Business Plan Development is the second core class in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship. The class is a sequel to the intro course, but instead of focusing on the theoretical, in Business Plan Development you actually start your own business and make at least $200 in revenue.
Throughout the course I learned just how hard it was to actually start a business. One of my biggest challenges was dealing with supply chain management. The vendor we used consistently delayed delivery of our paper and as a result we almost didn\’t have any stickers. This struggle taught me to always plan for the worst. In the past I have mitigated risks regarding ventures but haven\’t actually had a risk come to fruition. Now I know how essential it is to mitigate these risks and to be ready for anything.
I\’m most proud of getting the stickers produced by the end of the semester. While this task may seem simple, it was actually extremely complex. First off, we had the supply chain issues. I had to talk to their representative for hours over the span of October to get the paper. In the end, we ended up getting the white version of the paper rather than the natural color. While I thought this was ok, the representative never mentioned the white version of the paper only works with laser printers and not inkjet ones. After spending hours trying to figure out what was wrong with the printer I came to this conclusion. Unfortunately I found this out on December 2nd, the snow day. My next two and a half hours included checking every single academic building trying to find a laser printer that wasn\’t in a locked office. After checking every single building I ended up going to Office Depot to use the self-serve laser printers. This was another waste of an hour since their machines ripped our paper in the rollers. After that it seemed bleak but I went to Staples as a last hope. Luckily they let me use their giant laser printer for free and everything worked perfectly. Overall, I consider this my biggest success as I spent hours upon hours of frustration and determination on it and eventually came out victorious.
The biggest failure I faced during this class was making the vinyl cutter efficient and successfully cut. For some reason, the cutter needed over half the page to calibrate so we were only able to print six stickers per page. In addition to the large waste of paper, the cutter also generally ruined one sticker per page because the paper would get bundled up. If I was able to fix these two issues, then we would have even better margins and it wouldn\’t take nearly as long to cut the stickers we need.
In the future, I hope to learn more about the legal portions of startups. More specifically, I want to learn how to apply for a patent, how to officially create a company, how to declare an LLC, how to trademark my company name, and other legal aspects that all startup founders should be familiar with.