“Soundmap” and “The Ice Cream Dream” Case Studies

In Monday morning's class, we worked on two case studies and had some discussions about them. One of these was about a company named Soundmap which produces audio walks for he tourists travelling to London. The company wants to expand its business however it is looking for business angels that would like to make investements to their business. The other case study was about a woman's dream about opening an ice cream shop. She needs 80,000 $ to start he own business and is searching for investors too. After our discussion the class got divided into three groups: The Soundmap group, ice cream group and the business angels. We are going to play a game in our next class and the main goal of the groups in the game will be to assure the business angels that their businesses are worth to be invested so both groups need to come up with some strategies to be successful.

Throughout the discussion Mr. Sen mentioned some new terms to us such as a solicitor. We learned that a solicitor is a lawyer that Works in United Kingdom and gives companies advice about what to do intheir businesses. An important point mentioned was that a solicitor is not the same as an advocate. Moreover we looked at three forms of protections and the differences among them: Patent, copyright and trademark. Although all three of these elements are three forms of protection and look similar, they protect different things. A patent is essential in securing the ideas and technology of a company whereas a copyright prevents other companies to use the companies pictures and texts. Lastly, trademark protects the logo of a company. Moreover we had a discussion about an investor and a Money lender. We learned that a Money lender gets his Money back with a certain interest rate after investing in the business. On the other hand an investor might get a percent of the annual profit of the company that he invested into.