Entrepreneurship - Day 1

     Today we started off by going over the syllabus, including course objectives and what we can expect to learn in this class. Prof. Thompson introduced us to the book and the author behind it, Steve Mariotti, telling us how he directed the book towards teenage readers to keep them interested and inspire them. Then we went over the the projects we will be doing over the term. That included this blog, an entrepreneurial experience, and a business plan. After the syllabus, we covered the concept of entrepreneurship and what characteristics define an entrepreneur, using Barefoot wines as an example. We then discussed what is involved in a entrepreneurial business venture. Class was concluded with a shark tank video and a short discussion.
     I think the idea of becoming an entrepreneur myself sounds pretty cool. It allows a person to have freedom and creativity in the career, while also being responsible and challenging oneself intellectually. With that said, I think this class should be fairly relevant to my future in both college and in life. If I ever do decide to take business ventures, I hope that this class would contribute to me making good decisions. I think it is a good thing for the most part that the books are designed to keep students attention, even for college level students. We tend to get distracted easily, so it should certainly help a little bit. It was interesting to me the way Steve Mariotti thought about products by thinking backwards through what they are composed of and developing from there. The blog seems like a good idea to retain information that you learned throughout the day, especially with 3 hour long classes. For our real life entrepreneurial experience, my group discussed a variety of financial/accounting related ventures. One of them was calculating college expenses for people and keeping track of them. For my business plan, I would consider a new website, or possibly a clothing store in my home town of Le Mars since it is lacking in that department. It was definitely important to go over the basics of entrepreneurship today to get us familiarized, so I appreciated that. I haven't seen many episodes of shark tank, but from what I have seen it is usually pretty interesting. It is absolutely applicable to an entrepreneurship class, and gives a pretty good look into the workings of business ventures. Overall, we had a good overview of what to expect and we got our minds started again after holiday break.