Alyson Beaton, creative director and founder of the Lille Huset, spoke to the UMBC community about her successes and failures in launching her business.

If you missed this informative and exciting Speaker Series be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the Speaker Series available below. Also below is the slide deck Alyson used in her presentation.

Alyson started off the talk introducing herself and her background. She is trained as an architect and a designer. She started her company Lille Huset, after creating a slotted dollhouse for her daughter’s 6^th birthday. Seeing how much fun her daughter had with the dollhouse, she decided to build a collection, to teach kids about architecture, design and the love of home.

Alyson then went into how this Speaker Series will revolve around the successes and failures she has experiences while establishing Lille Huset.

“If you are willing to try and fail, and as a result work even harder, you are going to succeed in all that you do.”

She explained how you get through the failures by loving what you do. You want to find your inspiration first, then decide if it’s a worthy business opportunity. She went on to say that “experimentation is a way to find your passion.”

Her experimentation in dollhouse making involved making many different shaped dollhouses, out of many different materials to find what worked best. She landed on a simple design that was made out of a combination of wood and paper. She then held a small exhibit in her house displaying the different dollhouses to her friends, family, and neighbors. When the event was a hit she decided to pursue the business idea.

Alyson started going to farmers markets in order to learn more about her audience and to find a way to market her product. She also used this time to test out displays along with new designs. After solidifying some ideas she launched a Kickstarter to get her product out there. After a successful Kickstart campaign, Alyson decided to take her product to tradeshows. Tradeshows allowed her to sell her product in bulk to toy companies and other stores.

After struggling through the design and launch of her product, Alyson learned her first lesson, which involved letting go. She visited one of the dollhouse displays at one of the toy stores and found that the paper was warping, the wood was out of place, and the overall look of the display wasn’t up to her standards. Even though she felt defeated, Alyson learned to let go and decided to recreate! She went back to the idea of having an all paper product and redesigned the packaging to portray a different message.

In the face of this failure, Alyson decided to take ownership and fix what was broken. After fixing these issues she was happier with her product and customers responded.

“Sticking with it brings opportunities you never would have imagined”

The final lesson Alyson had for the audience was that sometimes your perception of failure sends you off track. Is what you’re doing a true failure or is it just not up to your standards? It’s important to distinguish between the two and know when you’re being too hard on yourself.

The third ENTR Workshop is in just one week! This workshop will feature Rob Baruch leading a discussion on How to Spot a Good Deal.

This workshop will be held on October 28 at 12:00 pm in entreSpace, located in Academic Services, room 139.

Event Description: Entrepreneurs are faced with many opportunities for their business. They will encounter people who want to partner with them and/or want to invest in them. When these opportunities arise, it's important to keep a level head. The idea for this workshop is to teach you about strategic thinking combined with ideation. It's important to align yourself with the people and businesses that are in line with your company's goals and values.

About Rob: Rob Baruch was the founder and former President and CEO of RABA Technologies, LLC . Rob has spent his career leading a great diversity of initiatives in information technology and engineering. He has strong technical and management experience in disciplines such as robotics, biomedical engineering, telecommunications, software methodologies, software product development, and management consulting. Rob holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University and received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Current UMBC students Erin Patterson, and her partner Brendon Thach, have created a company called Nidifiy and are seeking driven, innovative, critical thinkers who thrive on collaboration. 

Nidifiy aims to connect interns and mentors to collaborate and ideate using design thinking to solve real- world problems. The theory behind this group is that the students will be able to not only build their resumes, skills, and experience in work that they are both interested in and in need of experience for future positions, but they also won't have to do unwanted grunt work that most interns get stuck with in traditional internships. They have found that under traditional internships, interns get to work on and gain experience in a small sliver of a process. Using design thinking with the Nidifiy group, each person will be able to see the entire process from start to finish.

To find out more about design thinking, you can watch this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee4CKIPkIik

Contact Erin Patterson at epatt1@umbc.edu for more information.

John Schveibinz, Founder and Owner of Paxridge Technology, LLC, spoke to the UMBC community about the first 18 months a business is being developed. John has also made himself available to talk to students if they have an idea for a business. Contact Vivian Armor (armor@umbc.edu) to schedule an appointment.

If you missed this informative and exciting workshop be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the workshop available below. Also below is the slide deck John used in his presentations.

John first introduces himself as an electrical engineer. He goes on to say that his first job helped him gain an "entrepreneurial spirit". After starting and selling his business he now spends his free time doing business mentoring with SCORE Baltimore. SCORE as well as Small Business Administration (SBA) and America’s SBDC have many free resources for people who want to start businesses.

The rest of the workshop was broken down into monthly spans. Each span contained what you should be doing with your business and how you should be thinking. A brief recap is below (see slide deck for more information)

1-3 Months
Businesses are solutions to problems. If you want to start a business you need to think of a problem you can solve. Remember that sometimes good ideas are not solutions or something that the public needs. He encourages students to read the book "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries to learn more about the concept. He believes that a lean startup is the best way to start a business because you spend a lot of time getting real feedback from people, allowing you to learn quickly and "fail fast." All entrepreneurs want to fail fast because it means less time and money was spend on a bad idea or concept.

3-6 Months

After you have an idea you have tested, the next stage is to build a prototype. A prototype can be as simple or as complicated as you want. A good prototype is quick, cheap, minimal, testable, and measurable. The best thing about a prototype is that is brings ideas to life so you can get substantial feedback from a customer.

6-9 Months

After developing and testing your prototype you then need to analyze your customers. Use the above flow chart to identify where your market is and how you can be profitable

9-12 Months

Once analyzing your customers you need to take their feedback, listen to it, think about how you can improve your product/service, and then fix it! You can then start "Formal Planning" which involves developing a business plan, market plan, design documents, pricing analysis, etc.

12-15 Months

In the next couple months you need to identify a minimum viable product. This is the simplest product that provides the most customer value. For example, if you are developing the idea of something to take someone from one place to another, your minimum viable product would be a bike instead of a car.

15-18 Months

Finally you want to beta test your product! This section is "to be continued" in another workshop

Baylor University's entrepreneurship program is excited to host the fourth annual Baylor New Venture Competition.

The Baylor New Venture Competition is a two-day, dual round business plan competition and speed pitch competition promoting entrepreneurship and small business development.

The competition, underwritten by an anonymous gift to Baylor University and the Hankamer School of Business, provides students with expert feedback and the opportunity to win prizes to help fund their ventures.

For more information see the attached flyer or visit www.baylor.edu/business/newventurecompetition

Deadline to apply is November 8, 2015. 

The purpose of the PNC Scholars/Fellows Program is to provide awards up to $3,000 to outstanding UMBC students interested in becoming an entrepreneur.  This award is associated with UMBC’s Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship.  The scholarship will be awarded for the 2015-2016 academic year. 

The awards will be used as academic scholarships (up to $1,000), or as “seed funding” (up to $3,000) to launch new ventures or community based social entrepreneurship projects.

Criteria:

Students interested in applying for this award should:

• Submit a 1-2 page personal statement about their interest in entrepreneurship.  The statement should:
• Describe the impact an academic scholarship will have on their future as an entrepreneur or social innovator or
• Describe how the award money will be used as “seed funding” to launch a new venture, or “seed funding” to launch a community based social entrepreneurship project.  Submit a preliminary budget outlining anticipated expenses.
• Submit an updated resume
• Have a minimum GPA of 3.0

How to apply:

Send the completed form (below), a personal statement, and resume via e-mail by MONDAY, NOV 2, 2015  to:

Vivian Armor, Director of the UMBC Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship

Email: armor@umbc.edu

Office: PUP 115