Adventures of a Business Noob

 Now that we have covered so many areas of starting up a business, I want to cover another important area that future business owners eventually think about. Broadening their business scope. Matt Tolentino is a man of many hats, one of which is being an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Washington. But Matt isnt just an Assistant Teaching Professor, he is also the CEO of Namatad, Co-founder of Tempo, started the Intelligent Platform & Architecture (IPA) Lab, and created patented his own ad displaying products.  Matt did what most business owners eventually do to keep themselves relevant in the market, he learned valuable skills, expanded on those skills, and managed to find his way into various profit yielding avenues. He could have easily stayed as a CEO of Namatad, and left it at that, but he saw the value of broadening his scope of capabilities into other areas. Its not just about starting a business and making profit, its about staying relevant in ...

 So you have the skills, the ideas, and the funding to start a business. With all of these laid out, you open your doors to the public and let the customers flow in. For the next 5 months, things are pretty good. People are interested, they are excited for a new shop to be open, but after some time the customers start slowing and the profits start getting smaller. Starting a business doesn't end when the doors open to customers, starting a business means maintaining your supply and demand in a shifting market. Brian Forth of SiteCrafting came into my classroom one day talking about his journey from being a teacher, to owning a business since 1998.  It should come as no surprise that most businesses fail, some even say 9 out of 10 will fail, so to keep a business running from 1998 to now is very impressive. As I listened to him talk about his business, I realized a few things. First, as a UX/UI designer, having a product meet consumer needs is extremely important. Having a prod...

 I had the pleasant opportunity to meet John Dimmer in one of my entrepreneurship classes. He is an Angel Investor located in Washington State, and loves to give talks on funding your business start-ups. He helped walk the class through the process of funding your business. The biggest surprise to me is when he said he wants owners to have skin in the game. What does that mean? Well, as an Angel Investor like John, he wants to know that the founder (you) is dedicated to this business and willing to put forth your own capital before asking for investors to put in money first.  And he isnt wrong. The first funding that business professors will tell you, comes from your wallet. Thats right, you start the funding. After that, funding can find its way into your business through various sources. As John pointed out in his speech, funding can come from friends and family, crowdsourcing (like KickStarter says my Professor), loans, and Angel Investors to start. Thats what John Dimmer i...