"Startup.com" is a documentary about a startup. It totally was not metaphorically named. At first I was not too excited to watch it. The first ten minutes or so felt like any other documentary, introducing the subjects of the documentary, Tom Herman and Kaleil Tuzman, through observations of their everyday life. And then they started working...
“govWorks.com”
Since the whole “dot com” boom and bust thing was happening at the same time of the shooting of this film, I figured that this company of theirs was going to be crazy successful. It started with an idea of paying for your parking tickets online. At this point I was still not very interested. Then they started growing, like almost exponentially. In a few months they went from about 8 employees, 70 employees, 120 employees, and then to over 200. Here they are worth millions. Drama was always present throughout their journey, and there were different things that resolved their issues; ups and downs. But when the drama escalated towards one hundred, I became interested, and I wanted to see what happened afterwards.
Overall, I enjoyed watching Tom, but mostly Kaleil, going about running a business. It was eye-opening; the business world really does seem as crazy as Andrew Fry describes it. To be honest, after watching this movie and seeing all the hardships and hearing all that business terminology, I was pretty discouraged, and I do not really want to start a business as much as I did on the first day of the course.
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Saturday, March 3, 2018
The Final Guest: Shadrach White
Somehow... just somehow... I did not fall asleep this time around. Maybe it was the effects from the NAVSEA presentation that took place right before the talk, or maybe I happened to just not be drowsy coincidentally. Nonetheless, I managed to attentively listened to all of Shadrach's words at his visit. Shadrach White is the CEO and president of cloudPWR. His company's mission is "to simplify complex problems and help organizations adopt cloud based solutions" (from cloudpwr.com).
The most memorable point of his to me was the idea of bootstrapping. A bootstrap is when an individual starts his or her own company with minimal capital. In my opinion, this seems extremely efficient for building a business, but also extremely hard. The business either needs to be very inexpensive to run, or there needs to be a great initial amount of funds from personal finances or the company's finances. I feel like Shadrach was only able to bootstrap cloudPWR because he had founded and run many companies in the past, and most likely built up his own money and tons of experience from them, which to me is quite admirable. He had mentioned that his first business, which had to do with sports stuff, came out to be a valuable lesson to him. He spent more money than he received from investments. Then and there, he had learned all about finance. The more he did, the more experience and funds he acquired.
I also remember a question someone had asked Shadrach; it had to do with his exit strategy. Without hesitation, he gave a straight up answer of "one hundred million". If he can exit with that much, it would be a done deal. However, he mentioned that some things could change, and might end up staying even if the company's value reaches that amount, and thus set a new, higher exit goal.
If I must do a look-alike thing again, I'd say he reminds me of Matt from Big Brother season 19.
Friday, March 2, 2018
The Dot-Com Bubble's Lifespan: From Dot.com to Dot.Bomb
This whole "dot com" period from around 1992 to 2005 has to do with a revolution in the technological world; a crazy rise and fall of tech startups and websites. Basically, if you added a ".com" to the end of your business name, you were bound to make a fortune -- at least for a while.
All of these different technological organizations back then are best represented by a dinosaur race (credit goes to Andrew). Dinosaurs have ruled the earth, and were constantly competing against each other. During this period, some were dominantly leading in the race, and some got left behind and just collapsed. However, since they are figuratively dinosaurs, they all ultimately suffered from their inability to adapt to a new environment, the bursting of the dot.com bubble, and became instinct.
There were five stages during those few years:
1. Innocent Beginning (92-95)
2. Boom! (95-97)
3. Insanity!!! (97-00)
4. Bust!@#$%! (00-03)
5. Crawling Back (02-05)
During the first stage, guys like Prodigy, CompuServ, AOL, Genie, and Andrew's very own Free Range Media emerged, and acquired a good amount of success. Prodigy and CompuServ, each with over one million users at the time, were the leaders of the dinosaur race.
The second stage is where a lot more guys started showing up and were getting a lot more involved. Yahoo! was one of the dinosaurs that came from behind and managed to get in front at one point. Amazon was there too, although everyone believed that it would not survive at all. Quite a few more companies grew extremely fast as well.
At the third stage, public offerings and venture capitalists were the trend. AOL actually buys CompuServ, and passes Prodigy in the race. Yahoo! get Broadcast.com at 5.7 billion dollars. Everything is just as it is named; insane.
Then everything crashes. Websites and companies are going bust here and there, and the stock market takes a dive down.
But this doesn't mean the tech world has ended. Some start rebounding, support is provided, and sites like MySpace and Facebook emerge.
I was not old enough to understand the weight it had when this all happened. I still don't completely understand even after a lecture on it. But I know the dot com boom to bust was an important event that impacted the somewhat technological life that I currently live.
All of these different technological organizations back then are best represented by a dinosaur race (credit goes to Andrew). Dinosaurs have ruled the earth, and were constantly competing against each other. During this period, some were dominantly leading in the race, and some got left behind and just collapsed. However, since they are figuratively dinosaurs, they all ultimately suffered from their inability to adapt to a new environment, the bursting of the dot.com bubble, and became instinct.
There were five stages during those few years:
1. Innocent Beginning (92-95)
2. Boom! (95-97)
3. Insanity!!! (97-00)
4. Bust!@#$%! (00-03)
5. Crawling Back (02-05)
During the first stage, guys like Prodigy, CompuServ, AOL, Genie, and Andrew's very own Free Range Media emerged, and acquired a good amount of success. Prodigy and CompuServ, each with over one million users at the time, were the leaders of the dinosaur race.
The second stage is where a lot more guys started showing up and were getting a lot more involved. Yahoo! was one of the dinosaurs that came from behind and managed to get in front at one point. Amazon was there too, although everyone believed that it would not survive at all. Quite a few more companies grew extremely fast as well.
At the third stage, public offerings and venture capitalists were the trend. AOL actually buys CompuServ, and passes Prodigy in the race. Yahoo! get Broadcast.com at 5.7 billion dollars. Everything is just as it is named; insane.
Then everything crashes. Websites and companies are going bust here and there, and the stock market takes a dive down.
But this doesn't mean the tech world has ended. Some start rebounding, support is provided, and sites like MySpace and Facebook emerge.
I was not old enough to understand the weight it had when this all happened. I still don't completely understand even after a lecture on it. But I know the dot com boom to bust was an important event that impacted the somewhat technological life that I currently live.
Is John Brighter or Dimmer?
This question above is actually completely irrelevant. For some reason I just wanted to use his last name as a comparative adjective.
Anyway, John Dimmer visited as a guest speaker not too long ago. He is not the software developer guy, the marketing guy, nor the idea guy; he is the guy with the knowledge of the ins and outs of the financial stuff. He went to high school with Andrew Fry, and has worked with him in the past, and if I remember correctly, he managed the finances for Free Range Media.
One of the main points I took from his talk as the most memorable was the whole idea of exiting. Having and knowing an exit strategy for the business is a very valuable thing. By exit, I literally mean exiting the business but with some kind of gain, which includes selling the business to some other entity, or initial public offerings (IPO), or some other methods that I cannot recall at the moment. The exit strategy, more often than not, will change from time to time, depending on what situation the business is in. Honestly, if I were to ever successfully run a business, my goal would be to exit. I have always dreamed of making an insane amount of money at once, and pretty much retire very early. However, I know it would not be that simple.
Here were some other points mentioned in his talk:
Accounting is how you keep score -- I found this interesting due to the fact that both of my parents are accountants.
There was a time when there were twenty eight websites on the internet.
One must know how to read contracts.
He went on to Angel investing after retirement.
The more venture capital, the less ownership.
There are business plan competitions that awards funding.
After his visit, I realized that there was more to running a business than just knowing how to make the product or executing the service, or having negotiation skills; the financial aspect is a huge part of it.
Anyway, John Dimmer visited as a guest speaker not too long ago. He is not the software developer guy, the marketing guy, nor the idea guy; he is the guy with the knowledge of the ins and outs of the financial stuff. He went to high school with Andrew Fry, and has worked with him in the past, and if I remember correctly, he managed the finances for Free Range Media.
One of the main points I took from his talk as the most memorable was the whole idea of exiting. Having and knowing an exit strategy for the business is a very valuable thing. By exit, I literally mean exiting the business but with some kind of gain, which includes selling the business to some other entity, or initial public offerings (IPO), or some other methods that I cannot recall at the moment. The exit strategy, more often than not, will change from time to time, depending on what situation the business is in. Honestly, if I were to ever successfully run a business, my goal would be to exit. I have always dreamed of making an insane amount of money at once, and pretty much retire very early. However, I know it would not be that simple.
Here were some other points mentioned in his talk:
Accounting is how you keep score -- I found this interesting due to the fact that both of my parents are accountants.
There was a time when there were twenty eight websites on the internet.
One must know how to read contracts.
He went on to Angel investing after retirement.
The more venture capital, the less ownership.
There are business plan competitions that awards funding.
After his visit, I realized that there was more to running a business than just knowing how to make the product or executing the service, or having negotiation skills; the financial aspect is a huge part of it.
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