When I first heard of the word Technopreneurship, I already had an idea of what our subject was all about. I was thinking that the core or base of this subject is entrepreneurship but since we are Information Technology students, it would really involve technology. I was thinking that Technopreneurship is an entrepreneurship merged or combined with technology prowess. And I was right all along.
I have learned so many things last semester in our subject Technopreneurship. I have learned that Technopreneurship is one of the best solutions for the increasing rate of unemployed. Unemployment chooses nobody, even though you are a graduate or undergrad. Through the help of Technopreneurship, one will not experience unemployment; instead, he or she can generate jobs for the unemployed.
A Technopreneur is an entrepreneur who is technology savvy, creative, innovative, dynamic, dares to be different and take the unexplored path, and very passionate about their work. They take challenges and strive to lead their life with greater success. They don't fear to fail. They take failure as a learning experience, a stimulator to look things differently and stride for next challenge. Technopreneurs continuously go through an organic process of continual improvement and always try to redefine the dynamic digital economy. I got this definition and description from the internet. This was for me to fully understand the subject.
The good example of a successful Technopreneur is Steve Jobs. We were able to know able his life story before and after the birth of the Apple Company through the movie “Pirates of the Silicon Valley”. Steve Jobs, together with his good friend Steve Woz, started from scratch and became a famous Technopreneur that has brought the first personal computer and interesting innovative technologies to the world. Just like any of us, he has also experienced failure. But, the good thing about Steve Jobs, he was able to manage the negativity that has happened to his life. He has made the best of life out of his failures and was able to find his way back to success. With Steve Jobs’ life story, I was able to learn and understand more about life as a Technopreneur. To be a good Technopreneur, one must learn from his past experience. No matter how bad or good one has experienced, he or she must learn from those things. As they say, our experience is the best teacher. There are some things in life that we may learn through the help of books or by surfing through the internet, but, we could only fully understand these things by experiencing it. Another thing that I have learned from Steve Jobs’ life story is that, we are not destined to fail; hence, we were the one who chooses failure as an option. His love and passion for his work has led him to his success and contentment despite of his failures and hardships that he had experienced. Through his experience, I was able to understand that a good technopreneur must first find what he or she loves and never lose grip on it. Aside from the movie that we watched, I was also able to read his commencement address. Through his commencement address, I have learned that his hardship did not end with what the movie had shown us. He had an illness that almost cut his life short. But because of it, he was able to learn to live like he will die tomorrow. His commencement still talks about his life, success, and hardships. As we all know, Steve Jobs was not able to finish his college life because his family cannot supply his financial needs for his school. But, he was still invited to present a commencement address to a famous university. This only shows that though he lacks the diploma that others have, he still was able to gain respect from others through the success that he had achieved.
From the movie down to his commencement, Steve always stresses to find what we love. It is because if we find what we love, then it would be easy for us to find our purpose in life. With the experiences that he had, he truly is an inspiration for all of us. He is not a perfect man, but he has made things perfect for man.
We did some activities that gave us added knowledge and skills that made us an aspiring technopreneurs. The first activity that we did, as far as I could remember, was connecting the dots. This activity may seem very simple but this had taught us to think out of the box. Most of us were not able to connect the six dots with four strokes because they never thought of going outside the box. Although we had already encountered the same activity before, we still had forgotten how it should be done. This activity has also taught me to follow simple instructions.
Our facilitator introduced to us the SEED model. SEED is the acronym for Self – Mastery, Environment Mastery, Enterprise Mastery, and Development of Business Plan. This SEED model will help us to fully understand how it is to survive in Technopreneurship. We were only able to tackle one part of the SEED model which is the self- mastery. We did several activities to practice the self – mastery. As a part of self – mastery, we were instructed to take three different tests by searching for those tests by ourselves; these tests were Emotional Quotient test (EQ), Intelligence Quotient Test (IQ), and Adversity Quotient (AQ). These tests helped us understand ourselves. This is because there are some things that we don’t know about ourselves, these things are our unconscious reactions of different situations that happened in our lives. The first test that I took was the Intelligence Quotient. I based my result with the USEPAT result since our instructor said that it is valid. This USEPAT is an entrance exam that measures the mental capacity and capability of the students. The test measures the knowledge of students in different fields. This test measures the intelligence or the cognitive abilities of a person to show or indicate ones potential. The next test that I took was the Emotional Quotient test. I took different Emotional Quotient Test to check whether the test that I took was reliable or not since I took the test online and most of the sites were not that known. This test has revealed our emotional reactions to difficult situations. The importance of taking this test is for us to fully understand our own emotions and be aware of the emotions of others to act appropriately based on our own understanding. The last test that I searched through the internet was the Adversity Quotient Test. Same with what I did when I took the EQ test; I also took several tests to test the reliability of the results. The importance of taking such test is for us to evaluate our capacity to withstand unexpected adversities. Aside from the three tests that we took, our facilitator gave us another test which served as our exam. This test was the Personality traits test. Among the entire test that I took, this test was the most interesting one since this test will try to measure ones capability to be a Technopreneur. The purpose of the Personality Traits test is to assess the match between ones personal profile and the required career profile. By taking these tests, I have learned that one must not limit himself or herself with the knowledge that he or she have gained from the books that one have read, he or she should also learn to act accordingly to have a harmonious social life. We also had an activity where we listed down the things that we love, things that we are best at, and our irritants. The purpose and importance of this activity was to recall all those things for the next and last activity that we did. This activity was the presentation of business plan. This activity was by group and each group has five members. We took this activity for granted, that was why our first business plan was neglected. We had based our first business plan with the things that we had listed in the past activity ( the things that we love, best at, and irritants ). We also based our business plan with our capability as a student and followed the trend. The problem with our first activity was we did not chose of a business wisely, we did not think out of the box, and we followed the trend of customizing stuffs. Though it was rejected, we did not lose hope. We have decided to create several business plans for the next presentation and we have decided to present Irwin’s business plan first. The purpose of making several business plans were for backups. Luckily, our business plan was approved though other students from the evening program had several related and unrelated questions. In this activity, I was able to learn to accept rejection. Though ours was rejected, we never felt the pressure. Stressing ourselves won’t help us think of a better idea. I have also learned to explore my creative side. Creativity is breaking the conventional mental blocks and playing with imagination and possibilities, leading to new and meaningful connections and outcomes while interacting with ideas, people and the environment. With the activities that we had, I have learned that one must not rely solely to the people whom we think is capable of leading. We must also learn and practice leadership than just being led by someone. The problem with this is that, people tend to be passive. We tend to pass the responsibility of a leader because we are afraid that people might point their fingers unto us if we fail to reach their expectation. But if we will not start making a move and taking risks, how would we ever achieve the success that we all wanted to have? Let’s stop being passive and start making our own marks. We should also stop neither following nor hiding from other’s shadow. Let us stop following trends. The technological advancement is still in the stage of growth. If we will continue to follow trends than creating trends, then I can say that we are capable of passing the requirements of being a good Technopreneur.
The most important thing that I have learned in our Technopreneurship subject is that, there is no such thing as impossible for a person who is determined and focused to finish with what he or she is doing. A great example for this is our assignments in Technopreneurship. When I first heard that we were going to write thousands of words for our assignments, I was quite worried because I am not that good with writing. I even failed with our exams in our arts subject when I first took it because most of the items were in essay type. Our instructor at that time was Sir Paul ( the instructor who loves to wear red ), he was rating our essays based on how many pages we have written and not basing on its content. But this problem is now just a thing of the past. With the assignments that we had with our Technopreneurship subject, I could even do two thousand words just like this first exercise in our Technopreneurship 2. Hurray! Before we had ended our Technopreneurship subject, I also have learned that it pays to be patient and punctual.
Traditional educational programs, however, lack the methodology to transform today's students into creative, innovative, visionary global leaders who understand the importance of learning technopreneurship. We are very lucky to be enrolled in a university which includes Technopreneurship as a part of the curriculum.
I have learned so many things in our Technopreneurship subject. The only problem that I have encountered is acting upon the learning that I have gained. I still need to push myself more to practice the things that I have learned.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
October 1 meeting(Final Approval of business Proposals)
What we did for this meeting was supposed to be finalizing the proposals before we will conduct our major field trip at Manila.
Everyone was so nervous, the pressure was getting higher as we see and hear good proposals from our fellow classmates and the evening students. Though their proposals were good, some of them was not able to please Mr. Randy. Most of the denied proposals were already existing.
Most of us got stuck from thinking of innovations based on our capability now as a student. We thought that this will be our final project proposal for IT Elective 2. Luckily, we had someone like Irwin Rod Adesna as a groupmate. He was the one who thought of our so-called "All-In-One" product. This project proposes a multipurpose product where the consumer can play PS games, do some paper works, sing videoke songs, play music, and many more. It may sound very impossible for us students. But hey! This is just a proposal and we are still enrolled in IT Elective1! We are not required to do the application of our proposed projects. XD
By the time that Irwin was about to discuss what our proposed project was all about, we already have thought of back-up plans. But luckily, our project proposal was approved without presenting our back-up plans! Finally the "thinking for project proposal" is out of my list! Yahoooooo!
The presentation of project proposal continued. There was this one group whose proposal was quite weird but was able to pass Mr. Randy's requirement. By then, many of my fellow students thought of weird, strange, impossible, and useless innovations just to pass the requirement of having an approved project proposal.
Time passed by, and we already spent more than 3hrs at the lab1. Mr. Randy gave chances for those group who was not able to propose a good project. He gave them until the time of the major field trip at Manila.
Everyone was so nervous, the pressure was getting higher as we see and hear good proposals from our fellow classmates and the evening students. Though their proposals were good, some of them was not able to please Mr. Randy. Most of the denied proposals were already existing.
Most of us got stuck from thinking of innovations based on our capability now as a student. We thought that this will be our final project proposal for IT Elective 2. Luckily, we had someone like Irwin Rod Adesna as a groupmate. He was the one who thought of our so-called "All-In-One" product. This project proposes a multipurpose product where the consumer can play PS games, do some paper works, sing videoke songs, play music, and many more. It may sound very impossible for us students. But hey! This is just a proposal and we are still enrolled in IT Elective1! We are not required to do the application of our proposed projects. XD
By the time that Irwin was about to discuss what our proposed project was all about, we already have thought of back-up plans. But luckily, our project proposal was approved without presenting our back-up plans! Finally the "thinking for project proposal" is out of my list! Yahoooooo!
The presentation of project proposal continued. There was this one group whose proposal was quite weird but was able to pass Mr. Randy's requirement. By then, many of my fellow students thought of weird, strange, impossible, and useless innovations just to pass the requirement of having an approved project proposal.
Time passed by, and we already spent more than 3hrs at the lab1. Mr. Randy gave chances for those group who was not able to propose a good project. He gave them until the time of the major field trip at Manila.
My Business Proposal for our Technopreneurship subject
Prior to this assignment, last meeting, we had an activity in which we were asked to form a group and create a business proposal out of the things that we love, things that we were best at, and our irritants. The name of our proposed business was “PixelWorks Media”. The nature of our proposed business was lay - outing, customizing, designing and printing t - shirts, identification cards and other stuffs. And our target clients were students, schools, organizations, and others. Our business proposal had created so many criticisms from our instructor, Mr. Randy S. Gamboa, and from our classmates. Mr. Gamboa even called our business proposal as “manok”, which he referred as to a copied idea from a very common business. In my opinion, our business proposal deserves such criticisms. It is because our business proposal was not planned very well.
My groupmates and I relied on the capacity and capability of our fellow groupmate Irwin. He was the one who thought of having such business proposal because he already had an experience and enough knowledge in designing and even in printing. We did not think of creating any innovation or slight changes in the nature of our business that made Mr. Gamboa called our proposal as “manok”.
If I am going to base my own techno business with the “ business proposal ” that my group mates ( namely Nesscel Ann Marie Calara, Irwin Rod Adesna, Ruchan Alangilan, and Jonalyn Sanchez ) had, my techno business might not be as successful as I wanted it to be. It is because I do not have the skills nor knowledge or even partner or partners to make the business successful. Competing with the other better, bigger, and more reliable printing companies will be the next problem if ever I am going to pursue this business proposal. It might end as a waste of time, effort, and money. Since business involves money, I would rather opt for another business than printing and designing.
I had a very hard time thinking of a possible business that would fit my capabilities, capacity, and strengths. It might be because I have not yet found the things that I am best at not even the things that I love. But since, the explosion of the Internet and e-commerce had opened up a new wave of opportunities for all types of businesses; I have decided to make use of it.
Before starting any business, one must consider several things before jumping into a conclusion. One wrong move might become a big mistake that will pull you down into the pit of failure. As I was thinking of an idea for a techno business, I asked myself the following things:
- Are my ideas good enough?
- What should the price range be?
- Can my target clients / customers afford it?
- How to reach out?
- Can it grow in this slow economy?
- Can it become profitable, and return on any investment it requires?
One of the hardest stages in starting up any business is the planning stage since it is like a road map to long – term success. The business plan will give us a clear direction where the business is heading. Many business owners just jump into creating a business without researching and making concrete plan. Inevitably, they soon find that they are out of money, time, and clear strategies as to how to market their business. I have read an article from the internet ( the website is stated at the bottom ) about simple steps to create a business plan. I quoted the following statements / phrases are from the said article:
“ Here are 8 simple steps to creating your own business plan
( this is by no means a comprehensive plan but a primer to get you started ):
1. NAME OF YOUR BUSINESS – create a name or reevaluate the name of your business. Does it integrate well with what you are selling? Is it easy to spell and remember? Is it a name that can be well branded over time?
2. VISION – what will your business look like 5 years from now? Think of how you may want to expand it to include other branches or extra employees.
3. MISSION STATEMENT – this defines what your business really does, what activities it performs and what is unique about it that stands out from your competitors.
4. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES – clearly define what you want to achieve with your business. Make sure they are quantifiable and set to specific time lines. Set specific goals for each of your products or services.
5. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREATS ( SWOT ) – by analyzing these characteristics in your business, you will get clearer idea of what it will take for you to not only survive but also to prosper.
This could include such factors as:
- Your companies’ own changing industry
- The marketplace which may change due to social and economic conditions.
- Competition which may create new threats and / or opportunities.
- Ne technologies which may cause you to change products or the processes in how you do things.
Evaluating your SWOT will help you to:
- Build on your strengths
- Resolve your weaknesses
- Exploit opportunities
- Avoid threats
By doing this analysis will help you create more realistic strategic action plan.
6. STRATEGIC ACTION PLAN – this is the most critical step of your business plan, because without it, your business will not get off the ground. This should include your sales and marketing strategies.
7. FINANCIAL PLAN – a business can operate without budgets, but it is clearly good business practice to include it. With budgets, you will be more likely to achieve your business objectives, you will make more – reasoned decisions and you will have better control of your cash flow.
For any period, a cash flow statement would include:
- The cash and credit sales ( or accounts receivable ) expected to be received during the period.
- The anticipated cash payments ( for example, expenses for purchases, salaries, utility charges, taxes, office expenses and others )
- A description of the other incoming and outgoing cash, with a calculation of the overall cash balance.
This will assess how much money is on hand to meet your financial obligations – what cash has been paid out. Knowledge of this cash flow cycle will help you predict when you will receive funds and when you will be required to make a payment.
8. MEASURING AND EVALUATION – you wrote your business plan and set the goals with the intent of achieving them. So now break them down into measurable pieces and monitor the results regularly. A plan that cannot be measured is almost always destined for failure. Celebrate your wins and recharge yourself to accomplish your next goal.
Decide beforehand what constitutes a real serious loss and what loss will be acceptable.
If you find your goals are unrealistic and unattainable, adjust them, but realize that it takes hard work to achieve them, so don’t give up easily.
CONCLUSION:
Now that you have a business plan, make it a part of you by knowing and understanding it clearly. Build upon it continuously and refer to it often, so you remain on track to building a profitable business.”
Planning our group’s business proposal was the lacking key in our previous activity. We automatically jumped into a conclusion without understanding fully the nature of our proposed business.
If given a chance to have a technology – based business, I would like to base the whole thing with the things I love, the things I am best at, and Irritants.
Since I am fond reading articles in the internet and, I think, I am good at doing some researches, I thought, accepting researches via online would fit me. It will be a pay – per – request system which can be paid online via credit cards and other related paying system or do some meet ups with the client. Possible target clients are students or anybody who needed to do some research but has no time to do it. But unfortunately, as I was browsing the forum, it was already proposed by Juvilyn Consejo. I do not want to post the same concept because she might think that I was stealing or copying her idea because she posted in the forum first. So I decided to think of other possible business. Thinking of a back – up plan for my business proposal gave me more and more headaches.
My back – up business plan will make use of the internet and mobile phones. Since surfing through the internet has become a trend. It is now our need, and at the same time, our want. We browse in the internet to do researches, play games, watch videos, downloading and uploading stuffs, and many more. Nowadays, Internet is the biggest and the best information source for everybody. We even prefer to surf through the internet with the aid of different search engines than going to the library. Almost everybody has an access through the internet. Web browsing does not limit itself as to its accessibility. One can access the internet via personal computers / laptops, PSP, mobile phones, iPods, and others. In my case, I was able to browse through the internet for almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the use of my mobile phone.
Before, parents do not allow children to have mobile phones because they are afraid that their children’s safety might be at risk. Parents are scared that the mobiles phone might attract unwanted attentions from other people. But now, things have changed. Parents allow their children to have mobile phones for communication and safety purposes. On the other hand, kids use their mobile devices mainly for social interaction with friends.
My business plan focuses on the children’s internet browsing via mobile phones.
By the time kids reach middle school, they are likely having much or more knowledge about the internet than their parents do. They use the internet for school works, playing games, email, instant messaging, downloading music, and others. But although they already know their way around the internet, they may lack the judgment and emotional maturity to steer clear of trouble. That is where parents come in and guide their children with web browsing.
Mobile phones come with new things for parents to worry about aside from thefts. Nowadays, mobile phones are essentially handheld computers, so worries about your child stumbling across the pornographic or violent contents, or being groomed in chatrooms, via personal computer or laptops now apply equally to their mobile phones. No matter how clued up you are about the internet safety of your home computer, you need to get similarly clued up about your child’s mobile phone if you want to keep them safe in the cyber – world as you try to in the real one.
The virtual world is probably more dangerous and unsafe than the real world.
" The Internet has risks. However its threat of physical danger is rare. But this new playground does host a small population that spreads hatred, pornographic material, and it seeks to commercially prey.
Our young ones are not always the prime targets of these nefarious activities. But an innocent child is easily ensnared within these amoral webs during a first unsupervised encounter. Unfortunately, such an encounter may prove to be life altering. "
NATURE OF BUSINESS
There are a lot of dodgy internet material which can be accessed easily by children and those who are under 18, yet there is no responsible policing and censoring. Several computer software for blocking unwanted internet sites ( like those that have pornographic or violent content ) are already available in the market. But, mobile phones do not have that same kind of software for the safe browsing of your children via mobile. This gave me an idea for my business plan.
My business plan is to create“spy” software in the mobile devices. The name of the software will be “MOBInet spy”. If the lack of control over the whole internet – on – mobile devices malarkey scares you as a parent or as an elder brother or sister, this is the best software for you. This software will give you a report of every websites and URLs visited from your child’s mobile phone. Though this might sound like you are invading the privacy of your children, this will become the best way to keep your children safe in the cyber and mobile world.
FEATURES:
This software works like the Opera Link that is also available with their mobile browser ( Opera Mini ). The difference with this software from the available Opera Link is that, this software spy will not be logged out or turned off easily. To use the service of this software, one must first create an account from my proposed website ( mobinet.com ).
This software enables data sharing between your child’s mobile phone and your computer. It synchronizes the following browser components, so you can monitor your child’s web browsing via mobile:
-bookmarks
-searches
-typed history
-downloaded files, pictures, and other stuffs
-saved pages
Once you are signed in to mobinet.com, synchronization occurs. You can also activate / deactivate MOBInet spy through the proposed website. Activation / Deactivation of MOBInet spy would only be possible if you enter the correct activation and deactivation keys. Deactivation and Activation keys will be sent through your email after you have purchased the software.
Once you have installed MOBInet spy from your son’s / daughter’s / sister’s / brother’s mobile phone, it will work like stealth. Since he / she will not be able to see the software, he / she will not be able to uninstall the software from his/ her phone.
The best feature of MOBInet spy is the restriction and blocking system. Once you have activated the MOBInet spy, you can block several unwanted sites and restrict
HOW TO PURCHASE MOBInet spy?
MOBInet will be available at mobinet.com. And the paying system will be via credit / debit cards, paypal, or by doing some meet ups ( if possible ).
TARGET CLIENTS
In my business plan, my target clients are concerned parents / brothers / sister.
My first client/s for this business would be my aunts and my cousins. And if ever, with God’s grace, it will profit, I would like to extend my clients in the cyber world.
Having this as a business plan is a good idea since there is an existing demand for this kind of software. Though it might seem unethical, at least you will be able to protect your child from unwanted information that your child can get through the internet.
I wanted to help those parents who are too busy to check their children’s cyber life especially, those parents who work abroad. Kids with parent or parents working abroad would likely seek attention in the cyber world or in real one.
Kids, in their nature, love to explore anything and everything in this world. Nowadays, they are more exposed to the technology. As early as 5 years old, they already have a cyber life. A great example is my niece Anya. As soon as they had their own internet connection, she had already explored many things and had her own cyber life. Unfortunately, she had also explored the unnecessary and unwanted sites like porn. Now that she has her own mobile phone, and her phone is capable of connecting through the internet, I thought this software might help us restrict her from those pornographic sites.
Though this will help parents resolve their problem with the exposure of their children with pornographic materials, I think it would also be better if you talk to your children and create a better relationship with them.
Putting up a business is good, but creating a service that would benefit both client and the business man would be better.
I know that having this as a business plan is too risky. But, the fact that I will be able to help parents is more than enough.
Resource: www.isitebuild.com/simplebusinessplan.htm
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/52567_risks-and-dangers-of-the-internet-to-your-child#ixzz0zkw2hjTb
My groupmates and I relied on the capacity and capability of our fellow groupmate Irwin. He was the one who thought of having such business proposal because he already had an experience and enough knowledge in designing and even in printing. We did not think of creating any innovation or slight changes in the nature of our business that made Mr. Gamboa called our proposal as “manok”.
If I am going to base my own techno business with the “ business proposal ” that my group mates ( namely Nesscel Ann Marie Calara, Irwin Rod Adesna, Ruchan Alangilan, and Jonalyn Sanchez ) had, my techno business might not be as successful as I wanted it to be. It is because I do not have the skills nor knowledge or even partner or partners to make the business successful. Competing with the other better, bigger, and more reliable printing companies will be the next problem if ever I am going to pursue this business proposal. It might end as a waste of time, effort, and money. Since business involves money, I would rather opt for another business than printing and designing.
I had a very hard time thinking of a possible business that would fit my capabilities, capacity, and strengths. It might be because I have not yet found the things that I am best at not even the things that I love. But since, the explosion of the Internet and e-commerce had opened up a new wave of opportunities for all types of businesses; I have decided to make use of it.
Before starting any business, one must consider several things before jumping into a conclusion. One wrong move might become a big mistake that will pull you down into the pit of failure. As I was thinking of an idea for a techno business, I asked myself the following things:
- Are my ideas good enough?
- What should the price range be?
- Can my target clients / customers afford it?
- How to reach out?
- Can it grow in this slow economy?
- Can it become profitable, and return on any investment it requires?
One of the hardest stages in starting up any business is the planning stage since it is like a road map to long – term success. The business plan will give us a clear direction where the business is heading. Many business owners just jump into creating a business without researching and making concrete plan. Inevitably, they soon find that they are out of money, time, and clear strategies as to how to market their business. I have read an article from the internet ( the website is stated at the bottom ) about simple steps to create a business plan. I quoted the following statements / phrases are from the said article:
“ Here are 8 simple steps to creating your own business plan
( this is by no means a comprehensive plan but a primer to get you started ):
1. NAME OF YOUR BUSINESS – create a name or reevaluate the name of your business. Does it integrate well with what you are selling? Is it easy to spell and remember? Is it a name that can be well branded over time?
2. VISION – what will your business look like 5 years from now? Think of how you may want to expand it to include other branches or extra employees.
3. MISSION STATEMENT – this defines what your business really does, what activities it performs and what is unique about it that stands out from your competitors.
4. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES – clearly define what you want to achieve with your business. Make sure they are quantifiable and set to specific time lines. Set specific goals for each of your products or services.
5. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREATS ( SWOT ) – by analyzing these characteristics in your business, you will get clearer idea of what it will take for you to not only survive but also to prosper.
This could include such factors as:
- Your companies’ own changing industry
- The marketplace which may change due to social and economic conditions.
- Competition which may create new threats and / or opportunities.
- Ne technologies which may cause you to change products or the processes in how you do things.
Evaluating your SWOT will help you to:
- Build on your strengths
- Resolve your weaknesses
- Exploit opportunities
- Avoid threats
By doing this analysis will help you create more realistic strategic action plan.
6. STRATEGIC ACTION PLAN – this is the most critical step of your business plan, because without it, your business will not get off the ground. This should include your sales and marketing strategies.
7. FINANCIAL PLAN – a business can operate without budgets, but it is clearly good business practice to include it. With budgets, you will be more likely to achieve your business objectives, you will make more – reasoned decisions and you will have better control of your cash flow.
For any period, a cash flow statement would include:
- The cash and credit sales ( or accounts receivable ) expected to be received during the period.
- The anticipated cash payments ( for example, expenses for purchases, salaries, utility charges, taxes, office expenses and others )
- A description of the other incoming and outgoing cash, with a calculation of the overall cash balance.
This will assess how much money is on hand to meet your financial obligations – what cash has been paid out. Knowledge of this cash flow cycle will help you predict when you will receive funds and when you will be required to make a payment.
8. MEASURING AND EVALUATION – you wrote your business plan and set the goals with the intent of achieving them. So now break them down into measurable pieces and monitor the results regularly. A plan that cannot be measured is almost always destined for failure. Celebrate your wins and recharge yourself to accomplish your next goal.
Decide beforehand what constitutes a real serious loss and what loss will be acceptable.
If you find your goals are unrealistic and unattainable, adjust them, but realize that it takes hard work to achieve them, so don’t give up easily.
CONCLUSION:
Now that you have a business plan, make it a part of you by knowing and understanding it clearly. Build upon it continuously and refer to it often, so you remain on track to building a profitable business.”
Planning our group’s business proposal was the lacking key in our previous activity. We automatically jumped into a conclusion without understanding fully the nature of our proposed business.
If given a chance to have a technology – based business, I would like to base the whole thing with the things I love, the things I am best at, and Irritants.
Since I am fond reading articles in the internet and, I think, I am good at doing some researches, I thought, accepting researches via online would fit me. It will be a pay – per – request system which can be paid online via credit cards and other related paying system or do some meet ups with the client. Possible target clients are students or anybody who needed to do some research but has no time to do it. But unfortunately, as I was browsing the forum, it was already proposed by Juvilyn Consejo. I do not want to post the same concept because she might think that I was stealing or copying her idea because she posted in the forum first. So I decided to think of other possible business. Thinking of a back – up plan for my business proposal gave me more and more headaches.
My back – up business plan will make use of the internet and mobile phones. Since surfing through the internet has become a trend. It is now our need, and at the same time, our want. We browse in the internet to do researches, play games, watch videos, downloading and uploading stuffs, and many more. Nowadays, Internet is the biggest and the best information source for everybody. We even prefer to surf through the internet with the aid of different search engines than going to the library. Almost everybody has an access through the internet. Web browsing does not limit itself as to its accessibility. One can access the internet via personal computers / laptops, PSP, mobile phones, iPods, and others. In my case, I was able to browse through the internet for almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the use of my mobile phone.
Before, parents do not allow children to have mobile phones because they are afraid that their children’s safety might be at risk. Parents are scared that the mobiles phone might attract unwanted attentions from other people. But now, things have changed. Parents allow their children to have mobile phones for communication and safety purposes. On the other hand, kids use their mobile devices mainly for social interaction with friends.
My business plan focuses on the children’s internet browsing via mobile phones.
By the time kids reach middle school, they are likely having much or more knowledge about the internet than their parents do. They use the internet for school works, playing games, email, instant messaging, downloading music, and others. But although they already know their way around the internet, they may lack the judgment and emotional maturity to steer clear of trouble. That is where parents come in and guide their children with web browsing.
Mobile phones come with new things for parents to worry about aside from thefts. Nowadays, mobile phones are essentially handheld computers, so worries about your child stumbling across the pornographic or violent contents, or being groomed in chatrooms, via personal computer or laptops now apply equally to their mobile phones. No matter how clued up you are about the internet safety of your home computer, you need to get similarly clued up about your child’s mobile phone if you want to keep them safe in the cyber – world as you try to in the real one.
The virtual world is probably more dangerous and unsafe than the real world.
" The Internet has risks. However its threat of physical danger is rare. But this new playground does host a small population that spreads hatred, pornographic material, and it seeks to commercially prey.
Our young ones are not always the prime targets of these nefarious activities. But an innocent child is easily ensnared within these amoral webs during a first unsupervised encounter. Unfortunately, such an encounter may prove to be life altering. "
NATURE OF BUSINESS
There are a lot of dodgy internet material which can be accessed easily by children and those who are under 18, yet there is no responsible policing and censoring. Several computer software for blocking unwanted internet sites ( like those that have pornographic or violent content ) are already available in the market. But, mobile phones do not have that same kind of software for the safe browsing of your children via mobile. This gave me an idea for my business plan.
My business plan is to create“spy” software in the mobile devices. The name of the software will be “MOBInet spy”. If the lack of control over the whole internet – on – mobile devices malarkey scares you as a parent or as an elder brother or sister, this is the best software for you. This software will give you a report of every websites and URLs visited from your child’s mobile phone. Though this might sound like you are invading the privacy of your children, this will become the best way to keep your children safe in the cyber and mobile world.
FEATURES:
This software works like the Opera Link that is also available with their mobile browser ( Opera Mini ). The difference with this software from the available Opera Link is that, this software spy will not be logged out or turned off easily. To use the service of this software, one must first create an account from my proposed website ( mobinet.com ).
This software enables data sharing between your child’s mobile phone and your computer. It synchronizes the following browser components, so you can monitor your child’s web browsing via mobile:
-bookmarks
-searches
-typed history
-downloaded files, pictures, and other stuffs
-saved pages
Once you are signed in to mobinet.com, synchronization occurs. You can also activate / deactivate MOBInet spy through the proposed website. Activation / Deactivation of MOBInet spy would only be possible if you enter the correct activation and deactivation keys. Deactivation and Activation keys will be sent through your email after you have purchased the software.
Once you have installed MOBInet spy from your son’s / daughter’s / sister’s / brother’s mobile phone, it will work like stealth. Since he / she will not be able to see the software, he / she will not be able to uninstall the software from his/ her phone.
The best feature of MOBInet spy is the restriction and blocking system. Once you have activated the MOBInet spy, you can block several unwanted sites and restrict
HOW TO PURCHASE MOBInet spy?
MOBInet will be available at mobinet.com. And the paying system will be via credit / debit cards, paypal, or by doing some meet ups ( if possible ).
TARGET CLIENTS
In my business plan, my target clients are concerned parents / brothers / sister.
My first client/s for this business would be my aunts and my cousins. And if ever, with God’s grace, it will profit, I would like to extend my clients in the cyber world.
Having this as a business plan is a good idea since there is an existing demand for this kind of software. Though it might seem unethical, at least you will be able to protect your child from unwanted information that your child can get through the internet.
I wanted to help those parents who are too busy to check their children’s cyber life especially, those parents who work abroad. Kids with parent or parents working abroad would likely seek attention in the cyber world or in real one.
Kids, in their nature, love to explore anything and everything in this world. Nowadays, they are more exposed to the technology. As early as 5 years old, they already have a cyber life. A great example is my niece Anya. As soon as they had their own internet connection, she had already explored many things and had her own cyber life. Unfortunately, she had also explored the unnecessary and unwanted sites like porn. Now that she has her own mobile phone, and her phone is capable of connecting through the internet, I thought this software might help us restrict her from those pornographic sites.
Though this will help parents resolve their problem with the exposure of their children with pornographic materials, I think it would also be better if you talk to your children and create a better relationship with them.
Putting up a business is good, but creating a service that would benefit both client and the business man would be better.
I know that having this as a business plan is too risky. But, the fact that I will be able to help parents is more than enough.
Resource: www.isitebuild.com/simplebusinessplan.htm
http://www.bukisa.com/articles/52567_risks-and-dangers-of-the-internet-to-your-child#ixzz0zkw2hjTb
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Business Proposal Part 2
Today Randy merged us with the evening students in order to present our pending business proposals. If the Day class' turn to present, the Evening class' duty was to gave critic and vice versa. Wilkin's group from the Day Class managed to pass Randy's jugment. But before that, Wilkin's group received tons of questions and queries, some questions were irrelevant and senseless.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Business Proposal Part 1
Randy tasked us to form a group of 5 and formulate a business proposal based on the stuffs that we love, hate and best at. After considering all the factors, we came up with a proposal that centered on t-shirt designing and printing. We patiently waited for our turn to present. After a couple of minutes, finally our group was called to present our proposal. Irwin was our presentor that time, he managed to presented and defended it well from the critics. But, the ultimate critic, gave us a thumb down, meaning, our proposal was rejected and we need to think of another business idea to propose at some other time. Good luck to us!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Lessons Learned from Steve Job's Commencement Address
I read about Steve Jobs’ speech that he delivered at Stanford University in 2005 for the graduation commencement. In his speech, Steve recounts three important personal stories in which he had learned essential things that have led him to his success and failures.
After reading Steve Jobs’ outstanding Stanford Commencement speech, I found his words and stories to be very inspirational and motivational. I can somehow relate myself and my story with all his realization about the things that had happened in his life.
Since Steve Jobs have sited three important personal stories about his life in his speech, I have also decided to site different reflections with each story.
“The first story is about connecting the dots.”
“ …you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. ”
– Steve Jobs.
What Steve Jobs said was true. Everything that happens in our lives happens for a reason. Every thing in this world is interconnected with each other. Relating this to Steve Jobs’ story, he had realized that dropping out from college has given him the opportunity to study and learn calligraphy.
“ Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying amount of the space between different combinations, about what makes a great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found fascinating. ”
He had not realized the importance of calligraphy in his life. Not until such time when they were designing the Macintosh computer. “ …when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. ”
It may sound coincidental, but I would rather believe that it was fate. It was all meant to happen.
God does not want us to suffer. He only does things that are quite different and hard for us to understand ( at first ). But if we will just try to understand God’s ways, it does not matter whether we are having good or bad experiences; then, we will be able to appreciate our lives’ worth even more.
“ …I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. ”
Currently, I am experiencing the same thing as what Steve had experienced before when he was in college. I am still searching for the things that I wanted to do with my life. And as of now, studying for college thingy does not help. And I think it will never help me find the things that I wanted to do with my life. But I will never stop looking; I will find it one way or another.
“My second story is all about love and loss”
The second story was all about how he was able to handle the failure and rejection that he had got from the company which he founded. He also emphasized about the importance of finding the things that we love
“ …something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. ”
not rejection be a hindrance to doing the things that we really love. Though we may experience failure, we must choose giving up as an option.
“ I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. ”
With Steve’s statement, we can see how he had realized the positive side of failure. Steve also said from his speech that “ It was an awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it ”. The medicine that he was referring to was his failure and he was the patient.
After he had experienced the taste of fame and fortune, he became a monster who slowly tortures his own dominions. And he needed that “ medicine ” to make him realize that he was becoming very sick because he was not able to handle success the right way. But because he had already found his love, and he had too much love for Apple, he was able to rise and make his way back to his success had started.
“My third story is all about death”
This time, the story was all about how he had fought cancer and his realizations about how important time is.
“ Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ” After reading and reflecting from this statement of Steve’s speech, I have realized that I was too scared of making mistakes. I was using too much of thinking, that I almost forgot about my heart’s desire. I was always thinking of what others want me to say and do, that I stopped considering my own happiness. I was too scared of loosing something or someone if I was going to choose my happiness than them. Maybe, too much of something will not do any good to us.
“ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. ”
Sometimes we tend to idolize a person too much that we wanted to live the same life as theirs. Let us find our purpose and happiness. By doing such, we will be able to find contentment among ourselves.
“ …death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
It is true that death is inevitable. That is why we must find what we love to do, then do the things that we love. Life is short; let us not make it shorter.
We must not let our bad experiences and failures pull us down. Rather, we must take it as a compliment from God. He has chosen us to face different life challenges to help us grow and be a better person. Because God knows we can surpass everything as long as we have faith in Him. We must also learn to be contented of the things that God has given us. Because He only gives us what we truly deserve.
God has us only one life to live, so we must live it to the fullest.
Live, Love, and Laugh, these may seem very simple but these three are very essential to life. These are the things that we often forget or take for granted. So let us continue living, loving, and laughing. God bless us all.
After reading Steve Jobs’ outstanding Stanford Commencement speech, I found his words and stories to be very inspirational and motivational. I can somehow relate myself and my story with all his realization about the things that had happened in his life.
Since Steve Jobs have sited three important personal stories about his life in his speech, I have also decided to site different reflections with each story.
“The first story is about connecting the dots.”
“ …you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. ”
– Steve Jobs.
What Steve Jobs said was true. Everything that happens in our lives happens for a reason. Every thing in this world is interconnected with each other. Relating this to Steve Jobs’ story, he had realized that dropping out from college has given him the opportunity to study and learn calligraphy.
“ Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying amount of the space between different combinations, about what makes a great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found fascinating. ”
He had not realized the importance of calligraphy in his life. Not until such time when they were designing the Macintosh computer. “ …when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. ”
It may sound coincidental, but I would rather believe that it was fate. It was all meant to happen.
God does not want us to suffer. He only does things that are quite different and hard for us to understand ( at first ). But if we will just try to understand God’s ways, it does not matter whether we are having good or bad experiences; then, we will be able to appreciate our lives’ worth even more.
“ …I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. ”
Currently, I am experiencing the same thing as what Steve had experienced before when he was in college. I am still searching for the things that I wanted to do with my life. And as of now, studying for college thingy does not help. And I think it will never help me find the things that I wanted to do with my life. But I will never stop looking; I will find it one way or another.
“My second story is all about love and loss”
The second story was all about how he was able to handle the failure and rejection that he had got from the company which he founded. He also emphasized about the importance of finding the things that we love
“ …something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. ”
not rejection be a hindrance to doing the things that we really love. Though we may experience failure, we must choose giving up as an option.
“ I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. ”
With Steve’s statement, we can see how he had realized the positive side of failure. Steve also said from his speech that “ It was an awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it ”. The medicine that he was referring to was his failure and he was the patient.
After he had experienced the taste of fame and fortune, he became a monster who slowly tortures his own dominions. And he needed that “ medicine ” to make him realize that he was becoming very sick because he was not able to handle success the right way. But because he had already found his love, and he had too much love for Apple, he was able to rise and make his way back to his success had started.
“My third story is all about death”
This time, the story was all about how he had fought cancer and his realizations about how important time is.
“ Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ” After reading and reflecting from this statement of Steve’s speech, I have realized that I was too scared of making mistakes. I was using too much of thinking, that I almost forgot about my heart’s desire. I was always thinking of what others want me to say and do, that I stopped considering my own happiness. I was too scared of loosing something or someone if I was going to choose my happiness than them. Maybe, too much of something will not do any good to us.
“ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. ”
Sometimes we tend to idolize a person too much that we wanted to live the same life as theirs. Let us find our purpose and happiness. By doing such, we will be able to find contentment among ourselves.
“ …death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
It is true that death is inevitable. That is why we must find what we love to do, then do the things that we love. Life is short; let us not make it shorter.
We must not let our bad experiences and failures pull us down. Rather, we must take it as a compliment from God. He has chosen us to face different life challenges to help us grow and be a better person. Because God knows we can surpass everything as long as we have faith in Him. We must also learn to be contented of the things that God has given us. Because He only gives us what we truly deserve.
God has us only one life to live, so we must live it to the fullest.
Live, Love, and Laugh, these may seem very simple but these three are very essential to life. These are the things that we often forget or take for granted. So let us continue living, loving, and laughing. God bless us all.
Commencement Speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs
Thank you. I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We’d just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I’d just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors’ code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Thank you all, very much.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We’d just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I’d just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors’ code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Thank you all, very much.
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