The Dot.com boom was a moment in time where any company that had a website and tried to go pubic basically did, and got a lot of investing and interest around it. However, this caused a huge negative effect on the market once the bubble bursted, and everyone realized that the .com's where not actually that special.
There was five stages to the Dot.com bust, the innocence beginning, boom, insanity, bust, and the crawl back to sanity. Each stage was a time in the market where the market was learning about the technology and how it changed.
It started out in the early 90's where the Internet was live, but the browser GUI was born. When the GUI was being shown to investors and other people of interests, people realized that this was going to be the future of the world. So people started investing early into these technologies. The big players at the time was Prodigy, CompuServ, Genie, AOL, and Delphi.
Next was the boom, where more bigger companies came into play. The internet has become something that people can use so more companies doing more things come about. Like Netscape, Amazon, Yahoo, USWeb, and so on. This helped further the boom and make the companies worth even more.
Insanity happened next. At this moment there was so many companies that where going public that people were investing in that had no actual value. There burn rate was so high compared to their profits that they didn't make any money but kept getting investments. This is the point in time where people started to realize that these .com's weren't actually special or doing anything to generate revenue.
Then the bust came. All the investors started to pull out because they realized the .com's weren't getting them their money back. This left a lot of companies to go under since now all the revenue from funding was gone.
Eventually the web comes back and actual websites start to make profit as a business. At this time we see companies like Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo, and Expedia come alive and make money. Once this happens the investors start to return and the market stabilizes. We also see a lot of acquisitions like MySpace being bought by Murdoch for 580 million, and YouTube being bought by google for 1.65 billion.
The 90's were truly a weird time for the market and the internet as it started to mature into an actual business and make money. In the end it came out with some awesome websites and business that we can't imagine not having today, but the road leading to today was a bit rough. Those are the sacrifices that are made when a new market is formed, winners and losers.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
My Mission and Vision Statement
A mission and vision statement is a part of the company that some people miss when judging a company. It can tell you a lot about how a company operates, culture, and environment that people work in. If the mission and vision statement are dull and don't support the employees then the workers will feel unmotivated and bored and won't be as invested into their work as some other company that supports them. That is why I have designed my mission and vision statement to be proactive and support growth and a healthy working environment.
My mission statement was designed to support creativity and innovation, as they are important in science and technology. The statement reads "To create innovative inventions that make life easier, healthier, and more enjoyable". I want the employees to know that when they work that they should be trying new things and to help make the world a better place. In our business that better place would be in the gym or outside working out, however they are never limited by this. If one inventor makes something completely out of our field, but we see that it helps the world in some way, then we should support it because the employee will want to stay and we get better innovations. Helping the company to stay strong.
My vision statement was designed more towards the gym and what we really want to do as a company. The statement read "Our vision is to provide the greatest gym experience in every gym in the nation. While also having the single greatest fitness app for people". This is to steer people in the right direction when working within the company. It tells them that when we work that our work should be headed towards the gym experience and making sure that our company is the one leading the innovation.
With these mission and vision statements I hope that our company culture is strong with innovation and excitement for technology and the gym.
My mission statement was designed to support creativity and innovation, as they are important in science and technology. The statement reads "To create innovative inventions that make life easier, healthier, and more enjoyable". I want the employees to know that when they work that they should be trying new things and to help make the world a better place. In our business that better place would be in the gym or outside working out, however they are never limited by this. If one inventor makes something completely out of our field, but we see that it helps the world in some way, then we should support it because the employee will want to stay and we get better innovations. Helping the company to stay strong.
My vision statement was designed more towards the gym and what we really want to do as a company. The statement read "Our vision is to provide the greatest gym experience in every gym in the nation. While also having the single greatest fitness app for people". This is to steer people in the right direction when working within the company. It tells them that when we work that our work should be headed towards the gym experience and making sure that our company is the one leading the innovation.
With these mission and vision statements I hope that our company culture is strong with innovation and excitement for technology and the gym.
How I Will Protect My IP
Having an IP is the basic foundation for a lot of companies. Like Google and its algorithms, Microsoft and its games, or even publishers and their narratives. Its what gives these companies the edge in terms of their business. So protecting your IP is extremely important. I will protect my IP with copyrights, patents, and disclosure agreements.
The copyright will be used for the slogans and brand of the company. Having copyrights for these parts will ensure that no other fake company or competitor can come into the market and pretend to be us and take customers away from us. It also will show the legal system and judges in court (if we ever have to go to court over copyrights) that we were protecting our brand and deserve to be protected under the law.
Patents will be use on the invention of the hardware for the gym machines. Since we are designing a new technology for gym equipment we do not want it to get stolen or copied easily and loose our edge. However, a patent is expensive so for the first year we will hold out on getting a patent and just keep it a trade secret. This will mean we have to use disclosure agreements and NDAs to ensure no one leaks out the information to another company. After a year will get the patent filed and be protected under the law for our invention.
Without these means for protecting every company with a secret would be so locked up in terms of secrets and information we would not see the amount of innovation today. That is why they are important to have now so that future technology keeps on innovating for tomorrow.
The copyright will be used for the slogans and brand of the company. Having copyrights for these parts will ensure that no other fake company or competitor can come into the market and pretend to be us and take customers away from us. It also will show the legal system and judges in court (if we ever have to go to court over copyrights) that we were protecting our brand and deserve to be protected under the law.
Patents will be use on the invention of the hardware for the gym machines. Since we are designing a new technology for gym equipment we do not want it to get stolen or copied easily and loose our edge. However, a patent is expensive so for the first year we will hold out on getting a patent and just keep it a trade secret. This will mean we have to use disclosure agreements and NDAs to ensure no one leaks out the information to another company. After a year will get the patent filed and be protected under the law for our invention.
Without these means for protecting every company with a secret would be so locked up in terms of secrets and information we would not see the amount of innovation today. That is why they are important to have now so that future technology keeps on innovating for tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
John Dimmer
Guest speaker for this day was John Dimmer, an entrepreneur who worked at Free Range Media and helped create multiple businesses around the country. So of the business he has funded and created was Honda dealership, Airstream dealerships, and banks.
John went to high school with Andrew back in the day and his dad helped both of them to be stirred in the direction of starting their own business. However, John graduated with a degree in finance and worked in the industry for a number of years. He worked for about 5 years at a bank trying to work his way up and decided that the only way he would move up would be if he started his own business. So he teamed up with Andrew later on to create Free Range Media and when they sold made enough money to retire, however he wanted to do more. About 3 weeks later he became a angel investor and starting investing in other start ups to get back into the market. It was a success as he has helped many major companies become developed and be highly successful.
During his presentation he had some good tips on what to focus on in school in order to become a successful entrepreneur. John suggested that when you have free classes available during school that you should take an accounting class. He explained that an accounting class teaches you the basics of keeping score of your company. That is what accounting is for, to keep track of your business and to give you an idea to whether or not you are heading in the right direction or not. After all if you were not keeping score how would you to cut down on expenses, grow the company, or hire new people. All this accounting can do and make you a more successful business owner.
John went to high school with Andrew back in the day and his dad helped both of them to be stirred in the direction of starting their own business. However, John graduated with a degree in finance and worked in the industry for a number of years. He worked for about 5 years at a bank trying to work his way up and decided that the only way he would move up would be if he started his own business. So he teamed up with Andrew later on to create Free Range Media and when they sold made enough money to retire, however he wanted to do more. About 3 weeks later he became a angel investor and starting investing in other start ups to get back into the market. It was a success as he has helped many major companies become developed and be highly successful.
During his presentation he had some good tips on what to focus on in school in order to become a successful entrepreneur. John suggested that when you have free classes available during school that you should take an accounting class. He explained that an accounting class teaches you the basics of keeping score of your company. That is what accounting is for, to keep track of your business and to give you an idea to whether or not you are heading in the right direction or not. After all if you were not keeping score how would you to cut down on expenses, grow the company, or hire new people. All this accounting can do and make you a more successful business owner.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
How Much Will I Charge
Pricing is very interesting when creating a product because it can make or break a business and if your business is not flexible enough to change prices then you're going to have trouble. For my tech gym (name still undecided) I have come to a price of $14,999 to set up a gym and a price of free for the app for users to use.
The reason I set a price of $14,999 was for three reasons. Firstly, we have a lot of equipment that we are going to have to set up around the gym, which can vary from gym to gym so we might incorporate smaller prices for smaller gyms. I estimate that the process is going to take about a day or two to do. This is because it will probably be two workers fitting all the machines with the hardware necessary for our app to work, and then gym members trying to use machines we are working on. Those two workers have to be payed and the $14,999 should cover that, since if each works eight hours a day for two days is 32 hours, and $20 hour would be $640 dollars for two workers, still plenty of space for profit. Secondly we have to manufacture the equipment, I don't expect it to be super high tech, just lasers and sensors connected to NFC on phones. Thirdly, from class you talked about how companies didn't take your software seriously because it was priced so low, once you went up 2000% it price people took it seriously, and the name change helped too, adding "enterprise". So for gyms to take us seriously we have to price at a decent price for them to not go bankrupt and for us to still make profit off it. That is why I believe the $14,999 is a fair price.
The second product, the app, is priced for free for two main reasons, data and huge market. One of the revenue services we are going to be providing gyms is the data from the machines tracking members, and in order to do that we need the members to download the app, making it free makes the barrier to entry easy. This ensures that we can get the most amount of gym members using our app in a gym with our hardware. Also, another reason for making it free was that the market for fitness trackers is huge. There are millions of people go to the gym, and even more who exercise outside with body weight exercises like running, swimming, biking, hiking, etc. So if we can get those users using our app they will be more compelled to try out a gym, and thus use the gym hardware. This translates into more members for the gym and more data for us. It also presents an oppertunity to sell targeted ads to members now that we know what exercises they do in and outside of the gym.
The reason I set a price of $14,999 was for three reasons. Firstly, we have a lot of equipment that we are going to have to set up around the gym, which can vary from gym to gym so we might incorporate smaller prices for smaller gyms. I estimate that the process is going to take about a day or two to do. This is because it will probably be two workers fitting all the machines with the hardware necessary for our app to work, and then gym members trying to use machines we are working on. Those two workers have to be payed and the $14,999 should cover that, since if each works eight hours a day for two days is 32 hours, and $20 hour would be $640 dollars for two workers, still plenty of space for profit. Secondly we have to manufacture the equipment, I don't expect it to be super high tech, just lasers and sensors connected to NFC on phones. Thirdly, from class you talked about how companies didn't take your software seriously because it was priced so low, once you went up 2000% it price people took it seriously, and the name change helped too, adding "enterprise". So for gyms to take us seriously we have to price at a decent price for them to not go bankrupt and for us to still make profit off it. That is why I believe the $14,999 is a fair price.
The second product, the app, is priced for free for two main reasons, data and huge market. One of the revenue services we are going to be providing gyms is the data from the machines tracking members, and in order to do that we need the members to download the app, making it free makes the barrier to entry easy. This ensures that we can get the most amount of gym members using our app in a gym with our hardware. Also, another reason for making it free was that the market for fitness trackers is huge. There are millions of people go to the gym, and even more who exercise outside with body weight exercises like running, swimming, biking, hiking, etc. So if we can get those users using our app they will be more compelled to try out a gym, and thus use the gym hardware. This translates into more members for the gym and more data for us. It also presents an oppertunity to sell targeted ads to members now that we know what exercises they do in and outside of the gym.
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