Blog Post 4

The past few classes I have learned more about some different strategies to have a successful business model. A few weeks ago, we learned about the SWOT of each building block of the canvas. In order for an entrepreneur to have a successful company, they need to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of their own company, as well as their competitors. I had the opportunity to evaluate SWOT myself in the competitive analysis assignment. After completing this assignment, I learned that it is hard work for entrepreneurs to complete this process. There is a lot of research that goes into evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can be especially difficult when evaluating this for a competitor since you yourself don’t know a whole lot of information about the company. It’s a timely process and one that requires dedication. From the outside, many people might think that an entrepreneur’s life is sunshine and rainbows. They start a company that is successful and make a lot of money. What people don’t see is all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to create a successful business model. I definitely learned that through the competitive analysis assignment. Although this assignment was timely, I really enjoyed learning more about my startup Cheddar and how the company came to be. 

Another aspect we’ve recently learned about is startup funding. This might be one of the most important aspects of becoming an entrepreneur besides having a good idea. Some ways entrepreneurs obtain funding is through loans, investors, crowdfunding, and family and friends. I recently met with my assigned entrepreneur, Chris Jennewein, and he taught me a lot about startup funding. For his own company, Times of San Diego, Chris used a mixture of bootstrap funding and seed funding. Bootstrap funding is when funding comes from the founders own savings. Chris was smart and had a lot of money saved up that he used for a kickstart within his own company. Since he was using most of his own money for his startup, he did everything he could to keep the costs low. He used things like WordPress, Google Analytics, and others free applications to avoid putting money into those areas. He was so passionate about stressing how important it is to keep the cost low, in fact that was his biggest piece of advice to anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur. He told me that it’s worth it to put time and research into finding an application that does the job for free than to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it. I really enjoyed meeting with Chris and hearing his story.