Customer Interviews #1

1. For an opportunity I decided to use the problem of focusing with distractions in todays society.

2. Everyone might have this unmet need, but specifically I’m targeting college kids who have to stay focused to get good grades.

3. After asking five potential customers about this opportunity, I think there is a real chance to build something off of this idea. So many people are unfocused in their day to day life. 

4. While interviewing people I didn’t know it was a little nerve racking but also a neat experience to get honest feedback from people about a potential opportunity that could help people if a solution can be found.

Week 5 Reading Reflection

1. The thing that stood out to me the most in chapter 9 of Kuratko’s book is the section entitled eBay Entrepreneurship. I just enjoyed reading the different steps that you can take to become a successful eBay entrepreneur, because I know several people who use eBay as a second source of income and make quite a bit of money doing it part time.

2. Something that was confusing to me in chapter 9 was table 9.5 because its not very well organized. 

3.Two things I would want more in depth discussion about from the author would be the section about internal and external problems experienced by entrepreneurs and the section about facing your fears because they are both very interesting to me.

4.There is nothing in chapter 9 that I disagree with, and I feel that his assessment of entrepreneurial opportunities are accurate and fascinating. 

Week 4 Reading Reflection

1. The thing that stood out to me the most in this chapter was the “Most Common Idea Killers.” It’s just a short list of phrases that people say that kill ideas, and the reason why it was such a surprise to me is because I’ve literally heard every single one. From phrases like “where do you get these weird ideas?” to “I don’t see anything wrong with the way we’re doing it now.” It’s that type of thinking that kills creativity!

2. One thing in the chapter that confused me was the Critical Thinking Process chart. It’s five squares labeled creative process, incubation, ideas, evaluation and implementation, and knowledge accumulation. An arrow points from creative process to all of the squares and then they are all linked on the outside, and there isn’t much explanation about the chart to explain. 

3. One question I would ask the author is to explain the Critical Thinking Process Chart better. I also would ask him to elaborate more on table 5.4 that pertains to the two brain hemispheres.

4. I don’t disagree with anything in Chapter 5. Kuratko’s ideas on creativity and innovation are very unique and interesting and I don’t think there was anything wrong with the ideas displayed. 

Week 3 Reading Reflection

1. The thing that stood out to me the most in Chapter 2 of “Entrepreneurship” by Donald Kuratko is the characteristics often attributed to entrepreneurs. There were 42 listed attributes related to entrepreneurs including things like dynamism and aggressiveness. It just stood out to me because you never realize how much an entrepreneur has to be able to do. 

2. The thing that not so much confused me but bothered me was the section entitled “The Dark side of Entrepreneurship.” In this section Kuratko points out the negative attributes that an be attained by Entrepreneurs including financial risk, career risk, family risk, and even psychic risk. It just goes to show that entrepreneurship has its downside as well.

3. Two things I would ask the author is why he didn’t make the dealing with stress section bigger, because he has four sources of stress and then a very small section addressing all of these sources. Another thing I would ask is how to control the entrepreneurial ego that Kuratko descries.

4. Honestly, there was nothing in this chapter that I could really disagree with. I found this chapter very interesting and an eye opener to the different struggles behind entrepreneurship. 

Very Short Interview No. 1

For my Interview with an Entrepreneur, I had the pleasure of interviewing Craig Wilburn. Craig is the CEO and team leader at Keller Williams Realty who started Team Dynamo, Gainesvilles number one residential real estate team. Craig is a multi million dollar producer and has been in Gainesvilles top 1% of realtors since 2003.

1. What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

So, essentially in my opinion what it means is that you are a visionary. You are someone who has the ability to see things that other folks don’t see and you have the people skills and communication skills to communicate the vision to others. You recognize that a true entrepreneur can’t do anything on their own and have to have other people who understand the vision.

2. What do you think I should learn in an entrepreneurship course?

Probably one of the most important things to learn is you want to learn how to structure, learn systems, and how to be a good communicator. So I think those are probably the most important things. You have to learn communication skills, time management skills, to be successful in whatever your business venture is.

3. What do you wish you had been taught in school before setting out on your own path as an entrepreneur?

Aw man, so much! Because the reality is that most of the things I've learned I didn’t learn in school. The most important thing I didn’t learn in school is learning about yourself. The psychology of people and really learning about yourself is so important in my opinion. Being educated by seeing other people who have taken risks and studying other peoples failures and successes from their own personal risk taking is something I didn’t do a lot of in school but as I grew up and learned these things. These concepts have really helped me be an entrepreneur. Learning and understanding other people also help in management skills, which is a skill as an entrepreneur. Also, you don’t learn the value and importance of networking, and how important that is at being successful at what you’re doing. Networking is everything.

My reflection on this interview is just looking at entrepreneurship differently. Entrepreneurship isn’t just owning your own business, its all these things discussed in this interview combined with that to help people, and then the money follows. 

Top 5 World Problems

Top 5 Problems:
1. Poverty
2. Terrorism
3. Water
4. Global Warming
5. Lack of education

Top 5 solutions:
1. Water
2. Lack of Education
3. Global Warming
4. Poverty
5. Terrorism

I selected poverty as my top problem from my list out of five because the majority of the world lives in poverty. Third world countries are living on pennies a day and thousands die from starvation. I feel like this is the biggest problem in the world

I selected that finding a solution to lack of water would be easiest out of the top 5 world problems. I feel that finding ways to desalinate ocean water at a mass scale wouldn't be that hard since we already know the technology. And the fact that the majority of the world is covered with salt water, we should never have a problem with running out. Also, we could supply countries that don't have clean water with this water.

Week 2 Reading Reflection

1. The biggest surprise to me in this reading were the 10 myths of entrepreneurship. Because I have a lack of knowledge on the subject, I was one of the many who thought the majority of these myths were true about entrepreneurs.

2. One thing that confused me slightly was the Financial Analysis Emphasis. Are the three venture stages necessarily always going to happen (start-up, ongoing, and decline)?

3. If I was able to ask two questions to the author this far, I would ask why he chose certain trends as hot trends to watch. Some of these trends include Food and Beverage and Apparel which to me seem like trends that have been around since the dawn of time, as opposed to Tech or Health trends. I would also ask the author if he is an entrepreneur himself.

4. The one thing I think the author was wrong about is that Entrepreneurs are made and not born. I feel that while you can teach someone how to be an entrepreneur, there are distinct traits that one is born with that make them exceptional. You have to be aggressive and willing to take risk, which some people just don’t have the guts to be this way no matter how hard you try to train them.