$100 startup: key ideas to success.

        In $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau emphasizes the necessary components to a successful business: 1) A convergence between what you like to do and what the rest of the world is interested in. 2) Development of business skills by using skills you already have to learn how to be professional. 3) A combination of the above: skill, passion, usefulness, and understanding of general demand (in business). For when you actually wish to start your business you need a product/service, people who demand said product/service, and a way to make money off product/service. An example Guillebeau uses of product/service demand is how restaurants are successful. In a restaurant, you are not just paying for the product (food), but you are also paying for a luxury, namely a fancy atmosphere, seating, and for them to cook the food for you. Many services are in demand because customers find these services more convenient or enjoyable when done for them.

This lesson actually relates a lot to our work for our $200 project. Our goal was to find a product (that being a broken violin in need of fixing) on craigslist, use our skills to fix the violin, and then sell the fixed product online. In this case, we are not only selling the violin, we are essentially selling the service of fixing the product for them and assuring them it is functional. In my opinion, the hardest thing about a business is probably finding that customer that demands your service. Although it is much easier than previous years to find customers due to the existence of websites such as eBay or Craigslist, finding and attracting customers is difficult and also determines whether or not your business is successful, which is something I wish the book would go a bit more in depth with.

class stuff 12/21

This week has been interesting for our group. Although some of us were still absent/late to class, I feel that we have made a decent effort at getting our group back on its feet. To start, we have made several revisions to parts 1 through 6 of the storefront project, such as the approximate costs as well as revenue from our business model, which we put into two spreadsheets made by me and Gerald. Chris and David put a lot of effort into creating a sketch for our storefront building. Rizheng and David helped us get information from the Architect as well as about permit fees, which helped me complete the cost spreadsheet and helped Gerald complete the P&L.

However, there are a lot of things our group still needs to improve and work on to help us complete the storefront project. For example, our project leader David has made certain revisions to our business model without explicitly telling us (such as changing it from office based to open workspace based) , which has made it more difficult for us to calculate specific and total costs. There have also been a few instances of our group going off topic, although we are improving our productivity much more than the last few weeks.

My thoughts: for us to be more productive overall, it may help to document our plans for the project, as well as our business model. I will ask David on monday (If he’s there) what our final business model is and what our plans are to finish the project in time to present, and I or someone else will type it up.

The $100 Startup, by Chris Guillebeau.

The $100 startup, by Chris Guillebeau, talks about the vast amount of opportunities today to make money by yourself without the constraint of long term commitments and with the freedom to work on what you want to work on. The idea Guilllebeau emphasizes primarily in this book is that anyone can work towards what they want by themselves and aren’t required to borrow a lot of money or go to business school. He examplifies this throughout the book with various stories of people starting their own business.

Guillebeau first talks about a man named Michael Hanna, a sales professional in Portland, Oregon, who upon losing his job gets contacted by his friend with a proposition. Michael’s friend offers him a large amount of closeout mattresses for him to potentially sell on Craigslist. From there on, Michael researched the mattress market and made a very surprising profitable business off of selling mattresses for the next two years. Additionally, Michael’s store neighbor named Sarah Young also started a yarn store called Happy Knits. Despite practically no prior experience in entrepreneurship, Sarah’s store became profitable within six months.

What I take away from this book so far is that the author tries to express how much opportunity most people have to be able to start their own business without much experience or a large investment. I was surprised by some of the examples he gave of start up successes, but I think that the author left out certain details about starting up businesses when describing his “$100 Startup Model”. For example, he stated that he expects a small business to gain at least a $50k yearly income but he doesn’t give an example of how one would gain that much through a startup. Overall though, his book is interesting and eye opening about how startups can become very successful.

Class Stuff 12/14: group struggles and plans to catch up.

This week, me and my group (Rizheng, Chris, David, Gerald) are making further progress with the storefront project and the $200 project. However, I have to admit that our group is currently struggling to meet various deadlines for our projects. This is primarily due to people, such as myself, misunderstanding assignments and end up with missing details, incorrect format, etc… Our current Storefront project involves using the storefront building as an office rental space. For this, finding information about financial costs of certain things like insurance, payrolls, construction, design, and others were really difficult to find in a short period and I was unsure if I was searching in the right places. In our 200 dollar project, we decided that the safest way to make a return on the 200 dollars was to purchase an item on craigslist that we could fix (currently a violin) and then sell the fixed product on craigslist. Since we have a limited amount of time left with the 200 dollars, we haven’t been able to think of other ways to use our money, which makes the amount of contribution to the project by each person minimal. Additionally, other group members were also absent on occasions when we really needed them and made it more difficult to progress forward and come up with ideas for our projects. When they are absent or late, it is generally difficult for us to still contact whoever is absent.

For the next week, it will be my and my group member’s priority to make sure we catch up on everything that needs to be revised. We will spend time discussing in class and make sure everyone knows what their roles are. I will attempt to email other group members in case certain work is still missing and is needed.

Class stuff 12/7

In class, I have been discussing with my group members (Rizheng, Gerald, David, Chris) about our $200 project and the storefront project. Most of the work for the $200 project was done by David, as our process for making money is simply to purchase an item online via craigslist in exchange for an item of higher value. My work for that was helping search for items to buy on craigslist and discussing feasibility. I also completed the finance quiz in order to participate in the project. For the storefront project, I have been cooperating somewhat with Chris to study brookline and how well our Office program would work for the space we were given.