Mission Statement

To help small businesses take advantage of technology, in order to allow them to continue to grow and prosper in tomorrow's market.


This is the mission statement I came up with our company, for several reasons. Firstly, it informs the reader about what exactly we do (at least to some vague degree), which involves technology and integrating it into their businesses. Although we are primarily focusing on daycares right now, I left it as small businesses for two reasons: 1) In case we expand to other markets down the road, we don't have to change our mission statement 2) Someone visiting our website might see our services and like what they see, and might want something similar but not for a daycare. After reading our mission statement, they can easily infer that we are not restricting ourselves to only the childcare market. This might encourage them to contact us and see if there is a fit for us to build something useful for them.

In the second half of my mission statement, I talk about the purpose of why we do what we do, which is to really nourish the growth of these small businesses that might not be very technologically advanced. A small business owner reading this might begin to understand why other business owners are paying for our services, and maybe why they should too. Lastly, I specifically used "tomorrow's market" because I want our potential and current customer's to know that we know technology very well, and how to take advantage of new and emerging technology to put your business ahead of the market. As we all know technology is forever changing, and staying ahead of those changes in a competitive market could be the difference between your business thriving with profit and going completely under.

Entrepreneur of the Day: John Dimmer

This week, we had John Dimmer come to speak to us with extra focus on the financial side of starting or running a company. This is something we really have not touched in class too much thus far and something I think most of us students are definitely not thinking about. I loved the depth of his talk and how he went into details of how exactly funding goes for a startup. Personally, I had little to no idea how I would even start to raise funds for a company if I started one today. For that reason I am thankful he discussed the several different options that exist, some of which seriously surprised me. The one that caught my attention the most, was the SBIR grant, which was basically free money that the government gives to certain young companies in which they believe in the work their company is doing and will continue to do in the future. This idea isn’t that crazy, but when I heard how much money the company he gave as an example received, I was blown away! This was a serious chunk of change for doing very little and trading nothing. This got me thinking to apply for grants like these or just any small business competition in which they might award a sum of money to whoever wins. Not only is this a relatively easy way to earn no-strings-attached money, but also I bet if I were to apply for something like this, it would force me to perfect my business plan and really think harder about the ins and outs of my business.

Protecting My IP

My company assists small business owners, specifically in-home family daycares, to better manage and automate the processes in their daycare with the use of technology. As with starting any business venture, one thing to think about is intellectual property and how I, as a owner of this IP am going to protect it.

IP is an extremely valuable resource in today’s market. So significant, that some larger companies have even bought smaller companies just so that they can have access to their IP and use it as their own. Owning the rights to a certain process, a specific character, or even a recipe is the reason some companies are able to maintain their success for so long without being ripped off. It becomes very easy to see how intellectual property can make or break a business, which is why protecting it is so critical.

For my business, I plan to use two of the four methods to protect my IP that we discussed in class. First and most importantly, we will be copyrighting all our code and any technologies we develop in an effort to accomplish our main goal of online daycare management. Secondly, eventually we will have a logo that represents our brand and that will be used on all of our marketing material, online or on paper. For this reason, we need to protect our logo and brand name. To accomplish this, we will trademark our logo.  Then over time, we plan to market ourselves well and slowly establish ourselves in the industry.

What We Charge and Why

When deciding how to price the services my company offers, I mostly thought about two things. 1) How much is this service worth to them / how much benefit does it bring? 2) How much would these small business owners be willing to pay while not having to reach too deep into their pockets?

My business offers a complete front to back online management system and infrastructure for small in-home daycare owners to easily and efficiently run their business. Our technology will be making major improvements in how these owners operate their business, which will allow them more time to focus on other things besides administrative tasks, which will hopefully allow their businesses to thrive. For this reason, I think what we are offering them is huge, and we can charge according to that. This online management system could save dozens of hours every month, and many headaches. Currently, I am imagining our price point for our base service would range from $100-200 as a monthly fee. (We are also considering making this an annual surcharge as opposed to monthly. Need to do some more research on the two different approaches.)

After talking to some friends who have worked closely with a few small in-home daycares in the area, I was surprised to find out these tiny business actually generate a large income. This of course was good news for us, because it means they at least have the money to be able to afford our product. For this reason, I think our price point is very fair (if not too low). I don’t foresee too much trouble convincing a business owner to spend $100-200 a month to completely flip around their operation for the better.

Entrepreneur Of The Day: Brian Forth

This week we got to hear from Brian Forth, a local Tacoma entrepreneur. Brian owns and runs Sitecrafting, which is a company that creates custom built websites for businesses. When I learned that he started his company all by himself almost 20 years ago (and its still running), I knew I was listening to a successful entrepreneur speak.

Two points especially resonated with me about Brian’s talk. The first was when he said something along the lines of “the first time I had to fire someone it was the worst, and the last time I had to fire someone it was the worst”. Hearing this made me reflect upon myself, as I know I am somewhat “soft” when it comes to being hard on people. That is something I know have to overcome if I ever want to run a company.

The second point that I really liked was when he talked about how his company was “a company that you can retire at”. This aspect of their company culture sounds beautiful to me. Having interned at Boeing, where there are dozens of people that have been there for 30+ years, I have really grown to appreciate that long term employment at one company. When I hear about companies like Amazon, where new grads are hired and burnt out in 2 years or less, I know right off the bat that is not somewhere I want to be. Regardless of whatever salary you might be offered, your work environment and work culture is everything. If you think about how much time you spend at work, that place needs to be a place you're not only comfortable at, but can thrive at.