Brian Forth talk

Brian talk was focused mainly on his business, Sitecrafting, and how and why his business is the way it is. He was clear that Sitecrafting was started in part as a backlash against many other businesses' decisions on how to treat employees. After being laid off, he felt that a company should focus more on its employees and ensure that they have a secure job that is comfortable. One of the biggest ways that he accomplished this was to be clear about his company's values. If you, the leader of the company, cannot communicate a unifying idea of what your company stands for to your employees, they will not work to their full potential. In addition, these values should be kept in mind during the hiring process to ensure that people coming into the workplace have similar goals to the company. Brian's business is focused on employee experience, so someone looking to gather experience and climb up in their field may not be the best hire. The other side to Sitecrafting that Brian mentioned was the product that they produce. Custom websites require a closer relationship with the client, and also require the client to understand the goals of the company. Brian mentioned that one of the first things that they ask any client about is what their goal is for a project. If their plan is not an intricate, customized website (which it may not be) then Sitecrafting is not the best choice for them. Essentially, for a successful and unified business, company goals must be established any communicated to people working with or inside the business.

Erik Hanburg talk

Listening to Erik's talk was very informative. It's clear that he has 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur from the way he talks about it. The thing that he talked about that stuck to me the most was practicing shipping. He mentioned the book he wrote in 8th grade, emphasizing that doing something like this gives you a more holistic view of what it means to take on a large project. He also showed how authoring some books paid off for him in the long term, giving him a bit of security. I know that if I want to achieve my life goals, I'm going to have to practice shipping with my own work. I need to create games to become a game designer and I need to write more D&D content if I want to become a games writer. If I was able to, like Erik said, break time for money eventually by generating income with these projects, it would be great. I'm not focused on that though, just knowing what it is like to take a coding or writing project to completion would give me more insight on future projects. I liked Erik's story about the theater he started. It showed that just knowing how to run a business isn't always enough and how living the life of an entrepreneur is unpredictable. It must be heartbreaking to put so much work into a theater and only be able to run 6 shows.  I enjoyed listening to Erik, and I thought that his presentation was full of useful information.

3 Business Ideas

Starting a business is a challenging prospect. If I were to start a business, I would need to have a certain amount of personal investment in the product or service I would be providing. Thankfully for this class, I have a very large interest in cutting edge technology, so I'd like to start some kind of tech business.

The first business idea I have is a virtual reality arcade. Virtual reality as it exists now is difficult to get your hands on. It either requires a powerful computer or a modern games console that represents a large upfront personal investment before any virtual reality equipment is purchased. Additionally, for a compelling experience, a large area to move around in is required, something that many people do not have readily available. My virtual reality arcade would allow anyone interested in trying VR in a large enough space.

My next business concept is a ramen vending machine. I know that this technology is common in Japan, but I have yet to see something like this in America aside from traditional ones that serve packaged snacks and coffee. This ramen 'bar' would allow customers to customize their order by adding things like eggs, soy sauce, sriracha sauce, hoisen sauce, and generally pick from various recipes. The machine could pair with a smartphone app that saves favorite recipes and shows the location of other vending machines. I would place these machines in food courts in malls or any kind of cafeteria at a hospital or airport. In concept, they would be inexpensive because they do not require a server. The only people I would need to employ would be in repair and manufacturing.

My final business idea is a tabletop RPG content website. I would assemble a group of writers and testers to create content for tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, Numenera, Pathfinder, and so on. I would sell this content in an online store where it would be purchasable by PDF, or eventually print. Selling this content as PDFs would be inexpensive, the only issue I can see is piracy potentially undercutting my profits.

What I want to learn about entrepreneurship

As a computer science major, I've always been interested in computer software development. I have a love for video games that I'd like to make into a career, but I realize that this could be quite a difficult task given the competition I'm up against. I would be happy as a programmer for a large project, being involved in game development in any way is a huge goal for me, but I really want to create something in which me and the team I'm working with all have a large influence over the end product. Becoming an independent game developer is probably my biggest and most daunting goal.

I'm in no way rushing into it. I've seen too many burgeoning independent game projects that are poorly managed and end up disappointing the audience that decided to back them on Kickstarter or Indegogo or whatever. I know I lack the skills to manage these types of projects, which makes this entrepreneurship course worth more than just the credits to me. If I'm ever going to achieve my goal, I'll have to learn the realities of business and how it relates to software development in a way I could apply to my own projects. Putting indie development to the side, I'm sure that knowing how businesses are started will help me understand the forces at play in a game development career. This knowledge will be useful when I am dealing with managers and directors that have to think about the business side of a game project more than the artistic side.

I have little knowledge of how businesses are started and maintained, but I've got to start somewhere if I really want to achieve my goals in life.