Elaborating an Opportunity – Cheap Research Essays

Shamshir Jessa was in his third year of a Civil Engineering program with an Entrepreneurship Minor when he chanced upon an opportunity to

connect short haul truckers with contractors working on road-building projects via a web page. At the time he was enrolled in a coop program

working for a Civil Engineering consulting firm. His partner in the venture under consideration was the person whose work he was responsible

for reviewing on behalf of his employer.

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In 1990, the Jessa family moved to Canada from Tanzania by way of Portugal. Shamshir’s uncle, who sponsored their Canadian immigration

application, owned a mid-sized business manufacturing kitchen cabinets in Calgary where his father promptly went to work as a foreman. Shamshir

was 14 by the time he arrived in Canada.

Shamshir’s parents had told him since he was a small child that he would be a doctor. During his high school years Shamshir typically got very

high grades with very little work. From grade nine on he had worked around 9 hours a week in his uncle’s business as a laborer and learned in

the process that there was no way he wanted to end up as a common worker. From grade 11 he obtained a number of sales jobs, on top of his

laboring job, at a variety of retail stores including Aldo Shoes, The Sony Store and Lenscrafters. “I loved working on commission because the

harder and smarter you worked the more money you made. That is where I started learning about sales techniques. I was the top part-time sales

person at all three locations.” In 1996 when he enrolled at the University of Calgary he signed up for pre-med. With his poor study habits

from high school he found after two years that he wouldn’t likely qualify for Medicine. From his earliest childhood Shamshir had been a Lego

aficionado. “By the time I was five years old, I completed the final kit for fifteen year olds. In my family there were only two things for a

person to be, either a doctor or an engineer, so I settled for Civil Engineering as a second choice.”

As a member of the Ismaili community Shamshir attended the mosque several times a week and became active in the volunteer organization. For one

year he was responsible for the management of a group of sixty volunteers. He was also active in the Partnership Walk program and as a Scout

leader. “From seeing people who owned their own businesses I learned that if you have your own business you can do whatever you want, however

you want, whenever you want.”

In 1998 the Engineering Faculty introduced a joint five course minor in Entrepreneurship with the Management Faculty. “When Dr. Irving Haliday

was setting up the program he was talking about it in class. I jumped right in and must have been the first person signed up for the new

program. Rather than add a half a year to my education I increased my course load.”

Since two Project Management courses were a required part of the Civil Engineering program Shamshir had an opportunity to discover a deeper

interest in the subject. “When I was looking for evening courses to accelerate my graduation I found a Master’s level course in Project

Management that appealed to me. From that course, I discovered that there are a lot of mistakes that people make when they set up projects and

they all typically can be related to a breakdown in communications. In my opinion, any business is a project – like in a project you have your

front end planning, your launching and your commissioning. In Project Management courses as in Entrepreneurship you learn to think outside the

box. I also learned from one professor that he was making $600 per hour simply to give his clients common-sense advice about project

management.”

“When I was taking the first course in Entrepreneurship I had a chance to compare what I was learning in the course with what my uncle was doing

in the second year of running his restaurant. I learned you could apply this knowledge directly. In the second course we had this phenomenal

idea to advertise at the airports across the country with TV screens. Not only were there regulatory complexities but also the capital

requirements were beyond our capacity. The fact that a private consulting firm from Vancouver began to implement virtually the same idea within

four months suggests that the idea was a good one. From these two courses, I really learned how to generate ideas. I must have considered

about a hundred ideas and initially explored about thirty ideas. I look for ways of improving or simplifying what is being done wherever I go.

It is just part of who I am now.”

For my second two entrepreneurship courses I had the same professor. “In the Opportunity Identification course I learned how to critique

opportunities. In that case our venture project was a web-based textbook exchange introducing buyers and sellers.In that particular case

however we were having trouble seeing where the revenue was going to come from. I now have a better idea of what could go wrong. I also

learned that there are many different ways to overcome problems and lots of possible creative solutions. I am currently taking my fourth course

and have one to go.”

As part of the Civil Engineering Major, students who want to do an internship to get job experience have the opportunity to do so. Shamshir was

one of the 25% of the class to get accepted for an internship post. Shamshir found himself in the enviable position of being able to pick among

four different placement opportunities. He chose to work in an engineering consulting firm that specialized in Civil Engineering. As part of

the contractual arrangement Shamshir had to sign a document agreeing that any knowledge created while working for the company would be the

property of the company.

During his fourth month of full-time work he was assigned as Assistant to the Project Manager on a highway expansion project. Since his boss

had personal problems that kept him away from the site, Shamshir was, in reality, functioning as the project manager, representing the interests

of the owner. His primary function was to oversee the work of the general contractor.

The superintendent and project manager representing the general contractor for the project was a Ken Klassen. “My first impression of the man

was that he was a big fellow that I wouldn’t want to mess with.” In his job, Shamshir not only had to do inspections of the work as it

progressed but also had to review the work of materials testing consultants doing tests on ‘base course and gravel compaction’. In effect Ken’s

responsibility was to make sure that the various sub-contractors were doing their work properly, and Shamshir’s responsibility, in turn, was to

make sure that Ken was doing his work properly. It was a system of checks and more checks still. When Shamshir was confident that the work was

done well then it was his responsibility to authorize progress payments from the government agency involved.

Right from the beginning Shamshir took a liking to Ken. “He was a reasonable fellow. He wasn’t one of those guys who would beat around the

bush but would tell you straight up. Ken knew that I was a student so he took extra time to explain things to me. I could tell from the way he

adjusted his communication style with different people that he was an intelligent person.”

“After a month of working with Ken I started realizing how the work was being done and what was really involved. When I was on inspections with

him as he drove around he was making one phone call after another, in particular organizing gravel trucks for the next day. Ken had a list of

truckers in each area where a project might be undertaken. For the current four-kilometer project he had a list of about 50 to 100 different

truckers. When I was on the project site I must have seen 30 different trucks from about 15 different trucking companies. It seemed to me that

he must have been spending at least two hours a day on the phone coordinating the flow of trucks for the job the next day. I thought this is a

waste of time, there has got to be a better way. The first idea that entered my head was to use the Internet.”

Shamshir began to give the issue some real thought. His problem was to determine an efficient way to get truckers and contractors communicating

about daily work over the Internet. The key was to make money, “…otherwise there was no point in doing it”. It consumed his thinking both day

and night. After considering a slew of possibilities, he concluded that a website containing two portals would provide the solution. Through

one portal, truckers would enter to view information on the jobs currently within their driving range . Through the other portal, contractors

would post their jobs and view lists of available truckers in the vicinity where they will be working.

“Within a couple of days, I asked Ken if he thought if it would be better to have the truckers contact him over the internet instead of by

phone. I sat down with him and explained how it would work – what my vision was. He loved the idea and said right away: ‘let’s do it 50%/50%’.

I couldn’t believe that he said yes to the idea right off the bat. I thought that he would have some resistance. He said he would provide all

of the contacts (and that he had been in the business 20 years or more and spoke the lingo) and make all of the phone calls to get the parties