Erik Hanberg!

Our first guest speaker of the class named Erik Hanberg talked about his entrepreneurial journey till now. He talked about how an idea needs to be put out in the market. May be that’s not the best idea at that time but all you need to is to put it out there. Eric talks about his experiences about the entrepreneurial world. He talks that everyone has ideas but what it takes to give a big step. He also talked about how an entrepreneur life should be. He should either sell self or sell something to be successful in ones ambition.  He also shoes us a graph where he talked about all the other things t was going on at the same time. He helps us understand that if one plan doesn’t work out, the world doesn’t ends and you can start something else using the skills of your previous experience. For example he talked about how he used his marketing skills from his fundraising in Side X Side which he worked with his wife full time. Erik Hanberg talked about his multiple businesses which was an encouragement for a start up entrepreneur that if you have to keep testing your potential until you hit the right one.  At the end he advised on what an entrepreneurial lifestyle should be. His lecture was all in all very helpful.

The Business Plan

The Business Plan

My First plan:

I have been studying in UWT from past one year and one of the things that I have realized lacks here is a good student lounge. I am talking a student lounge where you get food, beverages, books, Wi-Fi and also have late closing hours. There are a couple of café’s around the area, like star bucks, anthem, metro etc but I haven’t seen any café that has long opening hours. They either close at 6 or 8pm. Being a student sometimes I need to work on my assignments for long hours. And café’s provide a nice ambiance to work on them. I think if there exist a café’ lounge that has the facility of long opening hours will attract a lot of students. A lounge that has a nice ambiance to sit with some affordable food items and beverages can turn out to be a success in the area of our university.  So my business plan would be to open a lounge/café’s for student around the university area.

My Second plan:

My second plan would be to make a mobile application that will help call people to a different country on more affordable prices. The reason I picked up this idea is because a lot of my family members live in a different country and sometimes it becomes very hard to talk to them for long hours because either of the prices or the service. One of the mobile applications that help calling internationally is Viber. It definitely does support calling to a different country for free but then the service provided by the app is very low; most of the times the call ends due to low connection. Another famous application is Skype  Skype does provide great service but again even after buying the monthly subscription for calling a different country, the service provided is not up to the mark. So my business plan would be to have an application that provides good service for calling to a different country at affordable rates.

My Third plan:

My third plan isn’t that strong of an idea but that’s what I could think is a current problem that can be solved with a new business plan. As I mentioned before I have many family members that live in a different country. So there are times when I have to send them things from here. Let it be electronics, cloths, etc.  In order to ship them back there it costs a lot of money. Therefore I want to come with a plan that if a customer gets yearly subscription of the offer then the cost of sending parcels to a different country can be reduced. This plan is may be hard to implement but if a diverse background of entrepreneurs come together I think it can pulled off to be a success. 

StartUp.com

Mid 90’s saw the dot com boom. This boom left a handful of millionaires and hundreds to go-for-broke paupers in the wake.

GovWorks.com is another startup company that tried to sow its roots in the market during the boom. The film was shot in two years while the CEO’s (Kaliel Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman) were struggling to make a name of their company.

As shown in the movie, Kaliel Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman are childhood friends who had the main idea behind opening a company called the GovWorks.com. This Company offered a secure way for funds to be exchanged between the government and the citizens. For example fines, taxes, permits and so forth.

So the movie started off by how these business partners are trying to get their company started. As the movie started, Kaliel from the very beginning is shown as the main entrepreneur who was trying to get investors for their company to run. Through the movie it seemed that It started of pretty well.  The company got some good investors such as Vignette Corporation and sapient corporation.

Slowly the company grew. It got some good projects in their hand. I guess one of the main reasons their company grew was, at that point of time no one offered such a facility. So for the people and investors it was something new and they can trust on.

In the middle of the movie we see a theft scene. Kaliel was shown stressed out about it as all the computers were stolen. That means all the main data was gone too. But for some reason I was not able to anticipate its effect on their company. Did that theft really affected Kaliel and GovWorks? Were the thieves were caught? Or was that scene just for added to add some thrill in the movie.

                After like a year or so tom and Kaliel discomfort started to increase. I guess the reason behind it was the difference of their personality when it comes to business. Kaliel was a fighter, he would be out there trying to grow there company better. On the other hand tom seems like a person who gives up on things very easily. To me it seems like he was not serious about sustaining the company for future. He was definitely excited at the time of formation of the company but after the company saw its initial success. Tom kind of got a little laid back. He was the tech guy, and when the website was facing competition being the CEO of the company he should be take control and work things out. I think Kaliel noticed his laid back attitude may be that was the reason he didn’t want tom to work for the company.

The other thing that made me question in the movie was the downfall of the company. As seen in the movie it started happening when Tom left the company. Did it happen because Tom was not there? May be Kaliel couldn’t take care of the tech side as well as of the business side of the company. The main is reason behind the shutting down of the company was not really clear to me. But what I think is that may be Kaliel made a good decision of firing tom out but again on the other hand he should have appointed someone who was better than tom and who could take care of the tech side. Because if you look at the work GovWorks did, it was all about customer satisfaction. If the customers were not happy with the website then there is not point working on the business side trying to get the investors.

I think Startup.com is great movie for the future entrepreneurs. It shows you both the good and bad side of starting up a company. This movie definitely does a great job in showing how a great idea is turned into reality. Then it covers up the rise and fall of yet another start up Dot-com Company.