Visit from Brian North

Brian North was what my old definition definition of an entrepreneur was before this class. He built a business, which was selling custom made web sites for clients. His company has also began expanding into mobile sites, and a few mobile apps. Compared to Erik Hanberg, where his business of selling books and developing web sites was just getting started, Brian's business seems to be at the place where most businesses would want to be. I had not heard about his company, SiteCrafting, before his visit, so it was really interesting hearing from a small company. I came to the conclusion that building websites is still quite sought after. I figured by now, most websites would be something generated kind of like how this blog was. Anyway, what seemed to stick to me when he was presenting was their culture. He really portrayed that him and his coworkers were really close, with small events such as that brain storming one, and the retreat. I thought that was really cool. He didn't speak much about his whole start-up with the business, but he spoke a lot about how his company is today.

Overall I really liked how different Erik's and Brian's focuses were. Erik seemed to want only him and his wife in the company, which allowed them to be more free whereas Brian's company is still quite small, but considerably bigger than Erik's with a couple of offices in Washington. I'd wager our next guest speaker would be someone who has an even more successful business than Brian North.

What is an entrepreneur?

Before reading the guidebook I always thought an entrepreneur was just some person with a product that they wanted to unleash into the market, in hopes of making it big. I never thought of how a technology entrepreneur sought to solve a problem. When I think about my ideas, I really don't think they solve a compelling problem. My mobile board game app idea really just solves being able to play a fun mini-game based board game without actually having to be near a person. That idea was basically just mimicking a hot technology as the guidebook stated. It makes me less likely to follow through with that idea.

Applying that same concept of how technology entrepreneurs solve a problem to my second idea, making electronic music doesn't have a problem to solve at all. Maybe I am looking at this in the wrong way. If I were to ask how does Erik Hanberg's books try to solve a problem, I don't think that the problem would be there aren't enough entertaining plot thickening twist themed books out there. Then again, its aimed towards technology, which he is using to distribute his books.

Blog # 2: Erik Hanberg

I thought it was pretty cool hearing Erik Hanberg's story. I especially liked the graph he showed that displayed his and his wife's earnings. It would have been nice to have his wife too, since some questions I could have ask her were how she kept motivated to keep what she was doing. Motivation seems to be my big weakness so when Erik talked about how his book took almost a year to see sales was nice. For me, I always try to spend my time doing something productive where the ends justify the means. So if I don't see the end result to be good I'm tempted to give up on the project. It seemed like he hasn't hit that entrepreneurial gold mine where his books have sold in the millions, so it was interesting to hear someone who's steadily heading there. I always thought of entrepreneuring to be that big hit and become a millionaire type of thing, but Erik showed that it doesn't have to hit that millionaire status to work in a way you see fit.

3 Ideas

These aren't the most original ideas ever, and as noted in class that's a good thing. So one of my product business ideas is to make small game apps for mobile devices. I played around with Draw Something which is kind of like Pictionary. So what if we tried taking another board game and turned it into an app? Or what if we made a game like Mario Party, where a variety of mini games can occur, and made that into a mobile app? One of the major things I noticed with Draw Something was that you can play your turn whenever; you didn't need to be linked to another phone at that exact same time. So for mini-games they would have to be designed where players would go for a score, something that can be compared and doesn't require interaction between players.

The mobile app game was really my main idea, but I guess I could produce music as the second idea. I create music just as a hobby and can definitely say that I still very much suck at it. It'd really be something to see this idea actually go through, especially since the genre of music I make, in general electronic music, has seen a boom in the US.

Last idea which is super lame is probably a service that will try to remove a person's digital footprint, and help their information become less out there on the internet. I don't like this idea as much as the other two but it's the only thing I can think of right now.