As promised, here's what I learned from my entrepreneurship class last quarter:
First off, Sindrian Arts, at least my current vision of it, is what is know as a 'lifestyle' startup, as opposed to a 'foundation' or 'gazelle' startup. A foundation startup is like an inventor's project, but on a larger scale: the entire business is centered around the research and development of a new idea which is then sold to another firm to utilize. My class did not spend much time on these, focusing more on gazelle startups. Gazelles are more like what most people think of when they think of startups: it's designed to grow as much as possible as quickly as possible so that it can be sold for a huge profit a few years down the line. These are the types of business venture capitalists like to invest in. Lifestyle startups, on the other hand, could be seen as the gazelle's little cousin. They tend to be much less ambitious, focusing more on creating a stable small business then a national firm with explosive growth. As I mentioned before, the current version of the Sindiran Arts business plan has two distinct phases, and the first phase falls into the lifestyle category.
See, the mission of Sindrian Arts is to help create a new manufacturing paradigm based upon (among other things) decentralization. I want to help create a community of small, local businesses that collectively compete with big-box stores. The first phase of this is to create a model for success, so I need to create a living laboratory for my ideas. Since the end goal is to help create lots of small business, this laboratory will be a small business itself. Once I've refined and proven my ideas, I can then move on to the second phase of the business where I become an evangelical consultant to help others create the same kind of business.
Now, this is what I learned: most people are not interested in investing in lifestyle startups. This is one of the reasons I didn't write the Sindrian Arts business plan for the class: the class was geared towards writing business plans that would be attractive to investors. This also tells me that when I start looking for seed money, VCs are NOT where I should look. In looking at alternate sources of funding I came across Kickstarter. Through Kickstarter, I could raise the right amount of money with very few strings attached. Not only that, but there have been other CNC-based projects on there that have been very successful. Sounds like a good match!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
And now we get down to business
Apologies for not having posted in a while; unsurprisingly, school kept me busy. However, not a whole lot of consequence happened, so here's the cliff notes for the interesting bits:
Classes I took:
Design communication:
Same as every quarter; sketch a lot, do some renders. One highlight is that I was introduced to Prezi, a wonderful little presentation web app that allows anyone to make a visually interesting presentation fairly easily.
JCPenny bag studio:
This was my design studio for the quarter. Our task was to re-design JCPenny's (or maybe it should be jcp's) approach to reusable bags to help them transition away from plastic bags. Unfortunately it was a group project, and the groups kept changing. However, the execs from jcp LOVED the final presentation, so it all worked out in the end.
Design Seminar:
The purpose of this class was to prepare a proposal for our capstone project, start on research for it, and get it approved by the faculty. Given that I already had a pretty well fleshed-out vision of my capstone (the CNC-based business I just spent a quarter working on), this was pretty easy.
Career Development:
AKA, how to get a job after you graduate. Since I plan on being self-employed, I had to work with the professor to adapt the assignments to suit my needs, but it worked out all right. For the most part, I simply adapted work from my final class:
Entrepreneurship:
This was my big class of the quarter. Ironically, it was also my only elective, and the only class I took outside of the design college. I cannot rant and rave enough about this class; it was hands down the best thing I took at UC to date. If you go to UC and are at all interested in entrepreneurship, I HIGHLY recommend you take this class (or any class, really) taught by Tom Dalziel. If you're not in the college of business you'll have to get special permission, but Tom will be very happy to have you.
This was the first class I've ever taken with NO BUSY WORK. Every single assignment was part of the larger process of developing a business plan to be presented at the end of the quarter.
I had originally planned to write the Sindrian Arts business plan for this class, but as did more research, I realized that a: the business I wanted to start would not be attractive to outside investors interested primarily in making money, and b: my business actually had two distinct phases, each requiring their own plan, and thus too much work for the class. What I ended up doing was writing a business plan for a version of Sindrian Arts.
In this business, called Green Furniture Works, the focus would be on making sustainable designer furniture. While not quite what I want to do, it was close enough that I could still lean a lot from it, while being much more applicable to the class. My next post will be about how this all has informed where I'm going from here.
Classes I took:
Design communication:
Same as every quarter; sketch a lot, do some renders. One highlight is that I was introduced to Prezi, a wonderful little presentation web app that allows anyone to make a visually interesting presentation fairly easily.
JCPenny bag studio:
This was my design studio for the quarter. Our task was to re-design JCPenny's (or maybe it should be jcp's) approach to reusable bags to help them transition away from plastic bags. Unfortunately it was a group project, and the groups kept changing. However, the execs from jcp LOVED the final presentation, so it all worked out in the end.
Design Seminar:
The purpose of this class was to prepare a proposal for our capstone project, start on research for it, and get it approved by the faculty. Given that I already had a pretty well fleshed-out vision of my capstone (the CNC-based business I just spent a quarter working on), this was pretty easy.
Career Development:
AKA, how to get a job after you graduate. Since I plan on being self-employed, I had to work with the professor to adapt the assignments to suit my needs, but it worked out all right. For the most part, I simply adapted work from my final class:
Entrepreneurship:
This was my big class of the quarter. Ironically, it was also my only elective, and the only class I took outside of the design college. I cannot rant and rave enough about this class; it was hands down the best thing I took at UC to date. If you go to UC and are at all interested in entrepreneurship, I HIGHLY recommend you take this class (or any class, really) taught by Tom Dalziel. If you're not in the college of business you'll have to get special permission, but Tom will be very happy to have you.
This was the first class I've ever taken with NO BUSY WORK. Every single assignment was part of the larger process of developing a business plan to be presented at the end of the quarter.
I had originally planned to write the Sindrian Arts business plan for this class, but as did more research, I realized that a: the business I wanted to start would not be attractive to outside investors interested primarily in making money, and b: my business actually had two distinct phases, each requiring their own plan, and thus too much work for the class. What I ended up doing was writing a business plan for a version of Sindrian Arts.
In this business, called Green Furniture Works, the focus would be on making sustainable designer furniture. While not quite what I want to do, it was close enough that I could still lean a lot from it, while being much more applicable to the class. My next post will be about how this all has informed where I'm going from here.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Catch-up, part the first
Apologies for lapse in posts, but between wrapping things up in Boston, moving back to Cincinnati, starting classes back at DAAP, and being really sick twice, I've forgotten to make time to post here. However, I've recently decided to get my act together, and part of that is going to be posting here at least once a week.
Here's what's happened since my last post:
That standing computer desk I was working on turned out beautifully:
Leaving out a bit of trouble-shooting, it only took 45 minutes to mill all the parts, and that's with multiple passes. With a more ridged machine, I could easily half that. Design-wise, it was a little wobbly, but I think I know a neat way to fix that with a few eye bolts and some rope or cable. Also, I discovered that it should probably be a bit shorter, since one girl I showed it to said she had a hard time seeing the screen.
After that, I made a few modifications to the Blackfoot pattern to integrate the additional bearing holders for the X axis drive shafts and to eliminate the parts I wouldn't need before making the g-code for cutting it. By the time I was actually ready to run the code I was running short on time, so I ran it a little faster that I probably should have. The pieces came out with a few defects here and there, but nothing that would prevent them from fitting together correctly. The next day I packed up all my stuff, and left the morning after that. Thus ended my wonderful travel quarter. I was sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of the folks at the Asylum, but I'll be back.
Ok, I've got to go grab some lunch. I'll post the rest either later today, or in a day or two.
Here's what's happened since my last post:
That standing computer desk I was working on turned out beautifully:
Leaving out a bit of trouble-shooting, it only took 45 minutes to mill all the parts, and that's with multiple passes. With a more ridged machine, I could easily half that. Design-wise, it was a little wobbly, but I think I know a neat way to fix that with a few eye bolts and some rope or cable. Also, I discovered that it should probably be a bit shorter, since one girl I showed it to said she had a hard time seeing the screen.
After that, I made a few modifications to the Blackfoot pattern to integrate the additional bearing holders for the X axis drive shafts and to eliminate the parts I wouldn't need before making the g-code for cutting it. By the time I was actually ready to run the code I was running short on time, so I ran it a little faster that I probably should have. The pieces came out with a few defects here and there, but nothing that would prevent them from fitting together correctly. The next day I packed up all my stuff, and left the morning after that. Thus ended my wonderful travel quarter. I was sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of the folks at the Asylum, but I'll be back.
Ok, I've got to go grab some lunch. I'll post the rest either later today, or in a day or two.
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