30

1) Read through your posts from this semester. Recall all of the experiences you've had a long the way -- the highs, the lows -- the fun moments, and the moments of drudgery, and even the moments of dread.

2) What sticks out to you as the most formative experience? The experience that you'll remember years later? What was your most joyous experience? What experience are you most proud of yourself for accomplishing?

The part that sticks out to me the most is my unpleasant experience in this course. I do not like being creative nor do I like busy work that doesn’t serve a purpose to me. Joyous experience? This assignment being the last one of course. My most proud experience in this course was remembering to do some of the assignments.

3) At the beginning of the semester, I mentioned that I wanted each of you to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Now, at the end, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you think you have moved closer to developing an entrepreneurial mindset?

Before this course I saw myself as an entrepreneur and I still do and don’t think this course is helpful to becoming and entrepreneur.

29 Venture Concept No. 2?

Opportunity and innovation overlap creating the venture concept but in order to get to the venture concept I must discuss the opportunity and innovation first. The opportunity of IT work is created by the shift towards the modernizing of business to stay relevant and to keep up to date with shifting trends. This market exists worldwide and is continuously growing. I believe this opportunity will continue to be around for many more years as technology dependency is constantly increasing. While this idea is not innovative it is an area in which there are not enough business to fill the entire demand of this service. To be honest I don’t know how this assignment corresponds to what I want to do and therefore creating a venture concept is difficult.  

28

Identify the exit strategy you plan to make. Do you intend to sell your business in the next 5 years for a large return? Do you intend to stay with the business for several decades and retire? Do you intend to protect the venture as a family business, and pass it down to your children?

In the next 5 years I wouldn’t plan on selling my business as I enjoy this line of work. I would most likely keep it, assuming it is profitable still down the road, until I decide to retire. I wouldn’t keep it as a family business as I’d want my kids to choose their own future and not feel pressured into a specific line of work.

27

For this reading reflection I read Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s by Ray Kroc. The thing I admire the most about Ray Kroc, the entrepreneur, was his motivation and drive to go from a traveling salesman barely making ends meet to a massive success and a visionary. It is hard to say what I least admired about Ray Kroc as he was not a great person and, in a way, swindled the original creators of McDonalds out of their own business/idea but his business always came first which is admirable in its own right. A core competency that Ray Kroc had, going back to his roots, was being an excellent salesman. Ray Kroc was able to sell the idea of McDonalds to millions of people, customers nationwide and the franchise owners who invested in him and his idea of what a fast food burger joint should be. I highly recommend this book and the movie The Founder if you are interested in the story of McDonalds and being an entrepreneur.

26

Over the course of the semester I have been going to the climbing gym twice a week. Climbing requires many skills and the ability to plan how to climb routes. Almost every Tuesday I’ll work on new routes that were set and continuously fail each time leaning something new about it and how to conquer the task at hand. Each time you get on that wall you improve your footwork, hand placement, grip style, the dynamic and static motions, and the overall pattern you should climb. Then Fridays I’ll go back and combine all the nuances for that specific climb and attempt to finish it. The failures on Tuesdays always hype me up to get the climbs done the next time I climb. Also, every failure results in a learning experience and you can continuously clean up and improve your technique.

Personally, I find my own failures amusing and always strive to improve and correct them. For example, freshman year I was in chm2045 and I absolutely hate chemistry and am awful at it and I’ll be honest I didn’t put much work into the class and didn’t study for the final because my calculus final was more important to me. But to get to the point here I got an E in the course, E is not exceptional but rather an F, and I honest was amused when I got that course grade and am perfectly fine telling people that. I retook the course and studied much harder and got a B. Failure is inevitable, but it is just how you deal with it and correct it.

25A?

Existing Market. 

In terms of products and services, I don’t know what’s next. Each customer has different needs and will need different hardware and or services provided.

To be honest I have no clue who to interview or where to find people to interview. I’d assume they would tell me to begin marketing myself and business to my target customers.

New Market.

Again, I don’t know what to write about. I am not an imaginative person nor am I creative. I like many things but thinking up new ideas is not for me.

23A

• Generate a list of all of the resources in your venture (produce a list of at least 10 resources that you already possess). This can include your human capital, social capital, financial capital, and capabilities. You may also discuss the organizational culture you intend to create (but, obviously, it's not a resource that you have, now.) 

  Human capital because I have the skills, knowledge, and experience in the IT field from internships and previous jobs. This is extremely value in todays business world since many people do not have very good computer hardware and software knowledge.

  Financial Capital from friends and family. Every few weeks a good friend of mine calls me and asks what ideas I have and when can he fund them. This is replicable if other people want to start this business, but they might not be able to gather funds as quickly and easily.  

  I have the necessary equipment needed to start an IT business. This is very important because you need high end computer hardware to run an IT business.

  (Insert 7 more) yeah I got nothing else 

  After conducting the VRIN analysis, determine what your top resource is. Explain why it's more important to your venture than all of the other resources.

  My top resource is readily available funds to start a business. Sometimes the most challenging part of starting a business is gathering the necessary funding to begin and absorb the startup costs without being in debt.