
9. Public Offering - this is when the company files for and IPO and is liquidated.

Amy Salin Visit

Guest speaker Amy Salin talked to us about the UW business plan competition. Amy Salin is the assistant director from the University of Washington's Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship at the Seattle Campus. The UW business plan Competition is open to college students across the state.

She talked to us about 3 different challenges; the Health Innovation Challenge, Environmental Innovation Challenge and the Business plan competition. The health innovation challenge involves students coming up with innovative ways to improve the health industry. This includes accurately collecting health data, health apps, prototype challenge etc. The environmental challenge is sponsored my Alaska airlines and involves students coming up with innovative ways to tackle environmental problems.

The judges in this competition are investors themselves and participants that get through more often than not get investment from Angel investors and VC investors. Participants are asked to try to connect with the judges and try to get the judges connect to them. Also participants are asked to attend a mandatory 1 hour training with a panel of coaches to practice for the real show down.

The winners of the competition are given $70,000. In the six years of the competition, there have been 46 companies created and and 37 still in existence. These companies range from consumer products to tech and beyond. The competition is difficult and competitive but students are encouraged to apply and to at least get the experience of pitching to an investor. 

StartUp.com Documentary

Startup.com is a documentary that explores the journey of two best friends as they launch their company. Kaleil Tuzman and Tom Herman both founded govWorks.com in 1998 and the company closed down when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.

Kaleil Tuzman is an entrepreneur and Harvard graduate who started his career at Goldman Sachs where he worked for 5 years before he quit to go launch govWorks. He served as the CEO of the company and was the main driving force behind their fund raising. Tom Herman is Kaleil High school best friend and co founder of govWorks.com. Tom is for the most part considered the brains in terms of software development. He is usually very quiet and no at extroverted as Kaleil. The third founder is barely showed in the movie.

govWorks.com was launched in 1998 with 8 employees. It was initially called public data systems. Govworks was supposed to be an easy way for people to pay their parking tickets and other outstanding government dues. The company raised approximately $60 million through VC funding.

However the company suffered from some organizational struggles that ultimately led to the companies demise. Kaleil and Tom had a fallout that led to Tom getting fired from the company. Also the software did not work as well as it should have and by the end of 2000 the company had closed down.

Mission Statement, vision and Mantra

Mission Statement
"Great Software, Great Business!!!" The idea behind this mission statement is pretty much the same ideas behind the business. We intend to build great software to help make businesses great.

Vision
To be the biggest software company in West Africa 10 years after launch. This vision stems from the fact that i would love to launch my company in my country Nigeria. I have a couple of friends studying computer science back in Nigeria and when they graduate, they will most likely not have any job waiting for them. I think this market is open for the "software revolution" and so i intend to capitalize on it.

Mantra
Thread Fearlessly

Fortune

Logo, Company Name, and Product

Company

I intend to name my company Ponzeal Tech - i may make some changes in the future. My dad is an entrepreneur and currently runs a real estate company. He has also founded another company called Ponzeal investment Limited; this company hasn't really taken off and so i intend to take the name for my company.

Product

My company would specialize in building enterprise software. These are software that aren't made for everyday users, but rather are made for businesses to make the business running processes smoother. Some examples include, Hospital Management software, Inventory tracking software, Human resources management software etc.

These software would be sold as a service. So for example, if the company sells a Hospital Management software, we would keep the patients data. So the hospital would have to pay a monthly fee to use our software every month. However, not all of our products will be sold as service, for example the we don't need to store the inventory data. The idea behind this sale strategy is that, after some time, our customers would have to stay with us because we are essentially holding them hostage with their data.

Logo

Rather than Paylas, mine would say Ponzeal. The idea behind this is design is that i want the company to portray a minimalist, clean and classy design.

Guest Speaker Brain Forth

Last week we had a guest speaker of the person Brain Forth. Brain is a technology entrepreneur, he is the founder and CEO of SiteCrafting. SiteCrafting like the name implies is a technology company that created websites for business. SiteCrafting also does a couple of other web application development.

Brian Forth graduated from Gonzaga University and became a teacher at the archdiocese of Seattle where he taught for about 5 years. He later quit his job as a teacher to fully focus on his company SiteCrafting.

SiteCrafting was founded in 1998 when Brian Forth still a teacher at the archdiocese of Seattle. He later quit his teaching job to focus more on his business because he realized that his business was bringing in more income than his full time job. This is a very big decision and should serve as a motivation us the students, we have to know the right time to quit. If Brian had quit his day job too early wouldn't have enough money to continue his business, and if he had quit his job too late, he wouldn't have given enough time to his business. So as entrepreneurs, we have to know the right time to make a decision.

He also founded a second company that is a spin off of SiteCrafting called gearbox. Gearbox is a R&D technology company that uses research to help company know how to improve their software. GearBox is staffed by 3 UW students and is currently working with a bunch of really good clients. Brian talked a lot about learning to weave through and tolerate obstacles. He recommends that we read the book, The Obstacle is the way.