Lew McMurran

Lewis McMurran is the VP of government and external affairs for the Washington Technology Industry Association. He is responsible for the WTIA's lobbying efforts and advocacy working with both federal and local governments. In 1986 to 1996 he worked for Household Financial as a lender. Later they were sold to HSBC until they went out of business. In 1997 he was the lobbyist for King county Council. He was in charge of the marketing and other events.He later was working with the trade associations with the unions from the companies. He also worked with Regence and Wells Fargo Health Insurance. Washington Technology Industry Association was founded as a 501-c6 in 1984 by a Washington state grant. It was there to help with the bus services, events and programs, and Advocate Lobbyist.

Jeff Goodwin

Jeff Goodwin was interested in being an entrepreneur since he was younger. When he was 17 he wanted to make money to help pay for college. He talked about how he was determined to pressure wash people's roofs to earn money, because companies were charging too much to have it done, but it was harder than just going out and doing it. Every time he went out to wash people's roofs they said no, so he didn't give up and he kept trying to get that yes. After finally getting that one yes, he started to get yeses from others in the neighborhood and collected enough money to buy his own pressure washer and pay for his first year of college. He went to Washington State University and received his degree in business with some focus on computer classes. After graduating he got a job at Boeing where he continued to go to school at night learning cobal, 4tran, and x86 assembly. While he was on his honeymoon in California he was offered a job as an assembly programer where he worked for a couple years, when he left to work for IBM. He continued to work for IBM for 5 years and during those years he started to show them ideas that he had for new business, which they did not back him up. He left IBM to start his own buiness in Austin, Texas building fixed price device drivers, where IBM became his customer. After doing this business for ten years he noticed that his company was growing, but he didn't have the mean to keep growing the way he was, so he decided to do a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, oportunities, and threat) analysis on his own business. After getting the results of the SWOT, he decided to sell his business and employees to CISCO. CISCO didn't know about this until Jeff sat in their lobby until they were ready to talk. He also signed a 4 year contract with CISCO to keep his project going. After 3 1/2 years he left and moved back to Washington to pursue yet another business opportunity, Lexbe.com where he overseed marketing. Goodwin is currently the president of Goodwin Attorney Services that is located in East Tacoma in the William M Factory business Incubator.

He did give ideas on starting a company and what to do to help with a company.
1) Start a company with about 5000.00 (he has started with Angel investments and then changed to Venture Capital later.
2) The closer you get to the customer, and the more you can understand their experience/problems, the more value your business will have.

Lynnette Claire

Lynnette Claire is and entrepreneur that likes to start companys. After graduating from University of California Davis in English, she worked for Horticulture Magazine. She decided not to move to Boston with Horticulture Magazine and move to Puget Sound area to work for Seafood Trade Magazine. Within six months she helped start the Simply Seafood Magazine. She later 'fell' into the business of association management and event planning. During this time she worked with small companies expand their networks. She helped co-found a tree care business and the 6th ave farmers market in Tacoma. After this Lynnette decided to go back to school to get her PHD in Entrepreneurship and then started teaching at University of Puget Sound, where she is still at today. While teaching she is also starting the Tacoma Entrepreneurship Network where her focus is on the economy through education and community of entrepreneurs in the local area. She works with the students and helps them with their ideas that they come up with for their own entrepreneurship, which one of them is the centsless.org social website for borrowing items from one another. She also discussed 'Networks 101' that inculuded two types of social networks, cohesive and structural holes networks. The cohesive network is great for quality of information and self-correction, while structural holes network is benefitted by new infromation.

Startup.com

Startup.com is a documentary of the GovWorks.gov company. This company existed during the .com fall outs. Even though there were more than two founders for GovWorks.gov, this documentary follows the life of the company and the relationship between two of the co-founders and CEO's, Kaleil Tuzman and Tom Herman, two high school friends. Kaleil was a great asset to the company because of his expertise in finance and was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs prior to GovWorks.gov. Tom was a great asset tot he company because of his technology specialties. During this film it showed how Kaleil and Tom both struggled with leadership issues, issues with competitors, and growth of the company. During these struggles the film showed how Kaleil fired Tom, companies information was stolen, and how the competitors started taking over the market and succeeded. During this whole time it showed how Kaleil was a good leader and that he can survive anything.

John Dimmer

John Dimmer grew up in Washington and graduated from Clover Park High School. Later he graduated from University of Oregon with a Finance degree. His dream was and still is to be a professional golfer. After graduation he went to work for Reliance Insurance working with bonds. He knew he wanted to be a business owner, so while working at Reliance he focused on learning all traits to become a great entrepreneur. In 1992 he was the manager for commercial surety bonds. In 1994 Dimmer founded Free Range Media that provided web services to companies. After retiring from Free Range Media he was bored and joined his father's finance company. In 1999 he became part owner of Airstream Dealerships, Stela Industrial Supply, and some of the Round Table Pizza franchises. He followed five steps to financing a business, for funding the businesses he starts. The five steps are the following:

Self Funding, Family and Friends, VISA or other credit cards for cash advanced, Angel Investors, and IPO (Initial Public Offerings). While meeting with our class John Dimer discussed Angel Investors, which will help othes become a business owner.

Ron Kornfeld

 

Ron Kornfeld started working in the early 1990's for MCI telecommunications, where he was exposed to the internet. At this time the internet was new and MCI kept it local and never took it public. After being at MCI he decided to start a business. Ron Kornfeld believes that when wanted to start a business you should start two to three businesses at a time. Since starting businesses he was founder of personal Grid, Dream Box, NimbleSource, Normandy Partners, Harmonetrix, Congnisoft, xl.io and XactLab. As an entrepreneur he believes that if you want to start a business you need to have a good business plan. He followes the Biz Plan Basic 5 steps for creating a business plan. These steps are: Identify your audience, Outline your business plan, Write your business plan, Review your business plan, and Update anything that is needed in your business plan. He explained that the business plan will help make sure that the idea you are doing is a good one and that it will be able to be follow through to a successfull business.

 

Bruce Kendall

Bruce Kendall is the Chief Executive Officer of Economic Development Board of Tacoma-Pierce County. The Economic Development Board is funded by private and public funding. He works with the board to try to have small companys with at least 20 employees start up or at least keep their non-service business in Tacoma/Pierce County. He is working with the state and the local government to change the laws for making it easier for small businesses. The board is working on developing five core busnesses clusters within Pierce County. To help Pierce County become the beacon of other attractive companies looking for a place to start or move the board is watching the clean water, cyber security, aerospace, logistics, and medical sectors.