College classes?

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Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!
jmilk
 
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 4:21 pm

Post by jmilk »

The most important thing here aren't your business skills -- they are your EE skills. The best of business skills aren't going to do you any good if you have nothing to sell. Considering that, I think you might be going about this backwards. You see, the reason why folks like Lady Ada are successful at what they do is because they are REALLY GOOD. She has the intuition to recognize a good idea, the education and experience to design original circuits, the stamina and equipment to test and improve them, and finally the business sense to put them into kits and price them at a level that makes it cheaper and easier for the average hobbyist to buy from her, while still allowing her to make a living.

I really doubt (correct me if I'm wrong, m'Lady) that she set off at age 18 thinking about starting a kit/engineering business, and chose to go to MIT to achieve this goal. I rather presume that she has always been interested in circuits and things that go beep/blink/hum, has honed those skills and added new ones at MIT, and that Adafruit grew out of that.

My field of expertise is IT, specifically software. I've been in this field for over 20 years, and have been involved in hiring about four dozen programmers, and I have interviewed hundreds of candidates. In the late 90s I noticed a remarkable trend of "useless" programmers. They were folks who had all the credentials, degrees, certifications etc., but when it came to actually getting work done, they lagged behind teenagers with a high-school BANNED... and without exception, those were all folks who decided to study computer science or MIS because there are job openings and high starting wages.

I trust this translates to this area. If you're intent on starting a kit business to make money, and you're taking those classes with that in mind, there is a good chance YOU WILL FAIL. Maybe you'll copy a design you find online, package it as a kit and sell a few... but then someone with "real" skills comes along and improves on that design, and you sit on a few hundred PCBs and kits...

Unless you have the ambition and expertise to continually improve your kits (like our Lady Ada), don't do it.

But of course, the caveat is that everything is cheap these days. A website costs a few bucks, and ordering parts for, say, 20 kits shouldn't render you bankrupt. And of course, you're young -- so you have the option to get that "real job" and work on your kits on the weekends...

magician13134
 
Posts: 1119
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:17 am

Post by magician13134 »

Ha ha, no, I think you've got the wrong idea. I LOVE electrical engineering and computer science, I just know that I want to be prepared, and since I'd much rather own a small business than work for one, I'd like a little background. I hope that's how it works :)

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aballen
 
Posts: 85
Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2008 6:00 pm

Post by aballen »

first off working for "the man" really isn't all that bad. you can focus on being an engineer, if it is what you love, and get really good at it. Once you gain experience and get good you become a valued commodity... and you can work where you want when you want, and have a reliable income, let someone else worry about sales, marketing, customer service etc...

If you really are an entrepreneur at heart, and willing to be a slave to ou business, go for it... but to answer your question more directly.

Fill in electives with business classes, they will help you whether you work for yourself or someone else.....and don't forget girls man... unless the ratio has changed since I went to school, you will want to take as many non-engineering courses as you can ;)

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westfw
 
Posts: 2008
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm

Post by westfw »

If you're planning to run your own company, you should definitely take business course, probably more than a typical EE/CS cirriculum allows, and perhaps NOT the ones offered at universities (which tend to be "big business" rather than "small business" related, I think.)

I've never been particularly interesting in owning my own business, but I've got to put in a good word for working at "Start ups"; you get most of the excitement (and a good portion of the risk) of working on neat stuff, and there's a TEAM of like-minded individuals, plus other guys to handle the business aspects, and occasionally FUNDING (which is not to be sneezed at!)

It helps a lot if the startups you work at are successful enough to employ you for a couple of years at a time.

Startups tend to spin out of those "cubicle" companies and/or universities. The best way to get such a job is to have impressed co-workers ahead of you on the company ladder to the extent that when they go off to a startup, they recommend you for a job there too.

OTOH, a lot of the startups seem to be of the "we'll succeed wildly, or we'll go under" dichotomy. Building a small company that stays around in a moderately successful state for a long time is probably an entirely different skill.

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granzeier
 
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2010 11:09 pm

Re: College classes?

Post by granzeier »

Magician,

As someone who has been running my own business for the past ~12 years (several of them with that being my only source of income), I have learned several lessons. First, most of my mistakes and heartache in my own business have been from lack of knowledge. I am an engineer by training and hobby; when I was younger, I never had any real interest in learning about business. Now that I am older (and trying to get a business of my own up and running again) I constantly tell my kids to take at least a few business oriented college classes. I recommend that my kids take an accounting class, an entrepreneural business class and a marketing class. These minimal classes should give the basic knowledge to run a one-man shop, or a small business.

Good luck with your schooling and your career.

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