Dot Com Boom and Bust

I actually wasn't present for this talk so I had to go over the slides to see what it was about. The title made it clear is was about the Dot Com Boom and Bust which is a term for the insane growth of internet companies and their eventual demise. From reading this, I notices a lot of similarity to the Housing Market Boom and Bust. I watched a movie called the Big Short and there seems to be a lot of similarities such as people capitalizing on get rich quick deals. I don't actually remember the Dot Com Boom because I was so young then. However, I do remember the rise of MySpace and how much more fun it was than Facebook. The Dot com boom started because of over investing in companies and Venture Capitalists trying to make a quick profit by selling their shares for a higher profit. This made companies focus on  Venture Capitalism and funds raising instead of what they should have been more worried about which is creating long lasting value and increasing revenue. But honestly, I can't judge these Venture Capitalists because if I had made a lot of money on investing in one company I will keep trying to do it again to increase my profits. It just seems like magic when you are investing and then selling those stock and boom. You just doubled your investing portfolio. Like that feels like a drug and you're going to want to do it again and why not? If it worked before it will probably work again.

Reading some of the other blog posts, I noticed that Andrew Fry talked again about how his family moved and he was all on his own here to start his own companies. I think part of his success comes from his personality. He is a really likable person and great at communication and public speaker. He is amazing at telling stories and this must attract talented people in order to help execute his visions for his companies.

Mission Statement for LitHub

Weed, anytime, everywhere.

Guess Speaker: Shadrach White

Today, we had another guess speaker Shadrach who owns CloudPwr, a cloud computing services company based in Tacoma. His talk was great because it was short and to the point. When he was telling his story about how his second business that sold vintage basketball tees, I thought it was awesome that they had DMX wearing their product. The point of telling us about this business was to tell us that even if you do everything right such as having crazy good marketing and a solid focused mission, all of that doesn't mean anything if you don't have your finances in place. He called it being a revenue hawk. Since his company wasn't able to manage their money properly. Somewhere through his talk, he talked about character when dealing with business. He was able to leverage his previous business connections and reputation with the government agencies as customers for CloudPwr. This made think about how important it is to have a good reputation because that is how doors will open for you in the future. No matter it be a job or being a business owner, "your word is your bond," is how Shadrach put it. I really liked the fact that he would rather hire someone with good character that wasn't as smart or talented over someone who has a shady character but was super smart and talented. I consider myself as someone with good character but not super smart. It's refreshing to hear this kind of thinking since the places that I would like to be hire really place a huge emphasis on technical aptitude even before behavioral.

Guest Speaker: John Dimmer

I learned the most from John Dimmer's lecture. First off, John Dimmer seems like a really successful guy. He owns multiple Honda dealer ships, Round Table, and a bunch of other businesses that I can't recall. I like the fact that when he was explaining the reasons for becoming an entrepreneur, he brought up reasons like wanting to make an impact and yada yada other bull shit happy go lucky stuff. Then he just straight up came with the reason I want to become an entrepreneur was because I wanted to make a lot of money. Once he said that I was like yessssss. Some honesty.  And he gained my respect and attention This presentation was different than the previous guess lectures because it had to do with financials. Which I could appreciate. I liked the slide about raising money and I learned about how pre money valuation and dilution works. Actually I don't really know if I really learned those concepts. I have to apply it on some homework problems or my business plan template. Good thing I took a picture of these slides so that I can refer to it when I am writing my business plan.  I liked how his parents came with him to his presentation. His dad was sleeping the entire time haha. I don’t feel bad for dozing off in class anymore.  It’s really cool how John and his dad both worked on businesses together. They are probably a really close tight knit family.

How I would Protect My Intellectual Property

The one technology that will really help my business would be the I.D. scanner that scans and verifies a card to be over 21 and also the facial scanner to make sure that the person paying for the product is indeed the same person on the card. This technology would be very hard to develop and therefor it would be to my advantage that I protect my intellectual property somehow. I would choose to use a patent to protect my intellectual property. Although there are probably lots of patents on facial recognition software. Another option for my business would be to hire a 3^rd party facial recognition software and scanner. This could end up costing me a lot more money to pay for the rights to use their hardware and software. I would have to do more research on which method would be cheaper, building the technology in house and then patenting it and having exclusive rights to use the technology or paying a third party to use their hardware and software for my business. I like the idea of doing my own research and development on the technology and patenting it. That way, if other companies wanted to use my technology, I could sell the rights to use it to them and charge them recurring. Also, since I would like to have multiple drive-thus running, I would probably have to pay for a license to use a 3^rd party technology for each of my store locations. This would not be ideal.

Drive-thru Cannabis Dispensary Prices

I just did a google search too see if there were any drive-thru dispensaries that exist in this world. I found that there are already medical dispensaries doing drive-thru. And the first recreational drive-thru dispensary is being opened in Oregon later this year. I wasn't able to find that dispensaries website to see what they are pricing their products for.  So my pricing research is going to come from personal experience. Non drive-thru dispensaries prices for a gram of cannabis can range anywhere from $10 - $30 dollars, depending on the quality of the bud. Since my business is supposed to be able to run with 1person maximum, that means I won't have to pay lots of workers like traditional dispensaries do. I believe I can cut down to $5 dollar grams of high quality product. But I wouldn't want undercut prices with my competitors. So I would keep it at the established $10 dollar grams. Where I would be saving money is in wages. I went looking at the prices of dispensaries around my area. The lowest gram prices I have seen are $5 dollars which means that I can lower my gram price to that amount. I would see 1/8 oz. prices for $15 - $40 depending on how much it costs to purchase that product. The thing with my drive thru dispensary business is that it depends on how high quality product I want to sell to my customers. I’m thinking of buying the lowest quality bud from suppliers so that I can have my prices be the lowest around. Since I am trying to go for that cheap and convenient but does the job vibe like a McDonalds.