The Entrepreneurial Journey

 The University of Washington hosts an event called dubpitch which happens twice a year and allows groups to give a 10 minute pitch. As of now they have raised over 1 billion in funding and it looks like 50% of the pitches lead to meetings with investors. Another grant is the Venmo Small Business Grant which gives 10,000 dollars to 20 different companies every year. The minimum requirements are that the company has less then 10 employees and done $500 in revenue in the last 3 months. It also requires that you have a Venmo business account in good standing.  I think that the best way for me to use a grant is if I want to avoid giving up equity early on in the development and financing stages. They are also a great way raise capital because they are less stressful than borrowing money from friends or family or taking a loan from the bank. I think the entrepreneurship program at the Seattle campus should set up a deal with the state where each entrepreneur team or project is guaranteed a

 Uncle Alders Alder was interesting to me because it helped visualize how profit margins decrease as the size of a company expands. For example the profit that unc made off  the first chair was 100%. As he produced more chairs it required more time equity and the manufacturing cost of mass producing the chairs dug into the profit margin. eventually Unc had a salary position at the company that was paying enough money to make him have a middle to upper class income. However, if he is making 160k a year on a company that he started that is doing 6M in revenue, he doesn't have the liquid amount of his ownership in the company until he sells it or gets out. This is a weird part of being an entrepreneur where most a large portion of your wealth is in equity, but if the company goes down or something wild happens that affects the industry, your wealth in equity goes down with the business. This makes me wonder if a founder could give up their equity to a buyer in return for a larger guar

 The sales funnel for the Washington window Warriors looks something like this:  Market How many people pay for window cleaning in your area? Thousands of people Suspects Who pays for window cleaning?  Just about all middle and upper class home owners Prospects   Who doesn't have a window cleaner that they hire every year? People who have an annual window cleaner are much harder to sell to because they are loyal to their current cleaner which infers that their current cleaner has shown loyalty to them as clients.  Reach prospects with the brand. We market the brand as one that is based on quality and community. Interested   If prospects show interest in needing a new window washer or having their windows clean, capitalize on the opportunity and get them to them commit.   Committed   we have set up a date and time with the customer to complete the job Closed We have been paid and completed the job. Follow up We put them on our calendar for the next year or contract with them to do

 Mission statement  The Mission Statement of the Washington Window Warriors is to build community not customers, we focus on quality over quantity,  and we want our community to build community.  The first point of the mission statement means that we do not just want customers because customers come and go. We want to build a community of clients because friends sand communities support each other. A customer will always look for the next best guy to come and wash their windows but a community has loyalty and loyalty means returning customers. Returning customers means we need to spend less time and money on advertising and acquiring leads. The way we build community rather than customers is by developing personal relationships with our clients while on the job. Most clients will hang around while we wash windows which gives us to opportunity to get to know them. When we come back the next clean we bring up past points of conversation which shows our customers that we are developing pe

 Brians business was interesting to me because he adapted to the release of new technologies and found a pain point that this new technology brought about. As people were driven to the internet, if commercial business wanted to keep up they would have to bring their stores to the internet as well. What Brian did was build their locations on the web so they could be seen in the new domain. He made that point that "if we were gone people would need to miss us". I think thats a good way of identifying if your business will get traction in the first place because if they will miss you than that means at some point they needed you. Without need there is no base model for a company. I also found it interesting when he said he hired based on what they will need in the future. When I look at my business plan, the team consists of people needed for development of an MVP or proof of concept but it does not go into the people that we will need later on. After thinking about this I reali

 What I was the most curious to find out about Erik was how invested he was in his book. Many successful entrepreneurs say dont fall in love with the product, but the customer. I imagine that when it comes to writing a book it is as if creating an art piece as every word comes from your own imagination. I would find it hard not to write what I want, but the customer wants. Erik also made the point that once he figured out the Amazon ads his distribution greatly increased. When I asked him if he would rather have a quality product that quantity distribution, he said that he would rather have a rough draft of a full book than a quality first chapter to get out. This surprised me because as a consumer I want to buy a quality product but has a seller he wants to distribute as much as whatever he can produce. It was also shocking to me that even though the kindle version of his book was free, people still wanted to buy the hard copy. I think this was a good marketing tactic because all it t