Quest #5 - John Dimmer's Talk

Listening to John Dimmer's talk in Tuesday's class was quite interesting. He introduced himself by talking us through his various entrepreneurial endeavors. He graduated college and began acquiring skills to help him start his own company, and he referred to his knowledge base as an "armory" that he filled with weapons for his own business. This idea resonated with me a lot, enjoying the medieval era in history and much of the fantasy and lore that comes from that. Moreover though, I think this is a really valuable tactic for an entrepreneur. You make the most of the experiences you have, in order to better equip yourself for your endeavors.

John also talked about two business endeavors he is involved with now. The first was owning a series of Airstream dealerships. He owns the majority of the western corner of the U.S., having dealerships in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California. It was fascinating to hear about some of his tactics, from referring to the Covington location as "Seattle" to keep that portion of the airstream market to himself to trying to squeeze out competitors geographically. The second venture of his is co-owning a Honda dealership. This provided some interesting insight into dead ends. He and his partner were met with so much inflexibility from Honda that they couldn't fulfill their goal of having a series of dealerships. This was a valuable lesson because not only did they run into this problem, but they are now potentially looking to sell. This illustrates a second part to this, and that is that it's possible to simply alter your course and still come out ahead. Selling the dealership may not be ideal, but it can still make some profit.

On top of the entrepreneurial insight, I was interested in John's experience as an Angel investor. He talked about the way in which you approach Angels or get involved in a network if your area has one. This was useful information, as seeking Angel funding may be something in the future of my game development company, or future endeavors as well.