Kickstarter+Twine=$556,541 and counting!

Kickstarter is a cloud-sourcing site that entrepreneurs-to-be and hard core practicing members HAVE to know about. Recently, a startup called Supermechanical listed a new sensor named Twine. They asked for $35,000 to fund their product, but 3,966 signed up with orders totaling $556,541. You can read about Twine here and view their funding video below.

All of this is well and good, but you should really look at the forest, not the trees. In this case, a couple of guys took and idea for some pretty neat sensors that notify users via common communication channels (email, twitter etc) when something occurs, like water in the bilges of our sailboat. They figured other people would be interested too, and took their idea to Kickstarter where “people” proved their concept in spades. Purdue-related entrepreneurs should definitely consider Kickstarter for initial funding! Hank

Have A Happy Friday: See you next semester (1/9/12)

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation” Henry David Thoreau: Substitute “entrepreneurs” for “men”

I had the pleasure of working as a business neighbor to Chad Shedron, the owner of Family Pharmacare, in West Lafayette for many years.  Chad is a good man.  He’s the father of six; one set of triplets, a set of twins and a daughter in between.  He worked hard to support his large family, went to church every Sunday, gave his customers exceptional service, and had loyal, happy employees.  He took time out of his crazy, busy business day to present to my Introduction to Business class a few years ago and was a wonderful speaker.   Chad is an entrepreneur in trouble.

On November 10^th of this year the FBI raided Chad’s pharmacy, took boxes of paperwork, and shut him down.  We can only speculate on what might have been the reason, but the outlook for Chad’s seemingly successful ten-year-old business doesn’t look good.  The fate of Chad, his family and his employees have all been affected by some bad business decisions.  What could Chad have done to avoid this mess?

http://www.jconline.com/article/20111111/NEWS/111110310/U-S-attorney-mum-visit-pharmacy

Just a decade ago Chad was an optimistic entrepreneur, happy with his life choices and excited about his new venture:  from ncpanet.org ( http://www.ncpanet.org/pdf/junior_partnership_transfer.pdf)

CHAD SHEDRON
From Residency To Ownership

When he was finishing pharmacy school at Butler University, Chad Shedron figured he would be buying his first independent pharmacy when he was 35 or 36. But there he was, 27-years-old in June 2001 signing a financing agreement with a local bank in West Lafayette, Indiana, and wondering if he’d done the right thing. “I’ve probably enjoyed it more than I thought I would,” he says, “even with the hours you have to put in. Sales are up 30 percent. We just had a great first year. I honestly don’t have too much to complain about.  I knew this is what I wanted to do when I did my residency,” he recalls. “It really turned the corner for me. Ownership was what I wanted to get into.”
Chad’s desperation, only ten years later, led him to make some bad choices.  When one owns a business, it’s hard to let it go, even when you know you’re sure to fail.  Desperate entrepreneurs sometimes make bad decisions.  I wish the best for Chad and his family, no matter what path his desperation may have led.  His entrepreneurial instincts betrayed him.    Beth Carroll (See video below for local news coverage of the closing.)

Kauffman Talks About Where Entrepreneurs Get Their Funding

 Kauffman Foundation’s latest animated sketchbook video features
Paul Kedrosky illustrating the give and take of new business financing.

 Watch the sketchbook presentation below. Hank

 PS: The oil industry in the Corpus Christi area is begging for workers! See article here:

Social Media Info for Entrepreneurs

There is a company named HubSpot that provides, on a regular basis. web analytics and data that should be in every entrepreneur’s toolbox. Below is one such presentation. Go full screen to read it as I crunched it down to fit our blog’s real estate.

BTW, it is an embedded PowerPoint presentation. You might ask “how did Hank do that?” I converted the HubSpot-supplied PPT using iSpring Free, then cut the object code out of the iSpring code to embed the resultant SWF (flash) file, which I separately uploaded to our Thinkbeta.com server. Lots easier than it sounds. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Cleats for our Hunter 27 Sailboat

Well, at least the project made me happy. Seems the majority of sailboats are delivered without cleats in the midships area where it is very convenient to tie up using spring lines. So I designed, fabricated, installed and am using a rig that is bolted to the toe rail of our Hunter 27. I found the two 10″ cleats in a junk shop north of Corpus Christi, Texas in a boat town named Northport. Paid $15 for the pair which new would run $30 each or so, and the old salt running the place threw in the treated 2X2  upon which I mounted them. The SS hardware was about another $25 or so. I finished the wood with teak oil.  (Since taking these pictures, I have moved the rig inboard to keep from dragging pier-pilings with them.) Hank

Why do jeans never go out of fashion?

Forever in Blue Jeans?

 Sand washed, stone washed, sand blasted, acid washed, dark wash, boot cut, baggy, skinny, bell bottom, boyfriend, straight leg, relaxed fit, frayed, ripped, torn, patched, painted, cut off, cargo pocket, pajama, stretch, high waisted, low rise, hip hugger… 

The history of Blue Jeans according to Wiki:  The word “jeans” comes from the French phrase bleu de Gênes, literally the blue of Genoa. Jeans fabric, or denim, originated in the French town of Nîmes, from which ‘denim’ (de Nîmes) gets its name.   Jeans are trousers made from denim. Some of the earliest American blue jeans were made by Jacob Davis, Calvin Rogers, and Levi Strauss in 1873. Starting in the 1950s, jeans, originally designed for cowboys, became popular among teenagers. Historic brands include Levi’s, Lee, and Wrangler. “Blue jeans” are particularly identified with American culture.

Since our parents and grandparents first fell in love with jeans over 60 years ago, the styles have frequently changed, but as a product in the United States, the five pocket denim jean has been one of the most durable consumer goods.  Most of us have a favorite pair.  We are always on the lookout for that perfect fit.  Some think that jeans are appropriate attire for nearly any occasion; weddings, funerals…  Those who are able to wear them to work think of it as a privilege. When not in jeans, most of us can’t wait to change into them.   According to Cottoninc.com, 96% of us own an average of 7 pairs of jeans, accounting for 6% of all apparel items in our wardrobes.  It’s a 5.2 billion dollar industry.  Sales of premium quality denim jeans ($100 or more per pair) rose 16% for women and 21% for men in 2008 and continue to rise even in this economy.  The denim jean is probably our favorite clothing article, the thing we pull on when we want to feel our best.  Why do we love jeans so much? Beth

Copyright & Usefull Things

I ran across this article yesterday which addresses the coming Industrial Revolution 2.0 wherein 3-d copiers are common as regular printers are today. The article addresses the protection of and legality of copying physical objects, an area I had never heard of in copyright law. I suggest all students of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs read the article by Nick Bilton which was in the “Bits” section of Sunday’s NY Times from which the picture came. Hank

Oil & Entrepreneurs Texas Style

Texas, cowboys and oil kinda go together. While there have been several oil booms (and busts) in Texas, there is another one going on in South Texas where we have our condo for the winter driven by something called Eagle Ford. According to Wiki, “The Eagle Ford Shale is a hydrocarbon producing formation rich in oil and natural gas fields. The shale play area starts at the Texas-Mexico border in Webb and Maverick counties and extends 400 miles toward East Texas. The play is 50 miles wide and an average of 250 feet thick at a depth between 4000 and 12,000 feet. The shale contains a high amount of carbonate which makes it brittle and easier to use hydraulic fracturing to produce the oil or gas.^[2] The oil reserves are estimated at 3 billion barrels with potential output of 420,000 barrels a day.”

So what’s this have to do with entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs? According to an article in the Corpus Christi newspaper Caller Times (front page 11/13/11) in  2010 alone 12,600 jobs with $512 million in payroll resulted. All kinds of opportunity is knocking for those willing to take modest risks and start businesses related to and/or supportive of the requirements of extracting this new source of oil, from trucking sand (used in the process) to inventing new devices to more efficiently extract black gold from the ground. There is also a large pull of other services, such as housing, auto repair and sales (Ford’s sale of fleet trucks has more than doubled on an annual basis).

For entrepreneurs, you have to be able to find the hot spots, be there with a product or service that meets the demand, and in many cases be ready to move physically on a moments notice. Our Sunday paper is full of jobs, from IT-related, health care, to working behind a shovel. People just need to get off their collective asses. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Great example of viral marketing

Viewed over 9 million times and loved by people around the world, especially French women. Hank