Harvard i-lab | Entrepreneurship 101 with Gordon Jones

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Transcript

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[Music]

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um thanks for being here uh this is entrepreneurship 101 the workshop um we put on a number of workshops here in the Innovation lab um over the course of this year you can expect 75 to 80 really uh skill-based workshops where we

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try to get very practical and very real around a variety of topics or a variety of subject areas the the the common thread of all of them though is we're trying to communicate things that are really practical and are going to assist you in the Journey of taking ideas you

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may have or ideas you're looking to generate that may turn into projects or Ventures that you try to grow that we can create these workshops to be resources to you so that you can equip yourself to take them as far as they can and should go so this is one of many things we'll talk about um about that

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are resources to you for tonight's Workshop you can expect uh really three things that we want to cover with you one is U and I keep saying we and I'm going to introduce Jody Goldstein my colleague in a moment but um there's three things we're going to cover one is

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there's um this is called entrepreneurship 101 because there's a presumption that you're uh either really inclined towards entrepreneurship you're really interested in this area but you may not have much history much experience or you're really interested you you may

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have more experience than that but you're just really interested in what some of the foundational insights or foundational thoughts are from those of us who are running the ilap so I'm presuming you're one of those one of those two groups tonight um if not enjoy a soda and a piece of pizza and and uh

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hopefully enjoy what you're going to hear so there's three things we're going to cover off here one is there's a lot of interesting research and I think this is an important Workshop to kick off the school year with I've done this once before last year and I'm doing it again at the beginning of the term because I

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think it's really important that we um take a moment and step back and say hey what is this journey of Entrepreneurship what's the data tell us about entrepreneurship and there's five things I cover within that first area that I think really is pretty enlightening to

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what the Journey of Entrepreneurship looks like but it's a lot about data and what research and I'm I'm leveraging a lot of ernston Young's research on entrepreneurs second area is going to be taught by jod and it really gets more practical around 10 things every aspiring entrepreneur should know and

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I'm going to let Jody again talk more about her background and what she does and the third thing is we want to make sure you leave here knowing what are the things I can get connected to the Innovation lab Andor the resources that are available to me here at Harvard most of you I presume are Harvard students it's it was really a targeted for our

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University audience here at Harvard um so we want to cover off what are the things that are available to you those are the three things before I get started any further can I just show a hands how many folks are coming from the college okay it's a good number um uh

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gsas um let's see other schools the law school ed school okay good component of Ed school um Graduate School of Design folks okay anybody from the medical or dental school okay um and am I missing a

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school what School divinity Kennedy I'm sorry she I should have had that one Kennedy that's also another good um good participation okay terrific um I'm sorry yeah business school who what what's the

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business school never heard of that um you know one of I think I think that was the wrong thing for me to lead down because honestly we're governed by 10 of the uh Deans here at Harvard so you're putting me on the spot to remember right off the cuff um so apologies to uh

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business and Kennedy so little bit of an intro um I am Gordon Jones managing director of The Innovation lab um I also we're being taught here I think this is on a play screen um Jody Goldstein is my colleague

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director of the IAB and um Jody and I really represent a lot lot of the leadership when it comes to um our work within the university the various programming we do jod spends a lot of time and effort and I give her a ton of credit for the the Workshops the

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mentorship a lot of the programming that's designed and the uh Partnerships we do with the Innovation Community Jody has a very robust uh personal history as an entrepreneur that she'll give you in a moment from my standpoint um I also come out of industry I've been um with

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four different startups in my past um I've also done a lot of work within larger organizations more as an entrepreneur and um I've also been an educator as well I've been an i junk lecturer at a different University um but um all of that's been in the physical Goods space so phys consumer

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products uh Pest Control Hardware so I come more from a physical space Jody I think it's safe to say a little more of the the tech The Tech Mobile space um I think it's a real compliment when we look around the university there's a lot of different interests that span these uh these areas is Neil Doyle is the

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third person in this picture Neil is the manager of operations he manages all of the facility the technology to support this facility that we'll cover off he's also an integral member of the leadership team here and someone you ought to get to know if you don't already so I like to lead off with a few

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quotes because this really helps set some of the stage um and I've pulled these these These are easily uh searchable on Google but um I think they reflect something and I'll go through them one is Thomas Watson saying I believes there's a World Market for maybe five computers back in 1943 one of

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the founders of IBM um Western Union talking about the shortcomings of this thing called the telephone um can't be seriously considered as a means of communication inherently has no value um Henry Warner of Warner Brothers films in 1927 saying who the hell wants

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to hear actors talk one of the threads that you're seeing here and you'll hear this from other entrepreneurs who talk these are folks who in their day are experts if if you'd gone to meet someone at Western Union or if you had sat down with Harry Warner um you'd be sitting Amid Amid someone who you would have had

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a lot of respect for in that day they knew that industry they knew that business and um while it's clear that they were off The Mark with some of their guests and I have a few more quotes here as well I think what's important is you're going to be in the pursuit of your own ideas you're going

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to be looking to speak with individuals who also represent the kind of expertise that in their day these people did and I think it's important that we bring a level of uh interest and respect because these pokes do have interesting Insight at the same time too often in many students I see pattern recognition you

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may treat those individuals as having truth or that they really are validators of my own ideas and I think we're going to talk about a common characteristic in entrepreneurs that data talks about it's that shows you'll need to persevere through some folks who may have a

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different point of view and are still considered experts so there's no magic formula there but it is interesting and hopefully these kind of quotes illustrate with a little more time perspective how somebody who might have gotten advice from Henry Warner 1927 about their new idea to have sound

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Incorporated with moving pictures um they might actually been right and he was wrong um this is a famous One um Lord Kelvin talking about heavier than air flying machines are impossible U more more recently the founder of 3M talking about how if he

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had um thought about it more he wouldn't have done the experiment that led him to discovering the adhesive that made up 3M Post-it notes the literature is full of examples said you can't do this um so with that and before I get into the data

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I'll just say um Innovation is something that I like this description it comes from a colleague over at MIT and I wanted to share it with you um Innovation it should be cultivated entrepreneurship can be taught if you think about the two um the two words

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Innovation it's really about the invention um the there somewhere in there as a unique Insight whether that's a scientific definition of of innovation if you're interested in the health and the Sciences your your invention maybe more of an insight into something that's an idea but it's ultimately invention

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that gets combined with commercialization your ability and commercialization is not some of you in this audience may be more um um not focused on necessarily making a million bucks and retiring to an island I don't I don't know you know sometimes you dat dream about that but the reality is

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commercialization is more about the com the comment about bringing forward your idea to a greater audience and if you have that invention and you're then able to commercialize it bring it out to a broader audience um that's where real Innovation can take place so there's a

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lot of inventors out there and there's a lot of people who commercialize but when you bring the two together is where you get Innovation Innovation itself doesn't tell you much and I don't want to get too academic it doesn't necessarily describe how disruptive your or the impact that you your innovation

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has but it needs to have those two components I thought that was really really helpful um entrepreneurship we think of that as a set of skills that's industry knowledge practice it's um it's ultimately that individual who's able to apply and carry forward that Innovation

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um so what are the goals for my part of talking about this data I want to set context for you if there's one thing that my piece of this talk does I want to set context because again you're all at a place in time you may have individual friends who are you think are uh aspiring you aspire to be like

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they're further along and their interests as entrepreneurs and you're kind of saying I want to get going um I want to put some data around that so I want to set context around what it means to be an entrepreneur I want to inform you on what do successful entrepreneurs look like um hopefully teach you to look

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at uh new ways as a at a career in entrepreneurship um and we'll talk about ways that the Innovation lab can assist you and and ultimately I hope this is an uplifting Workshop it's designed to hopefully give you the sense that gosh you know there's not any One formulaic

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path to it but there are some key insights and principles that can be used to be an entrepreneur so our agenda I want to review this report on entrepreneurship this really is relying on Research ernston young does they've um it's the 2011 report they work with

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800 entrepreneurs around the world and they really try to distill key insights into what makes these entrepreneurs successful and what is it that makes them unique and then we'll talk about the 10 things that every aspiring entrepreneur should should know and then the iLab so

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what are the key findings I like to get right to the point so rather than try to progressively reveal I'll just tell you those F five key findings one is that entrepreneurs are made they're not born you know unless there's a few of you who felt like you were just born ready and maybe there maybe you do

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there's certainly some who feel that calling early but there are characteristics that you can do to help develop yourself as an entrepreneur second of all is entrepreneurship is rarely a one-off decision there's a lot of practice that goes into it and the data talk that

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really shows that working as an entrepreneur and doing this you can actually develop yourself so that it's not just a random thought that turns into an idea and you just had it and you were born an entrepreneur um it's

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there's a lot of of work you can do to develop expertise there were three key um barriers to entrepreneurial success that were identified funding people and knowhow and I think there's some interesting insights that come from that entrepreneurs do share common traits when you look at the personality types

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um eron young calls out and then lastly for those of you who might say boy this entrepreneurial thing is interesting but how how might I be an entrepreneur within larger organizations or what things can larger organizations learn from entrepreneurship there's some insights as well that come from this research let me jump into it

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entrepreneurial leaders are made not born um there is no entrepreneurship Gene iron when you look at these entrepreneurs around the world um about half over half of entrepreneurs actually start being entrepreneurs after the age

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of 30 so again hopefully for those of you who have friends who've uh you know gone off to be teal fellows or are um already on their way you may say okay half people don't even start the journey being an entrepreneur why is that I

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think there's three things that go into being an entrepreneur I think it's a skill set it's an inclination to um to to basically um it's some form of expertise you deploy it's a skill set and it's um a a sense of a risk profile

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and I think my two cents on top of this data is for many people it takes time to develop um the Insight I don't see a lot of your peers Medical School excluded who walked through the door from the college saying you know what I got this new idea for a cranium drill I'm going

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to Corner the market for a cranium drill you why is that it's because you probably haven't been in an operating room or really thought through um you know what are the issues that need to be addressed to identify a more Superior Cranium drill I don't see a lot of

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businessto business Toopy Solutions coming from students so there's certain areas you'll develop expertise and insight as you go along and I think my commentary on this is that that may be one of the contributing factors is some individuals it just takes some more time before they start to develop that level

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of expertise um I think the the opposite of what I'm saying or is don't worry if you don't have your idea right now don't feel like you've missed the boat if the place and time where you are today um makes you feel like I don't have that idea I don't have that team I haven't

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yet launched and I haven't yet received my series a funding um just you ultimately this is a long journey and um and I think the data tells us that that that's hopefully reassuring um more than half of entrepreneurs are transition from

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employees I think this reinforces my earlier point about expertise that um often times working for experience if you don't feel like you have coming out of this school experience that key idea or that area you're extremely passionate about some

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folks do find there's value in being a more traditional employee um um and the data talks about this and again my belief is that that's about developing expertise a lot of people um ultimately roll out of companies with new insights and they

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have expertise to go commercialize those it's really analogous to where you are as students today we see a lot of students coming out of classes where you've just come out of a course where you've had a project you've been working on or you've had something that's a team

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you've formed and a lot of those students come out ready to now work as a team they've built familiarity with each other they built an idea so that's really the um the corollary to what many folks are doing in the marketplace um and thirdly there was an entrepreneur who said I was brought up

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in an entrepreneurial family but I became a chartered accountant and then a banker so there's also a component and a thread here from data that says some people are very deliberate about going out and seeking experiences that'll inform them being entrepreneurs so I want to what does that all mean in the

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end is you may be some someone who ends up choosing between now and being an entrepreneur and stepping into this someone who takes a more traditional role and and and I guess the underlying point there is do it for a purpose that you're developing some deliberate skill

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try to be choiceful in what that is if you think that you want to ultimately end up in some entrepreneurial Endeavor so that's point one um when or that's the second part to part one is the the reported success factors so when they surveyed these entrepreneurs and said

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what are the things that made you successful ironically they said experience as an employee again we believe that's because you're developing expertise two is higher education and three was mentors I'm going to jump right to the second point the bottom three factors investors friends and sea

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level Executives and your board I'm going to start on the second point then I'll come back to the first a lot of people presume that you know um these three the investors friends and and members of their board are the ones who inform how they should be developing their business

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or their idea data here says those are actually the three um the bottom three that are reported as helpful why is that often times your friends what are they telling you they're telling you what you want to hear not so much the objective perspective they have I've seen this in my own experience I'll hand somebody a

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you name it a product or you put somebody online to try your your service they're going to tell you most often they're biased and you're getting biased answers people don't really always very rarely will they do what they say in my world I've been in physical goods and services I've put a lot of products

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in front of people from toothbrushes to women's razors to Mosquito prevention devices and virtually all of them if you put something meaningfully thoughtful in front of them if they know you they're going to want you to feel good they be oh that's a great product Gordon man I know how hard you you know in the minds

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they're saying I know how hard you worked what they're telling me is yeah of course I'd buy it and you know you got to know and over time to either develop really insightful ways to to get your friends to give you more objective feedback or you ultimately need to turn

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to other less biased ways I think on the top reported factors um the experience you're getting as employee education you know we all have our own ideas I don't have any one key insight into this I do think though that the the

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the um the learning that does take place in the classroom over time especially in a liberal arts center of gravity world of Harvard it's a pretty rich platform to draw upon I can't tell you how studying geology today is going to inform what you're doing 10 years from

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now but you never know and I've seen in my own life um how I have taken different classes and at times it'll the craziest things will pop up it could be serendipitous or it could actually be meaningfully insightful to the product you're doing or it could be something very serendipitous um and mentorship I think

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this one is key it's something that I know jod you've worked hard to develop up here and it's something that's really a key component to resources that are available to to individuals um in Residence here in theab we do think that that's a really critical experience that you have someone who's partnering with

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you to help you develop your idea and advisory capacity and a mentoring capacity third Point here is value the big organization or corporate work for the experience and training the catch is and this is a point I want to make the

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longer you stay the harder it is to leave so this back to my point about working for experience rather than for the money I have more friends who over our 20s and 30s talked all about at lunch in the larger organizations I've been with about all the things we were

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going to do and they're still there and they keep telling me man I love what you you've done or what you're doing I can't wait I just need my idea I just need this I just need that the problem is every year they stay what's going on

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somebody rais yeah getting raises you know what they're having they're they're starting families they're finding that their obligations in life start to expand and you know what now all of a sudden the opportunity cost to leave gets higher

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and higher so opportunity just the costs of leaving get higher I mean if I my first job out of college I taught high school math for $144,000 a year there was a lot of jobs and a lot of entrepreneurial activity people could have offered me and I'd have taken it

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because I was giving up $114,000 okay um maybe let's say I was making more than that 10 years later which I was it's going to be a lot harder to ultimately I'm now looking at those opportunities let's just be honest

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it's tough so when you get in you know you'll stay it gets comfortable you know what I know the drill yeah I really did want to get out I kind of liking it this is my own personal analogy stick with me if you don't like it I apologize working in bigger organ organization is a little

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bit like um what I imagine it must be like to be an animal in a zoo okay you know three three times a day they come around they drop some food for you maybe you're a tiger you know it's they drop some meat you know once a month some guy shows up and gives me

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shots and make sure I'm healthy and my job is when the family comes by I'm supposed to Roar you know and I know the drill you know it's easy and um and I think that it'd be really tough after 20 years in the zoo to be let go in the middle of I don't know Camp chatka if

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I'm a Siberian tiger and know what to do know where to go and yet again I'm I'm layering a lot of what I imagine it's like to be a Siberian tiger but you know if you're in the wild I'm assuming you know you may not know where your next meal comes from but you know where you

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want to go you're able to start to identify what you know where food may be what great Vistas you want to go look out after it's just it's a different species in the end um and you become that which the environment in which you're a part of I guess is the ultimate

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point and this is really speaks to the third point you know getting in and learning a little bit is great but if you stay too long your opportunity costs get to be high so entrepreneurs are not um born they're made entrepreneurship is rarely a one-off decision so this really

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is about being a career decision there's a career here and a career choice and I think the IAB as an organization is really designed to try to represent to you you a place where you can find the resources if this is the kind of career you might want to step into or explore

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so one of the things we find is that really a small subset of entrepreneurial leaders create the majority of startups um the data here has 10% of entrepreneurs starting between a quarter and almost a third of new businesses one in five start one in two new businesses

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what does that tell me that tells me that you develop expertise in doing this if you start to get into to this as a profession you're going to become you're going to find out quickly if you have what it takes but you'll find that there is there is a learning curve and there is expertise that gets developed you're

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going to hear from an several entrepreneurs who are quoted here towards the end of this um and many of them are are multi-time multiple time entrepreneurs and there's that expertise they develop um some of the data if you're interested there's this concept

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of you know some some of you may find as you get started in this or you know people there's a trap of sort of a a grow and kill um there's individuals who are kind of unwilling to ultimately let go and I've seen this here in the iLab we've had 165 student teams in our first

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year come through in our Residency program and like many startups many multiples of those jod and I have celed seen break up and one of the threads we see is that there's often individuals

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who really are so passionate that they actually hold too tight to their startup and they hold so tight that they don't they're so committed to their vision of what this startup is going to look like that they really don't invite others in when you're on that team you know you're

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re what what we see develop over time is that there's a real brittleness that founder brings and they end up constraining the growth of it they effectively kill it and many of these will fail because they're um they're ultimately um holding too tight to it to

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allow others to join in and really feel like Partners in the growth and you start to feel like this is really somebody else's show and I've had them thinking of one team in particular I won't mention but it's just really difficult number of team members ultimately fell off because said gosh I really want to help but person X or

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person y just it's really their show and you start to see Talent falling off rather than coming around and coalescing around um and um I guess the last point I'm going to skip

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point three and go to four only a small core of entrepreneurial entrepreneurial leaders make a successful transition from startup to mature company this is interesting because it's the opp it's the opposite there's at the same time you're going to learn entrepreneurs are very talented but you'll develop uh

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hopefully Insight if you are do become an entrepreneur into what stage you're really good at some people are really good at spinning up and getting a venture just started on traction and then it's it's important for them to realize actually the skills required to grow an organization continually change

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and evolve as that organization grows what it takes to be leading a startup that is now growing at $25 million in revenue is very different than someone who's got a million dollars in Revenue um and those skills ultimately require greater um scaling and structured

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thinking Pro process starts to work its way into the organization um how you actually think about your businesses right different and so I can only think of one person I know who grew a startup um from two co-founders to now I think it's A5

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billion doll a year Revenue company and the individual one of the two co-founders has stayed with that company from the beginning it started as a um it's called Roadside Rescue and it started as a um a little business that would uh kind of almost like triaa the

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car service if you if your car breaks down it's a service that came through your credit card for free and and that company has changed so much since Roadside Rescue um it It ultimately got in they started to realize well we're selling this service we can actually

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also start to um expand it into batteries they got into battery repair for a lot of mobile devices then they got into actually insurance they would sell you insurance so you go to Best Buy and buy a TV now and they'll offer you nine 12- Monon extended warranty this

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business has changed so much over time it's very very special that on somebody could actually stick with it I think it's one of the most rarest birds to find so think more about you know as much as you can grow and kill you got to also know where your own limits lie and when you need to hand

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off um three funding people and knowhow are the biggest barriers to entrepreneurial success so um access to Capital was the number one reported um biggest issue um so funding people and knowhow um there's an interesting uh

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formula I sat with a VC when I started this job 18 month almost 18 months ago and he said to me um um G Gordon he said you know you want to know what how I think about bus startups and and entrepreneurs I think of uh and he gave me a formula he said GF plus

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GI plus what is it t BT trajectory equals F I said okay unpackage that for me he said well good founder plus good idea plus TR trory meaning up you're growing you're growing your idea you've

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got people adopting it equals funding he goes you need two out of those three to interest my business in funding you and I promise you unless you are well known and have started multiple startups it's not GF so it better be G GI plus

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trajectory if you're most of you presumably in this in this room and that's not a sign of disrespect or dismissiveness don't misre read that I think it's just more a sense of people who are putting a lot of other people's money into ideas actually fairly risk

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averse and they want to know that you're on to something and they'll either Bank on your name if you're well known because you've done it before and people know that or they can point to the metrics of your idea and your trajectory so um think about that equation as you

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think about access to funding all there's that's something you'll come across as you as you go through your journey but um think of these three things um um you think about funding people in know how so entrepreneurial leaders need to choose between being rich and being King noome wer and Harvard Business School students here

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you may have gnome or you'll be able to choose gnome your second year um he talks a lot about he does extensive research on startups he talks a lot about this dichotomy and this Choice it's a little bit related to my point about leaders who hold on too tight do

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you want to be rich or do you want to be a king is what he says and he says if you want to be king you're you're going to ultimately pursue the um you're going to you're going to so pursue your dream you you you have to be prepared that you may not reach full scale because you're

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not always going to attract the most talented people to come to your idea if you are committed to 100% of your idea coming to fruition and again he's not using the word rich or King in in a he's a very broad ecumenical definition of that his point is is if you want to be

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rich meaning you want to see your idea really blossom be willing to you know would you rather get 80% of your idea and the impact you're looking to have but take it globally or would you rather see you know you're just so demand that your

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idea is right that it has to be embodied in your idea be prepared for folks that you're not going to ultimately be able to scale it as big that's what he's observed with the data and he's written a whole book on it we had a whole book uh launch with him here last year it's a really interesting um um dichotomy

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then second point about um about people finding people skills are difficult to find but PE finding people with the right values is even harder when you're in a startup you've got to at the earliest Point have a team that can work well together so yes you need to have so

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many of you want to find either individuals with an engineering background or a specific Science Background or you're looking for somebody who's got credentials and education or medicine or in other areas um that's important but if if you're not working well as a team I use the iLab

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the iLab itself is a startup in a sense it happens to be a startup within a very large organization being Harvard we're a four-person team our days are very crazy but we really are very complimentary in our skill sets we get along well and when

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things when that when things are really hopping here and we have we're up to our eyeballs I know and I believe my team all knows we lean into each other we actually implicitly trust each other and we really enjoy ultimately working together at hours that you know um will

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often be very odd and and different than most other employees to Harvard University and we've replicated that and other teams and I've been on some teams that were awful I mean I've been in I've been on one startup this was an Inc magazine fastest growing company and I sat and my jaw almost hit the ground as

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I watched a fight almost break out between our lawyer and our chief scientist um not the kind of environment that was that healthy and ultimately it was a sign of a lot of corrosive behavior in the organization it didn't the organization by the way didn't succeed um uh after doing very well

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early on but um that people with the right values they're people who tend to be rowing in the same direction as you and it's a real important Point um make one point on this and I want to I want to hustle this along because I think that I think uh there's

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a great list coming here with with Jody sharing some applied things but I just say entrepreneurs do share core traits they really share a sense that they control their Destiny um or they they have an internal locus of control they call it it's a belief that your actions

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lead to outcomes okay not that external for forces control and this is really interesting because it's um there's going to be times when when ultimately um you may not see things as having opportunity you think the economy is

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down you think that you know this is a really difficult time it's the entrepreneur will often have a Viewpoint which is um that's great that's great but let me move on to you know I know that I believe I can actually drive an outcome here I'm not overly in you know

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gosh you know it's been terrible the last month you know our our business is weather dependent and you know it's just there's a sense of fatalism that is not what I think entrepreneurs bring and the research they they talk about really brings that forward um they also see

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opportunity where others see disruption again this speaks to people's risk tolerance um to their willingness to um to ultimately see opportunity where others see disruption and I think it's pretty self-explanatory that Viewpoint so my hope here is you're thinking about this is through your own lenses where do

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you fit on this how would you rate yourself as you think about these components you don't have to know it all this is not a I'm not trying to create um a a um declaring yourself as either fitting that or not but just in your own mind think about hey how do I match up

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to that what is it and you may watch yourself evolve over time or you may be aware I meet a lot of people on this risk aversion I think it's one that that that often will trip a lot of us up there's times that I've made choices that have been more uh risk averse than risk-seeking so I don't want you to

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think that oh we're finished products but I do think that that's one I've seen a lot of students and you yourselves because you're facing a lot of choices as graduates from this University or if you're from another University you've got choices there's no doubt about it I believe that this is a group of very high achieving and individuals who

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really want to make an impact so um you're going to ultimately if you choose this path foro a fair amount of upfront salary or cash if you choose to step into it right away and I think it's this um this willingness to basically have a

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confidence in yourself and ultimately have a level of of willingness to take on risk the reward comes that if you can grow it you can ultimately either see your idea come to fruition if there's a commercial and a for-profit side you may see a financial return that's

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disproportionate to um or that is proportionate to your risk you've taken on but I think that's important to be aware of and then I I do want to acknowledge there's cultural influences here the United States is a very is a culture is very supportive of this kind of environment of trying um failure is

35:21

is in many cases um uh at times celebrated certainly it's not something that people wear as sh shameful I think there are certain cultures where either structurally the the country is set up that it's more difficult to practice being an entrepreneur laws May um May

35:37

prevent you from writing off a bad a bad business in the United States if you set up as a as an entity that's separate from you as an individual that entity fails you move on the the government has set up a system that supports you taking those risks without feeling like you're

35:52

putting yourself in any Financial harm long term um you may be in a culture or just more culturally it's something that is difficult to do people don't necessarily look upon taking risk as uh something that's positive it may be something you're risking uh you may be

36:08

in more of a community culture where that brings um some level of discomfort to to those who identify with you so I acknowledge that um and those are factors that also you need to be thinking about if those apply to you then lastly um there's a lot traditional

36:25

companies can learn and and for those of you you're looking at at larger organizations meritocracies you're going to hear a lot of companies if you do go to other career uh nights talking about the meritocracy and we give you all the responsibility you can handle and you can show us what you can do you know try

36:43

to really if you're if you are evaluating those as two different options try to really push through that marketing speak and try to ask really what is what how are people rewarded is there a is there a career path for people who want to be entrepreneurs

36:58

um you know I've done that track I don't see too many organizations even the ones that are celebrated in all the magazines and the press as being Progressive and new organizations and structures um very often it's very difficult to be an entrepreneur you're very self uh you're

37:15

very lonely existence much like being an entrepreneur there's not a career path that's designed for you um and I think that if you end up do going into a more large organization how can you be that that that uh manager that individual who can support Innovation taking place within established organizations so I

37:32

think that there's a lot that companies can learn from what entrepreneurial leaders are doing today so my hope this is um concludes my section I've got a couple quotes and then I'll hand it over to jod but i' just say My Hope Is that this sets a little bit of perspective for you okay if you're under 30 you

37:50

don't have your idea don't worry about it you know obviously keep working at it what are the characteristics that go into um finding teams and involved with people this whole Rich versus King concept play with these ideas think about how they may apply with you I've

38:07

intentionally talked at about a 10,000 foot level here we're a very applied place here in the iLab so this is one of the few workshops where I'm really trying to more set context for you and kind of paint the background of the canvas um a lot of what we do here is more focused on how do you actually get

38:23

going and putting your ideas into practice so I leave you with these three um quotes I asked three successful entrepreneurs to just kind of share what would the wisdom or the perspective they would say looking back on their career John mcneel this his fourth startup he

38:39

actually U since he wrote this he named ernston Young's entrepreneur of the year in the Northeast he's on his fourth startup here he's done uh three very different previous startups but he talks about the leap is a lot less scary than it looks um I was really intimidated to

38:55

take a leap from a great job great career path steer off in a direction very different from his classmates think about that point about opportunity cost we talked about and John didn't go to graduate school all his friends did I've known John for 20 years in a word he he

39:11

it was risk he was facing I spent too much time churning on the potential downsides before taking the leap and launching a business as it turned out most of the negatives impa income incomea income in income impact failure risk isolation they all turned out to be

39:27

more than manageable ultimately the thrill of being a Serial entrepreneur for startups his case for good outcomes uh later I can't imagine doing anything else joh Brent Clan uh kimman went to HBS he

39:43

talks about two pieces of advice only reason a startup fails is it runs out of cash don't run out of cash sounds simple but don't get caught up in spending hype you can be really creative uh in a more budgetary fashion don't waste your time I like this one a lot personally don't

39:59

waste your time or money building a product people don't want to buy get a group of Target customers not friends or family back to slide two or three stay close to them work with them build out your business um if they don't want to help you with an idea it might not be worth your time since they didn't feel

40:14

enough pain to work on something so if you think these people are perfect Partners they don't want to work with you really ask yourself why why wouldn't they I think this is a great solution for them why aren't they willing to what's the issue and then lastly Antonio Rodriguez Antonio started and sold a

40:30

company um in the late 90s for those of you that were um studied that bubble or been a part of it that was a very frenetic time a lot of activity with startups and then the bubble burst in 2000 so he talks about I wish I'd known that being an entrepreneur is a career

40:45

choice and um that as such you want to have a bunch of experiences he sold his first startup really quickly thank you 1999 that was his reference to the bubble I assume the whole thing was a more of a hit-based lottery process it took another six years for me to learn

41:01

that there are actually skills and connections that you grow better by taking the Long View so I share those with you um and now I turn it over to jod to talk about 10 things you should

41:19

know okay can you hear me am I too loud um that was really great I actually learned a lot and you know as I was thinking about it as you were presenting it a lot of what you're um talking about really resonated with me in my career um

41:35

but hindsight is such a beautiful thing I didn't know I wanted to be an entrepreneur starting out uh so what I was going to do today I have absolutely no data to support anything I'm saying it's purely my personal experience as an entrepreneur so take it with a grain of salt um I find that uh I'm good at being

41:53

an entrepreneur but not so good at teaching it um but I will share with you my personal experiences and you can do with it what you want um so just a bit of background I did not set out to be an entrepreneur I graduated from undergrad with I think it was an international

42:09

business degree because I like to travel and I took a job that um would enable me to travel it was uh at General Electric one of the biggest companies in the world how ironic and um I liked it because every three months they plot me

42:24

in a new GE business and get to see the world and be on expense account and learn a lot in a really short period of time so I took that job and I had a ball and I had no idea I wanted to be an entrepreneur um and I did that for a couple years and then I started looking

42:40

around at the my boss and my boss's boss and their boss and what I was supposedly aspiring to be and realized I didn't really want those jobs and um to take Gordon's analogy you know I don't think I was the tiger that was willing to Roar

42:55

when someone told me to Roar um I kind of wanted to control my own destiny and uh didn't like being told what to do and often got into trouble by executing on something without asking permission and I was told on numerous occasions that I was I was too direct and I was too

43:12

honest and I should really you know be more political and I wasn't really good at that kind of stuff so anyway um I decided to leave the corporate world and I went into Venture Capital so I thought it would be really interesting to learn about both the investment side and also

43:29

the startup side of the world uh because I didn't really know what I wanted to do next but it sounded like a kind of a cool opportunity and I did that for a few years and I loved it um but what I loved about it was not the part on the investing side I really loved hanging

43:44

out with the entrepreneurs and figuring out that blank sheet of paper and identifying a market and building a team and um all those types of things that are involved in a startup what I didn't like was the investment side of things and hanging out with my partners so I

44:00

wanted to hang out with the entrepreneurs um so then I went to business school um I graduated in 96 right before that 99 bubble that Gordon was talking about and um when I was at HBS I took a lot of entrepreneurial courses there weren't that many at the

44:16

time uh it's a much more robust department now I'm happy to say um but those were the the classes that interested me and I was one of a handful of my classmates that actually took a job in a startup at that time uh sad to say 15 years ago it was unusual not to

44:33

take a job in a consulting firm or Investment Bank or a large corporation and uh my classmates laughed at me because I took a huge pay cut um but I went to work for a startup um and you know again I had no idea I wanted to be an entrepreneur but I knew I what I

44:49

didn't want to do and all those interviews at the investment Banks and the consulting firms I just could not bring myself to take one of of those jobs so I knew there was something different about me and you know in hindsight I realized I I came from an entrepreneurial family I didn't realize it at the time but my parents um owned a

45:06

hotel and restaurant in Vermont and um you know they controlled their own destiny they dealt with limited resources they grew something from nothing to something and then they sold it so you know looking back with hindsight I realized that I did have entrepreneurship in my genes and uh

45:23

there was something about me that these more conventional jobs just didn't appeal so I took a job in a startup and um learned a ton um I I've since done about half a dozen startups mostly in the technology space uh starting with the

45:40

internet at the early stages of the internet and then moving over to Mobile when the internet got too mature and wasn't as interesting to me um my first company was called IM Market it was sold to D and Brad street it was originally a cdrom software company and we transformed it into a web company um I'm

45:57

going to talk a little bit about that in my lessons learned the second company was called plan it all sold to Amazon for 100 million in 1998 again thanks to the bubble luck and timing uh had a lot to do with that I can't take a lot of credit and um my third one was hotel

46:14

luxury oh no third one was send.com which was originally sen wine.com and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute um and then I did hotel luxury which is a um a website that buil built um uh portals for luxury boutique hotels

46:31

to sell their furniture and uh then I did a mobile company called Mobius which then transformed to snap my life and again I'm setting the stage to uh talk talk to you about um what I learned from all these and then the um the last one I I had five startups where I was not a

46:47

Founder I was one of those people that joined startups at a very early stage I was usually the first one of the first five employees um part of the management team and I was not the idea person I was the entrepreneur the one that liked to execute as Gordon was alluding to

47:03

earlier and then my last one that I did before joining the iLab staff was um where I was a co-founder and that was called drink and it was a mobile app for wine um so where is the clicker thing um so again no data to support any

47:21

of my lessons learned I um I'm just sharing with you with hin being 2020 things that I've learned from my mistakes and my successes um I have to say that um you know one of my slides is don't be afraid to fail I've learned so

47:37

much more from my failures than I have my successes um and uh you know a lot of the successes uh were luck and timing so um you know I can't take credit for all of those but um uh I'll share with you some of my learnings so you know the first one and

47:53

you know Gordon talked about the idea and Innovation and commercialization I'm a really firm believer that it's not about the idea certainly helps to have a great idea um and if you have an idea that's going to transform the world um all the power to you but mo more often than not um you

48:10

don't have that great idea um and what I've realized that it the idea doesn't have to be brilliant just do it better do it cheaper do it faster do it somehow improve upon the way it's being done now um and you know there's a lot of that

48:27

that that you'll see in my slides that's very similar but um you know try to innovate in a way that does something that's already being done but do it better um most of my startups changed their original idea anyway I had a company that was send

48:43

wine.com and it was uh wine gifs and we morphed into send.com and it was completely different business model and we became a giant gift company and the reason I joined the company originally is because I liked wine um but you know you morph your idea

49:00

morphs um because of the market it morphs because you can't raise money it you know whatever it might be send.com happened to be uh resonated with the investors they thought it was going to be a bigger market cap and we owned that URL and they thought let's bend.com so

49:16

the idea is going to morph um Mobius was another one it was a mobile app um it was a a way to index mobile apps before the App Store even existed we were way way too early to Market we realized that uh we were creating a market that didn't

49:31

exist and that's a really hard thing to do and I'll talk about that later and we morphed into snap my life which was a mobile photo sharing site so completely different idea than what originally uh we had intended to and just you know Google they didn't have a great idea

49:46

there are a million search sites out there and they said you know what we're going to create a search site that doesn't suck we want to do it better than everyone else they didn't invent a new market and look where they are today so my first lesson and my first words of wisdom is you don't have to have the big

50:02

idea the second one is a follow on to that that it really is all about the people it's about execution and if you have the right team and you execute well you could work with just about any idea um and this is you know sounds kind of

50:20

silly but good people can fix bad ideas but good ideas can't fix bad people so I highly recommend you start with a great team um it's a marriage uh I've had a lot of these things go horribly wrong because we didn't choose each other

50:37

wisely I also recommend don't do it alone have a co-founder it's lonely and it's hard um at the same time don't have 10 co-founders because then it makes it really hard to split up the company and figure out who's in charge um have those

50:54

difficult conversations early when you do have co-founders make sure that the equity splits and the corporate structure is ironed out very early on and a lot of times you know you're you're partnering with friends and classmates and people that you trust and

51:09

you believe in and you don't think it's going to be an issue and you have a conversation um but things can get ugly and things can change um so work all that out early but to me it's all about the people and start with a great team the next one is and I think Gordon

51:26

alluded to this too earlier on make something that customers want to buy um a lot of my startups were creating a new market that didn't exist and it's a lot harder um when there's not an actual Market that you're playing in um and all

51:42

companies are going to fail if they don't create something that customers want I think Brent had that in his uh Lessons Learned um and then the other thing is and particularly now in this day and age it's so easy to launch something and get customer feedback um

51:58

even if it's not in the technology industry um but try to validate your concept and validate your Market really early on before you spend a lot of time and money doing what you're doing um and then again you know like I said most of my companies we pivoted and we changed

52:16

our strategy and ultimately what the company does um as we realized that either there wasn't a customer there wasn't a marketer no one was willing to buy it um so be willing to change don't be so stuck with your original idea listen to people get lots of feedback and then be willing to

52:33

Pivot um and then here's my really big one and again hindsight being 2020 I learned so much about this Focus keep it simple don't try to be everything to everyone um make sure it's a really easy thing to explain to people what you do

52:49

if your friend's asking you what you're doing with your company and and what does it do if you can't explain it um you know something might be wrong um and don't try to take over the world you know pick a small Market a niche market and do things really well um you know

53:07

you can always grow and you can always expand into other markets but make sure you have a a an idea that resonates with a particular Market space um again this is is similar to the other one but don't reinvent the wheel um opportunities for disruption are

53:22

everywhere build a business in existing Market try to do it better cheaper um another lesson learned um again just through my personal experiences start at the low end of the market you know it's a lot easier to make a cheap product better and move up the market than to

53:39

start at the top end and make a powerful product cheaper and to come down so start with something simple start with something easy and then work your way up um and here's another big one you know a lot of times I I had lots of

53:56

really great ideas that I thought were really great ideas that no one else was doing and then I spent a few months researching it writing a business plan and talking to investors and realized that there was a reason why there was no one else doing it and there was no competition uh I

54:13

love competition if I go into a market and there's no one else in it you know they must someone must know something that I don't know um competition validates your industry um my my mobile app wine uh drink wine when we first started uh there weren't a

54:29

lot of competitors there were a couple and um we had a really hard time uh talking to investors and validating the concept and uh we launched in the App Store there were about five of them and then May and then about six months later there were probably 20 different wine

54:45

apps I think there's 60 now the more competitors we had the easier it was to have those investor conversations and to talk about why we were different and what we were doing better than everyone else if there's no one else to talk about and how you're different from them

55:01

um it's really hard to have those conversations so I like competition um Gordon also alluded to this the whole um do you want to be rich or do you want to be king this is another big thing for me um I've seen a lot of my co-founders go down the wrong

55:17

path because they didn't want to give up the equity um it you know you'd rather own less of something that's worth a lot than all of something that's worth nothing uh my company plan it all that was sold to Amazon um we uh had a lot of

55:34

equity starting out um and uh we had investors and we brought on a management team and we had to dilute a lot of our equity and give up a lot of equity and in the end we sold to Amazon for $100 million and you know I don't think if we

55:51

didn't do all of that that the company would have been worth anything so um you know in the end it was the right thing to do um someone also told me this trade stock for something that improves your chances of success so bring in investors

56:06

co-founders employees um anyone who you think is going to increase your likelihood of success trade stock for that um you know I think it's going to be the best way to go in the end um and this is the other thing about the passion part uh you can't do it for

56:24

the money I mean there's so many people you look at the successes and you look at um Facebook and you know all all these companies that have had successes and they're they're the anomaly they're the the minority that succeed um you got to do it because you love it you believe

56:40

in what you're doing you're passionate about it um it's always going to cost a lot more and take a lot longer than you ever imagined U be so much harder and you know as Gordon said it's lonely and it's hard um so you got to love what you you you're doing and you got to do it

56:55

for that reason only not for the big win um the the other thing again I think this goes back to the ego issue um that Gordon also alluded to but you know be confident not arrogant you know you're

57:10

going to be hit with rejection left and right and people saying that your idea is terrible um so you have to be confident you have to be um you know have conviction with your idea but at the same time you have you know humility is important and you know you can say I

57:27

don't know and when you talk to investors or you talk to people who um are mentors or advisers don't pretend that you know everything I mean they're there to help you and um I think to be humble and to ask questions it it makes

57:43

a much better entrepreneur um but you know at the same time you know be willing to fight for what you believe in and you're going to get um people saying no and it's a stupid idea over and over again and you have to believe that it's not and keep going in the face of

57:59

rejection um but at the same time you know I I've seen the egos get in the way and people who are afraid to admit when they're wrong and afraid to change their idea or pivot when um they're getting a lot of feedback in that direction and it's ruined a lot of companies so I

58:15

think you have to be confident but be open to um listening to feedback from people who uh are experts in the area um and then the last one as I said earlier is you know don't be afraid to fail again I learned so much more from my failures and my

58:30

successes I didn't make as much money but um I think it made me a better person and um you know most of them are going to fail you're GNA you got to do it again because you love it um you got to enjoy the process and you

58:45

got to be doing it because you'll love to do it and um you know assume that it's probably going to fail and a hope that uh hope that you succeed um so with that I think we're going to start talking about um what the iLab can offer you um again this is my personal

59:01

experience my laundry list of Lessons Learned um with the uh 15 years of entrepreneurial experience I've had and I'm happy to talk to anyone uh on a one-on-one basis uh going forward and you know this all of this background uh that I've talked about brought me to

59:18

brought me here today um and what Drew me to the IAB is that I love entrepreneurship and I'm one of those people people I think you know according to Gordon's data I like the really early stage I like the idea and figuring out what you want to do um and as soon as

59:34

the company gets big and you need a management team and I had people reporting to me and a job description I was no longer interested so the stage at which um all of you guys are at and all of our iLab teams are at is is my favorite stage and I love helping companies get off the ground um and

59:50

that's why I came here um and I'm really excited about what the iLab has to offer and uh we're just getting started started ourselves as Gordon said we're a startup um but we've got a lot of great programming and a lot of interesting um resources that can help entrepreneurs get started

00:06

so what would you have here do you want to get up and talk with me um so the first things first um the iLab itself I don't know if if you guys have all spent time here or been inside the iLab uh

00:21

30,000 square ft of space people can come and use it on a dayuse basis as long as you're a current Harvard student and are working on an idea and you can utilize all the resources that we have um we also have should I get into the programming stuff

00:38

or do we want to yeah why don't you talk about the next one don't you talk about the the programming that you've worked on because um and then and and then we can talk about how people actually I'm gonna have Kate talk about ways people can get connected talk about the programming okay so um we have the space

00:53

and you can use it on a dayuse uh basis we also have a Residency program where you can apply for dedicated space on a semester basis to work on your idea this is for teams that are a little more well formed they've been working on their idea for a while they could benefit from dedicated space and the community that's

01:10

associated with that and you could apply for that uh each semester and uh we currently have about 75 teams working out of here and um it's uh it's a really great way to get entrenched in the entrepreneurial community at the iLab from a programming St Point uh the

01:26

workshops are a really great way uh to get involved if you don't have an idea you're just interested in entrepreneurship we offer uh 25 to 30 workshops a semester on All Phases of Entrepreneurship very Hands-On skill building as Gordon said before I bring

01:42

in entrepreneurs from the outside investors lawyers who all work in the startup field to teach you about entrepreneurship and uh you can go to our website and find out about uh all those different workshops we also have office hours we have

01:58

experts and residents who conduct office hours and have one-on-one meetings with students that um you are more than welcome to utilize if you want to toss around an idea or you're working on a venture and want some expert advice and um we have amazing experts and residents

02:15

from all the different school from different schools represented as well as experts in individual Fields uh like Venture capitalists and lawyers um we also have a mentorship program and again this is for V uh students who have Ventures that are a little further along

02:31

and can benefit from that uh ongoing relationship with a mentor and uh you can sign up to have a mentor assigned to you uh to work with you throughout the semester and Beyond and then there's all sorts of other um amazing opportunities to get involved there's uh startup

02:48

scramble that's coming up next weekend not this weekend and it's a way for students who are either looking to join a team or have an idea and want to pull together a team um we have challenges that uh uh you can form a team and um

03:04

compete for uh resources and uh monetary rewards and uh what am I forgetting there's all sorts of other oneoff events we have imersion events there's January term trips you can apply for we've got a trip going to Silicon valleys or

03:21

faculty-led trips really interested if you've got an idea you want to pursue Silicon Valley is the right destination the other is we're going to New York City for more of a cultural entrepreneurship theme so the Arts food

03:36

um fashion design media if those are areas of Interest we know New York is a real hot spot for that kind of activity so that's also an opportunity and then one thing I also forgot to mention you know I spent my almost my entire entrepreneurial career joining startups

03:52

we also do a startup career fair in early February for students who are looking to join a startup that don't necessarily want to start a company on their own uh these are all companies that are actively hiring for internships and full-time employment um and so that's a really great way to um figure

04:08

out if you want to be an entrepreneur let me let me also add too um from a different angle we've had a chance this last Academic Year to really see there's really three areas of student interest that ideas and teams form around and we we are organizing as

04:26

we continue to grow as a startup around those three areas and we um one of them is social and cultural entrepreneurship there's a lot of students who have ideas that generally fit under this whether they be education related they may be social justice they may be um you name

04:43

it a lot of different ideas and teams secondary Health and Sciences we have a number of teams that have been in Residence that um are looking around either Diagnostics or uh more bringing Healthcare to the home um there is some more more heavy science involved the

05:00

vacis being one some of these spin out of courses the third area is what we're calling more Tech or consumer it's really anything from mobile web physical goods and services it's just it's a clustering we do as we think about programming but it typically has a

05:15

consumer in mind some end user that you're looking to aggregate lots of individuals together and these practice areas you're going to find some of the workshops that Jody's put together are a little more tailored towards one of

05:31

those three than others although a good number are also intentionally designed for any practice area we think what we're building here is trying to be a resource that's University wide that's both the programming but also this facility where we believe in the strength of these three areas actually

05:47

intermingling and being around each other and we've talked a lot about forget the programming we're doing the stuff that happens when we're not doing program programming where students are meeting each other um in the break area people are meeting each other at workshops I can't tell you the number of stories we've seen um and heard of where

06:04

people like I met someone I never would have met at this University and we both now are working on a project together or this person really you know I I one of the ones I've talked about a lot was I had a student from the edld program in the Ed school here working with two two college students who had a financial

06:21

services startup and they had a charitable component that was meant to support schools that they'd Half Baked and a lot of their customers were really interested in it and if it wasn't for that edld student from the Ed school who sat down she'd been at new schools Ventures before um if you know Beth

06:37

rabbit and and Beth in a half an hour had unlocked for these students a whole new way they were thrilled their customers were happy um not that this has to be the end of the story but that team rolled out with v Venture funding

06:52

in in the low Millions to now go commercialize that idea and and those two students all agreed we never would have bumped into each other if it weren't for the kind of convening ability that a place like the IAB has so part of this is just about getting into the game too jump in the other thing we

07:09

missed was faculty or teaching courses here and that's very foundational and a lot of students meet each other that way too so workshops By Night courses that are taught we've had I think this term eight different courses from six different Harvard schools faculty teaching courses that have to do with

07:25

Entre r preneurship or innovation in their disciplines so intentionally maybe a little bit feeling like oh my gosh there's all you know how do they all fit together you know what we're a Marketplace we're not an we're not an escalator we're a jungle gym and you know get ready to climb on

07:40

that jungle gym but it requires you to also actually move move along and it's a very participatory journey and you know what I wouldn't have it any other way because if you're going to be an entrepreneur if there's one thing you've hopefully heard jod and myself talk about is it requires you you to be willing to go through obstacles in this

07:57

journey you're going to face them everybody's going to face them so it would be unfair of us to set up such a friction-free environment that you felt like wow this is pretty easy it's kind of fun you know you guys really take good care of us or you know we want to make it something where you have to kind of make choices but there's a lot of resources we do think we pull together

08:13

for you and as Gordon said earlier our mission's really simple to help students take their ideas as far as they can go you know our job again we have no ulterior motives we're not we're not like an accelerator or an incubator or we don't take Equity we don't charge

08:29

rent we're here to support you and increase your likelihood of success we want to unlock the resources of the university and unlock the resources of the greater entrepreneurial ecosystem for you and you know I I like to tell people we want to give you an unfair competitive Advantage we want to make

08:45

sure that you succeed and resource you in every way possible and that's what all of the programming is set up to do but as Gordon said um so well it's also also the the intangible the the the secret sauce to this space I think is the interactions among all of you and

09:02

facilitating those interactions so we want to create opportunities for you to find each other and pull together teams that'll ultimately uh be successful let me introduce Kate range um she's the fourth member of our team she works with Neil and operations Kate is um the

09:20

number one fan of many students she's certainly one of our biggest uh we're certainly biggest fans of hers um Kate is someone you will see a lot if you choose to spend time here um Kate is someone you can ask any question at any time of day when you're here and we've asked her to just kind of walk you

09:37

through really practically the last slide we have which is how do I get connected okay thanks Jody and Gordon what can I actually do what are you recommending as my next step so let me turn it over to you you've got a handheld mic am I am I live all right yep and just walk people all right um so

09:54

I am part of the operations team with Neil who couldn't make it tonight but um I want to talk to you about how to get involved practically so the first thing I would tell you to do is sign up for the newsletter um the link is on the slide it's also the far right tab on our uh web page and that's going to be

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delivered to your inbox the latest and most updated events eir appointments Legal Office hour appointments um events going around Boston and it's just a lot of information that I think is is really good way to digest what we're doing on a

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weekly basis um you can also like us on Facebook we have Facebook page um and follow us on Twitter Neil is daily tweeting and updating and sending out more kind of fun piics and information um so events that we put on

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that I really think are helpful for students um according to the feedback we get our workshops um so every Tuesday and Thursday 6:00 to 8 uh you probably registered for this event EV so there other Eventbrite Pages um and so check out on our IAB events calendar which is

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also on the web page you can go um just browse through everything and uh register for events that interest you um so in like Jody said in know a week and a half we have the startup scramble which is going to be an all- weekend event um where students with

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ideas pitch and students who want to join a team can pick an idea um and then at the end of the weekend hopefully some teams have formed and some progress has been made on some Ventures and I think it's really exciting I'm really looking forward to it and uh you can check it out also on our web page um so something

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near and dear to my heart is the President's challenge which is um an initiative we ran in the spring semester of this past year for social entrepreneurship we dispersed $150,000 of funding to um student teams who addressed one of five Global issues um

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this was my project it's my baby and um we're going to be running it again this year getting getting a little bit earlier start so stay tuned there will be more info on the website as well and um there are lots of clubs around the university that uh maybe are particular to a school particular to your school

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that are focused on entrepreneurship and Innovation um so look at those Club listings as well and they're going to have different information um hopefully you know talk about what we do here as well um but you know it's a good way to connect with people in your school uh so

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so check those out as well okay let me add let me add to this because I think this is also the other point here is there's a lot of Club activity that happens here in the IAB we are an extension when I started this I talked about 10 schools there's 10 Deans that I report to we really consider ourselves

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an extension of your campus um we're not we are crossovered in this University you are you your ID gets you in the door here and I want you to feel that sense of an extension of your campus there's a lot lot of clubs as as Kate has

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referenced there's a lot of club meetings that will happen down here that are intentionally open to broader audiences than just the school whose club that club comes from so there's a lot of programming that you may hear about that doesn't hit our calendar but we again we view ourselves as a node in

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the network so we're presenting a lot of the programming we serve up but we very much support a lot of these clubs and so that's why we put it up here it's a great way to get into The Unofficial current that works within the iLab and if you're looking for names of clubs

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you're not sure come ask Kate or Jody or myself and we can certainly give you some ideas as well so back to you okay um so also what I think students find really helpful um is sitting down with an expert uh we have experts in Residence and we also have legal office

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hours with lawyers these are half-hour appointments they're free you can go in with a problem that you're having and get individualized specific advice um you can always email me for those appointments as I said earlier they're also on our newsletter so that's even more incentive to open up that

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newsletter when it comes in to get an appointment um and if you're already on a team and and you're looking for a way to move forward I would suggest you apply for long-term residency in the spring those applications will open up later in the semester um so we have about 70 65 70 teams per term who move

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in um meet other teams work on their Ventures and take full advantage of our resources um even if you're not part of a team and and you don't feel ready for residency I would say the most important thing is to come here you know come work out of here because there are in incredible connections that are

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happening organically in the kitchen people sharing ideas as they you know open a bag of almonds and talk about how great it is to have free Fritos and coffee so really you know come down here meet other students and share your ideas all right thank you so that really

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is app on entrepreneurship

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