Week 13 Reading Reflection

     In chapter 14 of Entrepreneurship: Theory, Process, and Practice, I was a little overwhelmed with all of the information that goes into the valuation of a venture. I thought it was interesting to learn about how to assess the value of a company because when I watch Shark Tank they always mention, and sometimes talk about, what the particular value of the company is but not how they reached the number. Overall, I think that it was helpful that Kuratko included the list of questions that an entrepreneur must answer.

     In this chapter I didn’t find any section to be particularly confusing, at times it was overwhelming but not confusing.

     It would be interesting to know if Kuratko knows the method for venture valuation that would be the most effective in showing future success because since there are three methods it would make sense that one has an advantage over the other two. Something else I would be interested in knowing is Kuratko’s opinion on hiring an outside source to evaluate a company. While I imagine that this could be pricey, I also think that it would give the best objective evaluation of a company and provide the owner with the best information moving forward.

     I disagree with the concept of emotional bias because there are some people that build businesses with the intent to sell them for a profit. I think that emotional bias plays a larger role in ventures started by people who are passionate about their product.

Celebrating Failure

     Throughout college I’ve always struggled making connections with professors and each semester I tell myself that I’m going to make the effort to change things; however, the fact is that semester after semester I barely make any improvements. The fall of my sophomore year I came to the realization that I needed to start getting to know my professors and more importantly, they needed to know me so that when I go and ask for a letter of recommendation they can know enough about me to write a beneficial letter. Since all of my business classes have been online, I’ve really had to rely on getting to know my science teachers through office hours and questions after class. The problem has been that I’m not someone who generally asks for help or goes to office hours to just talk about random topics which has led me to be unsuccessful in getting to know my science professors two semesters in a row.

     My failure has taught me about myself more than anything. I learned that things aren’t going to get done unless you make them happen, you can’t always count on people to want to get to know you. This semester I’ve made some effort to get to know my science teacher and although it wasn’t enough, I’ve come out of this failure with a strategy for my attempt next semester.

     Failure is inevitable whether we like to admit it or not. It would be wrong for me to expect all of my professors to like me. The most important thing we can do is to take our experience and use what we learned in the future. This class has taught me to put myself out there in so many more ways than I could have ever imagined when we started four months ago. Below is probably one of my favorite quotes about failure that I came across a couple years ago; it pretty much sums up my thoughts on failure.