Saturday; September 24, 2016…

           Share. Today is the epic day of my life because it is my first time to experience a 6.5 magnitude earthquake. Epic, because it thought it is my brother who is shaking the upper part of the double deck bed and I blame him, but I instantly realized that he is not there and I check my clock, it is 9:00 am already; therefore, he’s at the school already. Puzzled in the situation, I quickly jump off and it’s too late because the quake is already done and I want to feel it with my bare feet. I ask my mom about what happen and she just quickly glances and nods at me. I’m surprise because she is not concern about me and even her, expecting to hide under the table to be safe. Well, I didn’t expect that because I’m old enough to care myself.

           Move on, sir Gamboa posted a new task at his forum. Well, we are all shock because we recently finished the reflections of Pirates of Silicon Valley and 3 Idiots which consist of more than two thousand words. I know sir Gamboa treated us like this because he wants us to be trained or polished to become a diamond-quality student; we call ourselves as “diamond in the making”. Sir Gamboa required us to post our IQ, EQ, AQ results and reflection about S.E.E.D. lesson. Honestly, every time I write a reflection about the specific subject it creates a new pressure within me, not because of the time or words needed but because of the values that I can relate to the primary subject to expand my examples and explanation to give further information to the reader. That’s how I love my reader,and they would appreciate how I love them if ever I have a reader on my blog…

           S.E.E.D, the seed was already discussed in the previous meeting including the characteristics that the technopreneur must have to become a successful technopreneur wherein, it does not only focus on gaining profit but also helping the society. S.E.E.D is composed of Self-mastery, Environment mastery, Enterprise mastery and Development planning. In the first half of our semester, sir Gamboa focuses on teaching us self-mastery and environment mastery. Self-mastery is needed for a growing technopreneur, not because of the perks of mastering it but because of the effect on the society. Last week, I gain new perk while having a serendipity tour – constantly changing places to widen the information based on observation, not limited to one place and it is random. First of all, because of the serendipity tour, I discover the new part of myself which is being a patient in decision-making, concern for the others  and practical in life. Last time, while having a serendipity tour from malls to common public places like People’s Park with my family and friends, it helps me to widen my characteristic dictionary especially being patient and concern. In our tour, we encounter common problems that we didn’t expect to happen, I will not site any sample because it is about personal, health and family problem and it is sensitive to their part because I didn’t ask for a permission to share the concern – in short privacy guys. Because of that, the group is now bothered on how to solve it and they keep on sticking the old process or old way to solve the problem. Silent and patient, while thinking the best solution for the problem, I quickly suggest my idea which some of them agreed to my idea. Until the situation happens that I already expected  to happen, the group is now satisfied and cheered me for thinking that simple solution. After the scenario, I realized that I have the ability to be patient in decision-making. After all the years in high school and college, in that scenario proves that I didn’t just familiarize the words inside the classroom but also able to apply it outside the classroom. Being patient in making a decision is needed for becoming a technopreneur, why? Because being patient helps you analyze things before you easily give the best decision and helps to throttle your business status. Patient, it does not mean it takes years to finish your next move for your business, but it should be fast enough but not as quick as lightning. Successful technopreneurs, like Bill Gates and much more, are patient in deciding their future step because adopting too much advance thinking skills could lead your business to failure. Leads to failure because you always assume that this would happen in the future even though it has a small percentage that proves it will happen.

           Second, being  a concerned citizen. Within my second part of serendipity tour, I discovered that there is some point in our society that we should be concerned not only for the normal person but also for the persons with disability. In this tour, I realized that we should equally value or treat people even we differ from sex or gender, age gap or even handicap attributes. Being a concerned citizen plays a great part in technopreneur, why? Because of the showed concern, you already knew the future possibilities that the customers needed most. Therefore, putting others shoes in your feet could help you to understand different situations and come up different solutions that you didn’t expect. It is like understanding a certain environment or a sample environment wherein problems are to be discovered and solved in the future. Third, being practical in life. At the halfway of my personal tour, I decided to take some personal time – spending money to vent out the stress resulted from academic pressure. Buying food from one local stand to another, I realized that why I’m not contented having one food only and I see the problem – because of stress. Being a technopreneur, he or she must have the characteristic of being able to handle the stress and pressure from clients demand and work environment  and also must possess the characteristic of being able to be practical in business from environment resources to its manpower. Having those two characteristics could help your business to improve like what Steve Jobs did to his Apple Company. Like Steve, he is practical in his way of business but, the down part of his life is that he didn’t know how to handle his emotion or the way he treats people inside and outside of his business which causes his business to experience a failure time.

           The first part of S.E.E.D concept is self-mastery. Self-mastery is important for becoming a technopreneur because once you know and master your own self, you already knew what is the next step of your business. Now, I get it why sir Gamboa wants us to take EQ, IQ and AQ test. We already took the AQ test last September 22, the previous meeting of our Technopreneurship subject. My result is 43 which belongs to the range of thirty-nine to forty-seven – somewhat technopreneur. I’ve taken the emotional quotient test online and I take it once personally. My result is 92 out of 100 and it says that I have the ability to recognize my emotions based solely on physiological signals from my body. I think the reason why I get these results is because of serendipity walk. Serendipity walk is not just a walk for creating new ideas but it is also for understanding yourself. Thanks to this approach because it helps me to further understand myself and help to inspire myself for becoming a successful technopreneur in life, someday…

           The second part of S.E.E.D concept is environment mastery. Environment mastery is about understanding your environment to help the society while gaining money. Let me share my pitching observation last week Thursday meeting. One of my classmates pitches his idea which is not an application but a device. It is good because it is about the emergency approach to the drivers especially when you are at the point of somewhere where you are not familiar with the surroundings like remote areas where hospitals are far away and you do not have enough time to call for 911. The device will show the exact location where the situation happened. Sir Gamboa asked him about what kind of technology he will use to implement the proposed idea. He said that he will use GPS which sir Gamboa instantly reacted that it is already implemented and sir added, how about those areas without internet? Which my classmate stunned in the question. Sir Gamboa sees his idea and it is great for the old cars especially here in the Phillippines but sir halfly approved his idea. After next meeting, last Thursday, he continues his proposal and answered the needed technology that sir asked. He said he will use Radio waves and sir see that point but sir Gamboa rejected his proposal because of using a device which is not our part of our course. Sir Gamboa said that we should only use mobile applications because it is part of our course. Base from that situation, my classmate approach environment mastery but for me, he only sees the society environment. Being a technopreneur, we should understand the environment not only the society environment but also your environment – understand your limited scope in life. I also realized that thing, before we approach problems in life with a proposed best idea, we should understand how it works or understand how to approach the problem even though our knowledge has limits but we should do our best to achieve it. With this approach, environment mastery, it helps your business to grow especially if you are planning to build a start-up.  Also in my serendipity tour, environment mastery was furnished. Furnished because I saw something in our environment, especially here in Davao City which is a candidate city for IT development technologies,  that need a new upgrade like the new approach to online business, information relay and much more. Base from my observation, Davao is a lack of improving systems that is why environment mastery is needed to be mastered in Technopreneurship because it could open up a new path to develop the city or country not only to improve the system but to improve people's life by giving job and new opportunities to them.  As a technopreneur student , gaining environment mastery helps you to view the problem as opportunities like most of the big time businessmen like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Both of them acquire the environment mastery mindset but differ in approaching the problem. Steve Jobs approach is common; understanding the society’s need in traditional way like defeating the old culture or norm, while Bill Gates approach is modern marauder: understanding the competitors need and giving an illusion success, where large companies tend to give support to their group but instead of helping them, owning is their priority. Their mindset is projecting the ‘being boss’ than ‘being worker’ that is why they are a model in terms of business subject.

           The third part of the S.E.E.D concept is Enterprise mastery. Enterprise mastery is about how to run a business. This part will be further discussed in the second half of our semester but I will do my best to give my idea and reflection about this specific subject. Enterprise master must pertain the knowledge of the different enterprise disciplines such as creating the business, marketing the business, operation management, financial management and risk management. Let me discuss the different knowledge that the enterprise master must have. First, creating the business. Upon creating the business, you must already know yourself to have the next step – as what I have said in self-mastery. In Technopreneurship, most of the inspired technopreneurs have a wrong perception of what is a startup. The startup is made to create a future company, it is not just a simple office for gathering ideas but it is a stepping stone to develop your business. Stepping stone because your ideas are starting to develop with the help of the angel investors. Technopreneurs must understand the financial part of the business, to understand how the money flows before they start operating. That is why in our subject, Technopreneurship, sir Gamboa is approaching this part slightly by relating this to our proposed ideas like, is it feasible or worthy to spend millions of peso to develop the application. Because of that treat, we are encouraged to elevate our steps further in developing the proposed ideas not only for selected customers but for the whole because of the fast technological development. Second, marketing the business. According to sir Gamboa, the first year of your business is a downfall because you are funding or advertising your business properly to the users. Users may like or dislike your application, but it is part of growing up the business that is why technopreneurs must master the enterprise part especially this part because most of them easily give up if it doesn’t meet their wants – to sell the application and gain more customers. This part is the crucial part because it involves wasting of money to cater the customer's needs and dedication of the technopreneur to pursue in selling his application. Third, operation management. In this phase, it involves on how to make the perception into a reality. Technopreneurs must have the idea on how to make the application successful. Making it real so that technopreneurs could cater the customers need. Also, technopreneurs are obliged to do the maintenance of their system to delete bugs and old errors that the customers are wishing for and make it faster and reliable in sharing information to the users. Fourth, financial management. In this phase, it does not only involve physical money but also the strategy on how to catch the customers and avoid copycats. Nowadays, technology is constantly developing. Multiple application with different qualities and standard are uprising in the technology business, which is one of our concern as a to-be-technopreneur in life. Sometimes we realized some of their weak spots but then they could easily solve the solution with just one update. With my further research, most of the technopreneurs have the same ideas but a different approach to the problem but the question is how to avoid copycat and catch more customers? Companies nowadays are adopting a different method to keep their business like selling them free but they offer a premium account to remove disturbing advertisement and others are adopting merchandise approach, wherein they sell virtual products to improve your game account or  to have collectibles. In these examples, it prevents copycat because of pricing and way of processing the transactions and it catches more customers on your application. Fifth, risk management. In this phase, technopreneurs must know how to handle risk from the start, in making a business, to maintaining your business alive. Technopreneurs must be a risk taker or risk manager because sometimes the problems occurring in the business happens a lot and could affect your business. If you are a risk taker already, then good for you, but for those who are afraid like me, must understand the effect of it. In understanding on how to take a risk, it takes the time to decide but patiently deciding would pay your effort. As a risk taker, it is not easy especially if your problem is creating a network of opportunities to solve it. Sometimes, it affects you causing to have a crisis and could affect your business if the crisis is applied on business. According to my Accounting subject, business and businessman must be treated in a different way. Business is virtually created by law and called as a juridical person while the businessman is called as a human person. In taking a risk for the business, the personality that would make a stand is a juridical person and not the human person. Therefore, the business problem is for the business and the personal problem is for yourself and not for the business. What creates and enterprise-mastered person unique? He or she must integrate the roles of management and tips and inspire people to generate estimates that contribute to innovation and changing the patterns of the game at a speed faster than the competition to replicate.

           The fourth part of the S.E.E.D concept is the Development plan. Development plan involves writing, presenting, defending and adding refinements to the presented business plan. This last concept will be further discussed in the second semester or Technopreneurship 2 subject, but I will do my best in explaining and giving more relatable topics. In this phase, technopreneurs must know how to present a business plan in order to a magnet or encourage more investors in their business. Relating our pitching, sir Gamboa is training us to be a good presenter of our business ideas which could help us in our future. He also gives us a situation wherein we are at the Microsoft and what we would do if we meet Bill Gates at the elevator. Of course, I’m sure that I will pitch my idea quickly but precisely so that before he arrives at the desired floor, he will accept my idea. Yes, that is the approach but the question is does your idea deserve an approval? Well, it depends on how creative and logical you are in creating an application. With the help of the last phase, technopreneurs are guided well in developing a new big hit of- town ideas. Just like Bill Gates, he possesses the development plan mastery. He deals with the large business industries of their times like IBM and Apple Company. With his mindset, he is able to lure both companies to end up fighting each other while acquiring the important business thing.