Assignments for Class #2

For next class we have the following assignments:

Watch: Tucker and the Alexander Graham Bell Story.

Read: Moore: Crossing the Chasm: Author's note, preface and pp. 3 -59
Twain: Tom Sawyer excerpt, Under Armour IPO excerpt
I haven't gotten the Starbucks IPO so we can defer that reading until later.

Write: 2 pager on "My Favorite Entrepreneur". Get it posted!

First Comment from the Professor

Class:

Good first class today all, I'm very encouraged that we'll all be learning alot. Along those lines, I realized when I received an email from one of you that I had not enabled the ability to comment or "author" permission according to Google blogger to you all--I had selected the "members only comment" category when I set up the site which required that I email you all an invite, which I just did using your UMBC.edu email addresses that I have from your class roster. I have to say, Google makes it a bit confusing since "author", "member", "registered user" and "follower" are all kind of the same thing but require different actions and are permitted different comment posting rights.

Hopefully, the use of the UMBC email address will not cause more difficulties in registration if you are already a Blogger registered user but used a different email address to create your blogger registration. All part of the learning process.

If it becomes difficult to navigate through this even after receiving the email invite let me know and I'll change the comment permissions to make it easier for all to post comments. Use my dfriedensohn@gmail.com address for that as I can get those emails on my cel phone.

Cheers,

The Professor

The American Entrepreneur in the 21st Century

First Class: Monday, January 26
Final Class: Monday, May 11

Class #14: Winners and Winners

Monday, May 4

Class votes on best business plan. Discussion of Next Steps in business and professional development for that plan. Discussion of class merits and items for improvement.

Class #13: Presenting a New Business

Monday, April 27

Presentation of NEW DRAFT of 3 powerpoint business presentations incorporating the feedback from previous class discussion.

Class #12: New Entrepreneurs Speak

Monday, April 20

Presentation of 3 powerpoint business presentations by the 3 teams: 20 minutes each with 10 minutes Q&A for each.

Detailed notes, corrections, suggestions and comments will be given.

Assignment #10: Students will incorporate these into a NEW DRAFT of their presentation.

Class #11: The Entrepreneur Speaks (continued)

Monday, April 13

Presentation by an actual successful entrepreneur.

An actual start up entrepreneur comes to class to give presentation on their start up origins and present situation. Question and answer period including questions and answers on ongoing business presentation development.

Assignment #9 (on going): Teams develop presentation.

Class #10: The Entrepreneur Speaks

Monday, April 6

Presentation by an actual successful entrepreneur.

An actual start up entrepreneur comes to class to give presentation on their start up origins and present situation. Question and answer period including questions and answers on ongoing business presentation development.

Assignment #9: Teams develop presentation.

Class #9: Practising the Elevator Pitch

Monday, March 30

Readings: Crossing the Chasm Part II, pp.162--211

Practicing the Elevator Pitch.

Each student gives their 30 second elevator pitch. Class then votes on the 3 best. Class is then split up into 3 teams that will create a powerpoint presentation for the 3 businesses to be developed for the final classes.

Class #8: See One, Do One, Teach One

Monday, March 23

The Surgeon's Credo: See One, Do One, Teach One
Readings: Selected excerpts from Carnegie. Selected excerpts from IPO filing of Google
Viewings: The Simpsons: The Old Man and the Lisa

Class discussion: ethics in business planning and development: Google vs. Mr. Burns: Show Me the Evil

Putting together a business plan: Components for a successful business plan: Remember the Rules of Powerpoint!

1. The elevator pitch
2. The executive summary
3. The powerpoint presentation
4. The business plan
5. The offering memorandum
6. The exit

Assignment #8: each student to create his or her own 30 second elevator pitch for their dream business. This pitch will be presented at the beginning of Class #9.

Sunday March 15 thru Sunday March 22: UMBC Spring Break

Class #7: The Art of Raising Capital

Monday, March 9

Finance Sources: The Art of Raising Capital

Reading: Mark Twain's "Roughing It", Chapter XLIV

Reading: Determining Success Factors of New Firms: “What are Firms? Evolution from Birth to Public Companies,” by University of Chicago Graduate School of Business professor Steven N. Kaplan, Per Strömberg of the Sweden Institute for Financial Research, and Berk A. Sensoy of the University of Chicago. http://www.chicagogsb.edu/capideas/dec05/1.aspx

Types of financing sources for start ups:

1. Angel investors: friends, family and professional angel investment networks:
review website: http://angelsoft.net/

2. Venture capital: professional investment for early stage business
review website: http://thefunded.com

3. Private equity

4. Small business loans: government sources, foundations and local banks
review website: http://www.sba.gov/

Assignment #7: Identify 3 sources of capital for your business plan. The sources should have a definite focus on the type of business you are envisioning. The name of your initial contact person should be included. Create powerpoint slide to document.

Class #6: Financial Projections

Monday, March 2

Financial Projections:
How to create a financial projection using information gathered in first 3 lessons on market size, costs, and the overhead necessary to create and sustain the business.

Classwork will focus on the line by line dissection of a business plan financial projection.

Assignment #6:
Development a 5 year summary financial projection using spreadsheet software WITH first 12 months detail. Base revenues on assumptions from the target market size data from Assignment #2. Base Product costs on Assignment #3. Base General & Administrative costs on Assignment #4. Base Marketing costs on Assignment #6. P&L derived from these projections will lead to necessary capital requirements and forecasting of return on investment.

Class #5: Marketing Costs in the 21st Century

Monday, February 23

Marketing Costs

Readings: Crossing the Chasm Part II, pp.103--161, Review "how to" areas of Yahoo! Search Engine Marketing, Google Adsense, and Adbrite. Review website: http://www.seomoz.org/

Discussion of how to market products and develop a marketing budget, using ONLY online and low cost "guerilla" marketing. Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization solutions will be defined, analyzed and discussed with regards to both online and "real world" products.

"That kid in the playground": There's always that one kid in the playground that knows the best new videogame, the best cell phone, the best new rap artist, the best new snack: How do we reach them and make them our partner? Who is "that kid" in your target market beachhead?

Online : Google Adsense, Adbrite, Yahoo Marketing, Facebook, Craigslist

Offline: Wild posting, celebrity endorsement, product placement, and PR: Make Friends with the Journalist:
"There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1--to tell him you have read one of his books; 2--to tell him you have read all of his books; 3--to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart."

Assignment #5
Create Marketing budget for your product using electronic spreadsheet software, summarize in powerpoint slide, or the equivalent.

Class #4: Creating the Dream Team

Monday, February 16

Overhead and the Division of Labor: Creating the Dream Team
Readings: Selected excerpts from the IPO filings of Apple Computer and Microsoft

"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs": Karl Marx

Classwork will focus how do you know what you don't know, and when and where to ask for help and how much to pay for it. Modern tools for sourcing of labor will be discussed and demonstrated: craig's list, the ladders, monster.com, rentacoder.com, guru.com, getfriday.com

Organizational Structure and Behavior: Crafting the Dream Team

Sales and Business Development: Making More Money
Real Estate: the Office or the Garage?
Legal: the Counselors:
Finance, Payroll & HR: Not a Profit Center

Discussion of consultants, employees, contract labor, user generated content and other 21st century labor definitions. Discussion of the formation of IMDB.com and Celestial Seasonings.

Assignment #4

Create a organizational chart of not more than 10 people for your company and place it in a powerpoint slide. Place these into a powerpoint slide in bullet point form, along with estimated annual salaries and/or hourly costs per each headcount per year. Deliver in powerpoint slide format or the equivalent.

Class #3: Product Development and Sourcing

Monday, February 9

Product Development and Sourcing

Readings: selected readings from IPO filings of Apple Computer. Crossing the Chasm, Part II pp. 63--103

1) Discussion of Products and Target Markets assignment.
2) Products and their cost basis

What do you want to build or produce? What service do you want to provide? Break down the product or service into its constituent components and begin development of a component sourcing plan. Where are the materials or services necessary to build the product located? How does the entrepreneur source these components? Once sources are found, students will be encouraged to think of lower cost substitution and replication. The cost of the product versus the potential quality and acceptance by the target market will be discussed.

Classwork centers on these topics:
Raw materials and services sourcing
Assembly lines
Outsourcing solutions in the 21st Century: case studies: skiphop.com, guru.com, napster.com

Class #2: Markets and Marketing

Lesson 2: Monday, February 2

"Cherchez le creneau!"

Niche: "a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species"

In the study of any specific ecology, a successful species is one that grows and thrives in direct harmony with its surroundings. When the ecology changes, species must adapt or die. Using our interdisciplinary reasoning skills, we will apply the role of a changing environment on speciation and draw conclusions on how to create a successful business in our changing economy.

Readings: Crossing the Chasm, Author's note and preface to the revised edition pp. i -- xix; Part 1: Discovering the Chasm pp. 3 - 59, selected readings from IPO filings of Under Armour and Starbucks

"If you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door." If you learn nothing else in this course you will learn that this statement is wrong.

Class Discussion: Technology Adoption Life Cycle: terms and implications. Psychographic descriptions and behavior of the iconic customers. Finding the target market.

Markets are everything: what is your target market? How big is this market? What is the growth rate of your market? How does your market behave?

These are essential first questions to ask for any potential new business. Fortunately, finding the answers is easier than ever with specific internet data sources at your fingertips. Classwork will go over how to determine and size target markets, internet web sites will be provided to complete the homework. Sources discussed in the class will be US Government online sources (e.g. http://www.census.gov/), "Mash Up Sites" http://www.policymap.com/, http://www.trulia.com, Securities and Exchange Commission (http://www.sec.gov), Macro economic indicators http://www.conference-board.org/

Other resources include: http://www.surveymonkey.com/, http://www.work.com/, http://www.entrepreneurship.org/, http://www.censusscope.org/, http://www.fedstats.gov/, http://www.bplans.com/, http://entrepreneurs.about.com/

Discuss online marketing costs and theory using Google Adwords and similar online marketing tools. Discuss the "Rules of Powerpoint".

Assignment #2: Choose a market you believe is the target for a product you are interested in launching. Research this market and come up with 5 important characteristics based on facts sourced through online data sources. Place these into a powerpoint slide in bullet point form, email this slide to the professor at least 48 hours prior to next class and be prepared to discuss and defend in class. Just as we use the "scientific method" in developing a hypothesis and then test it empirically, we will test each proposed target market through fact based observations and deduction.

Class #1: Who is the American Entrepreneur?

Lesson 1: Monday, January 26

Viewings for the class: Tucker, Alexander Graham Bell
Readings: selected excerpts from Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

1) Be ready to discuss the mindset of the American entrepreneur and their place in American history, literature and film.

2) What is an entrepreneur? How has the history of the United States come to foster this American icon? Who is "today's Tom Sawyer"?

3) The Profit Motive

4) Trading and Producing

5) Hunting and Farming

6) The Gold Rush and After the Gold Rush

Writing Assignment #1:

Which American entrepreneur do you admire most and why? How does their life story relate to yours? 2 pages

Further Course Readings

Readings from IPO [Initial Public Offering] Documents, sourced from SEC.gov and elsewhere:

Apple Computer S-1/A: December 12, 1980


Microsoft S-1/A: March 10, 1986


Starbucks S-1/A: June 25, 1992


Google S-1/A: August 19, 2004


Under Armour S-1/A: November 18, 2005