The Entrepreneur’s Pitch

I have frequent and recurring conversations with students about how to build an entrepreneurial career path. In other words, I'm frequently put on the spot to answer the question: "How do I go from being a student at the Leeds School of Business to being an entrepreneur?" I've come to answer that question in two parts.

The first part is understanding and leveraging the value of the entrepreneurship courses that students can take in the program, and that the fundamental importance of entrepreneurship education is two-fold: It teaches students how to identify, validate and act on an idea. And it also teaches students how to draw on all disciplines of business - management, strategy, marketing, finance, operations and project management, and more - and to integrate them all into a business model that one can articulate to experienced investors and entrepreneurs in the form of a business plan.

The second part is every bit as important, and answers the question "how can students build networks of trusted advisers, potential team members and a variety of other resources that will prove crucial to their project or business success?" It also predicts what happens when proven entrepreneurial achievers and leaders gather in close proximity for any length of time. We call these outcomes "productive collisions." It's also referred to by others as the power of place.

The Deming Center places enormous emphasis on helping our students to plant themselves in the entrepreneurial laboratory that is Boulder and our surrounding region. We can open the doors, but our students must be proactive and relentless in taking advantage of the networks which we can help them to join. The work is then up to them. I've been encouraged by how well our students "get it," and how well that visibility within and access to our dynamic business community serves our mission and the aspirations of our students.

This enthusiasm for creating these productive collisions creates a challenge for me and my colleagues to keep track of students, as many of them are simultaneously steeped in 2 or 3 projects or internships - and testing different sectors and types of businesses. We at the Deming Center are rewarded most for our work when we witness those opportunities opening themselves to students.

In the end, I've come to the conclusion that the surest track to launching a career as an entrepreneur is to position yourself in a community of entrepreneurs - people who have a shared energy and passion to play a role in creating something; people who thrive on creative and innovative projects and who have a high capacity for ambiguity, challenge and risk. So if there's any recommendation to be made, it's to live in the right community, the right neighborhood. Hang around in a group of like-minded, self-described entrepreneurs and it will be almost impossible to not become one. It's clear - the path to entrepreneurial career opportunities is all about the "hood".

Today's post is a guest entry by the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute's Director of Entrepreneurship and Business Development, Trent Yang. Thank you, Trent!

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Of all the services that that the Deming Center provides to CU Boulder's faculty and students, one of its most important roles is to foster the understanding, education, and promotion of entrepreneurship across all industry sectors.   Nowhere is this connection stronger than through CU's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a year-old joint institute between CU and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

As an early advisor and architect of the energy institute, the Deming Center played a significant role in not only identifying entrepreneurship and industry relationships as a critical part of the energy institute, but has actively guided the creation of both an incubation process and a thriving industry partnership program within the Institute.  This relationship was cemented when RASEI decided to hire a full time director of Entrepreneurship and Business Development to oversee and build upon the solid foundation that had been created.

I was fortunate enough to have met Paul Jerde two years ago, at a time when the Deming Center was just starting to become involved in RASEI's formation.  And one year ago, I moved back from Boston to my home town of Boulder, CO to be the director of entrepreneurship and business development at RASEI.

Since I joined the team--the blink of an eye it seems--one of the more exciting activities that we created for RASEI was the standardization of an incubation process that brings together entrepreneurs, industry experts, business & science students, as well as the faculty.

In conjunction with the Deming Center and our innovative & successful Technology Transfer Office (TTO), we created the Market Assessment Program (MAP) in conjunction with our existing Proof of Concept (POC) program. 

MAP brought together a team comprising of a industry lead, 1-2 MBA student and the PhD/Post-Doc researcher to spend three months to answer the following questions about a particular technology:  

(1) Is this technology commercialization?

(2) If so, how would you commercialize it (start-up, licensing, partnership, etc)?  and

(3) What are the biggest barriers and risks for the selected commercialization pathway?  

The program was an instant success with 12 applicants, and 7 selected projects that span  six different industries, including such topics as distributed hydrogen production to hybrid airplanes. 

On May 4^th, we showcased the findings of our 7 projects at the little-known, but wonderfully managed, CU's Natural History Museum (highly recommended).   We set up our event amongst all the old fossils of their main display hall, which made for a dramatic contrast between new opportunities and ancient history.

The Daily Camera published a great article summarizing the event and the presentations; I won't repeat the details here, but we will post public documents of our projects at our Web site. Out of this process will grow one or two start-ups as well as proof-of-concept funding.  For technologies that were identified as too early for commercialization, we have worked with the faculty members to identify pathways that are most relevant for market adoption and opportunity.

This was an incredible process that brought together some of the best entrepreneurial talents in the community to work with the best technologies coming out of CU and RASEI.  To those of you who are interested in participating, please contact me directly at Trent (dot) Yang (at) Colorado (dot) edu. I also suggest getting involved with the Boulder Innovation Center (BIC,) with whom we work closely to identify industry leads for all of our projects.

In Part I of To Be (or not to be), I mentioned the lifestyle issues that plague students when considering the entrepreneur's path, and the daunting, binary decision-making that business students can fall prey to.  In Part II, I wanted to mention the kinds of academic support our students are encouraged to accept.

The core courses of an entrepreneurship curriculum include topics on innovation, market assessment and feasibility, and business modeling and planning.  They are fundamentally about how to take an idea and advance it to a business opportunity: How to identify, test, and deploy an idea; how to take it from some stage of creative insight to something that is tangible and viable.  Entrepreneurship courses teach students how to do exactly that. 

How many people think they have an idea but have no clue what to do about it?  The world is filled with such people and a huge number of possibly excellent ideas lie dormant for lack of a basic understanding and the skills to act on them.  Those skills and the understanding of the critical thinking and assessment process that are required are critically important to start-up business ideas.  But the same skills are valuable in many organizations including emerging growth companies, established companies who are searching for new business opportunities or simply trying to be more innovative, and even to non-profit organizations. (As I mentioned in Part I, this is often called "Intrapreneurship.")

These courses, especially the feasibility analysis and business planning courses also add another dimension to a business education.  Business planning requires the integration of every aspect of business. It requires a financial plan, a marketing plan, a strategy, the identification of required management skills and an operations plan - and further the integration of all of these different business disciplines.  Students go through many business programs without every understanding the value of that integrative process - the bigger picture.

The process of starting with an idea, analyzing it, organizing a plan for building a business around it and then being able to organize their vision into a business model and being able to articulate it and present it to potential investors is a fundamentally valuable experience.

I've had several discussions just recently with groups of 1st year MBA students.  They're coming to the end of their first year, either heading for or still seeking just the right internship opportunity, and already anticipating activities and priorities for their second year.

Many are among the new leadership of GEA, Entrepreneurial Solutions, and other organizations.  I also spent some time reviewing their personal statements - one-pagers that they prepare to introduce themselves to their fellow classmates as they enter the program, or prepare to explain what brought them to Leeds; what they hope to gain from their MBA experience. Almost always they state something about being an entrepreneur or about gaining entrepreneurial skills to guide their career direction. And yet many seem to struggle with the question "Will I or Will I not be an entrepreneur?"

I'm constantly amazed by the spectrum of projects in which they're engaged, opportunities that they're exploring, the breadth of their interests, and the creativity of their ideas.  However, I often pick up on a sense that they are struggling with a fundamental decision about whether or not they can be an entrepreneur. When I dig deeper it seems that the decision takes on a larger dimension - that the decision is not just about taking certain courses, but that it carries with it the weighty, either/or decision to commit to the entrepreneur's life.

In a way it causes certain students to self-select a path away from entrepreneurship.  The reasons are many: Some don't have a good idea, and feel that's a non-starter; some are not sure they can take the financial risk. (Student loans, anyone?) Some are not sure they have the leadership skills.

The irony is that virtually all student state as the reason for choosing the Leeds School included the strength of the entrepreneurship program, the reputation of the Leeds School and its Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Boulder's reputation as an extraordinary community of entrepreneurs, and students' repeated, collective statement that they want to gain the skills and experience to build a career in an innovative company. (See also: "Intrapreneurship.")

I usually launch into such conversations with the observation that every few years the press reminds us that the average age of a Silicon Valley start-up CEO is about 42. The majority of those new entrepreneurial founders have gained extensive business experience and deep domain expertise; they've demonstrated management and leadership skills, and have built extensive professional networks prior to starting a company. It's true that there are notable exceptions, and every year we have some really promising businesses that are launched by our graduates.  But it is important for students to understand that there are alternative paths to entrepreneurial opportunities. It's a shame to see any student opt out because of misconceptions about the multiple paths to becoming and being an entrepreneur.

I want our students to understand that entrepreneurship is a mindset.  That the skills that they can acquire from our courses and from mentors and from their experiences in entrepreneurial companies can be applied effectively in many different settings.  And that those who have acquired those skills and experiences will be well equipped - perhaps many years after they graduate - to be more alert to identifying their own opportunity or to be invited to join a team that is forming around an opportunity.  And they can then be confident that they have the skills to assess, to plan and to succeed in pursuing an entrepreneurial opportunity.

In Part II of this series, I'll mention how an education in entrepreneurship lends itself to the entrepreneurial mindset and lifestyle, and what happens when knowledge and passion intersect.

During the course of my interactions with the wide range of people I meet here on campus and elsewhere, the conversation often turns to the subject of social entrepreneurship. These conversations are usually lively and make for a feel-good interaction, but I'm still asked from time to time: What is a social entrepreneur anyway? 

Social Entrepreneurship, Defined

According to Ashoka.org--the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs--"social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems."

Wikipedia calls a social entrepreneur "someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change."

While social entrepreneurship isn't a new concept, it has gained renewed traction in a world characterized by a growing divide between freedom and servitude. With this heightened awareness, entrepreneurs are defining and distinguishing themselves from others by considering change as currency. And here we are, at the forefront of social entrepreneurship's latest round of reinvention; interest is exploding among students on college campuses today.  

Social Entrepreneurship On Campus

The Deming Center and Leeds School are very involved in social entrepreneurship through curriculum, particularly as part of our Center for Education in Social Responsibility (CESR).  

The Deming Center participates in SEED @ CU, an organization that started as a funded research project to explore the dynamics and impact of social entrepreneurs in the development of sustainable communities. That interdisciplinary effort has now taken on many roles as a convergence of interest in social entrepreneurship is evolving and with the selection of CU Boulder as an Ashoka ChangeMaker Campus.

And there's now a self-organized student group for social entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship In Denver/Boulder

 During the 2nd Annual Entrepreneurship Day in the fall of 2008, we heard a presentation by Pete Kellner about Endeavor, the organization he co-founded, which has supported funding for almost 500 social entrepreneurs for close to 300 companies. That meant the creation of over 100,000 jobs.

More recently, in Boulder, we have another wonderful example of an organization created to raise funding for social entrepreneurs: The TouchPoint Trust Group, founded by Casey Verbeck and colleagues. 

One of the most exciting new organizations to be launched in Boulder is The Unreasonable Institute.  Through a wonderfully creative model, the Unreasonable Institute has raised funding to sponsor 25 social entrepreneurs from 17 countries to attend a 10 week intensive summer incubator program.  It will be a 24x7 live-in intensive experience with over 50 mentors and the opportunity to develop amazing networks.  The founders of the Institute are all recent graduates of CU Boulder; the network of mentors, the creativity of their model, and the nature and quality of the social entrepreneurs that were selected for this summer's Unreasonable Institute--their first--are truly extraordinary.

We welcome, as always, your thoughts and observations about this topic, and encourage you to share your experiences with us, either in person, or online. 

To learn more about the Unreasonable Institute, watch episode one of Unreasonable TV.

One of the reasons we form relationships with community organizations is to benefit students at the Leeds School of Business, and recently we had the pleasure of forming such a relationship with a private collaborative organization. CXO--recently merged with the Executives Network--was kind enough to invite us to co-host a networking night between their members and our board members. The evening was a real success, thanks in great part to our friends and colleagues at MWH Global, who hosted the event at their headquarters.

I can't say enough about the excellent work and organization that CXO's director, Jay Allen, and his colleagues have created. The concept of CXO is a simple one - to facilitate the ability of business leaders to easily meet each other and to build relationships in what I describe as a "low overhead, low maintenance" way.  Clearly there is great value for a university and business school to be well connected with leaders who are CXO members. 

Conversely, Jay and the CXO membership understand the importance of having a leading university at its core and to foster a robust private sector engagement.  The co-sponsoring of this recent event is solid evidence of both parties support such engagement. 

The program came to full bloom at the evening's networking event, at which the student interns were given the role of "connectors."  They worked throughout the evening to make introductions between executives who had expressed interest in meeting other executives, many times a counterpart in another organizations.  The ultimate networking experience with our students at the nexus.

Since then, CXO has conceived of and proposed a program to the Leeds School involving undergraduates who wish to serve as interns, the result of which serves the CXO membership by facilitating the most effective and well targeted introductions.  

Basically, our student interns are assigned during the course of a semester to a number of CXO members with the purpose of interviewing them; the information they collect helps CXO  develop a much more extensive profile for each member.  In turn, the students are able to personally meet with and develop relationships with a number of C-level executives--every student's dream!  The intent is that these connections remain open for our students throughout and following their college experience. Ideally, they lead to receiving mentoring, job referrals, and references from successful role models.

If you've ever heard my philosophy on networking, you know that I'm a fan, and this example of cooperation and collaboration between students, industry, academia, and community is hard evidence that networking has far-reaching and long-lasting rewards that are both obvious and subtle. Thanks to all who contributed to this great evening. 

Something happened on the way to April.  We're all familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink".  I must have blinked as I came to the blinding realization that the spring semester is coming to an end.  This being the last week of classes for our MBA students with finals and project presentations next week, I'd like to take stock of just a few of the remarkable accomplishments and stories of progress that occurred during the past 3 months.

One of our greatest assets is the approachability and engagement of Boulder's entrepreneurial business community.  That characteristic of Boulder offers one of the greatest values outside of the classroom that we can offer to our students - but only if the students make the effort to take advantage of it.  Great evidence of how that is thriving at the Deming Center and Leeds School is showcased by various student groups.

We've had a number of Deming Center connected student groups.  They form for many purposes, but most prominently to create points of connection between groups of our students with shared interests and with members of/and organizations within our business community.  Here's a brief summary of some of our leading groups, including a number that are quite new - some having started late in the fall semester but all achieving meaningful traction in this current semester.  This is a summary - more will be coming on each of these as they move forward.

•    GEA (Graduate Entrepreneur's Association) - the Deming Center has sponsored and supported this group for several years.  Never have they had such an active and successful year with Learn-from-the-Best sessions, ideation sessions, and the GEA annual entrepreneurship retreat.  
•    Organics Student Group - this self organized group is the center of gravity for the Deming Center's Organics Business Initiative and has developed a great working relationship with Naturally Boulder
•    CU Energy Club - this group was launched by a group of Leeds School MBA students who immediately set out to create a full campus, inter-disciplinary organization, and now numbers over 500 members from all across the CU Campus. Trent Yang of the Deming Center, who serves as Director, Entrepreneurship and Business Development for RASEI  has been advising this student group in fostering connections with students and researchers around campus, and with entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders in the exploding cleantech industry.
•    Social Entrepreneurship Student group - this is a group of graduate and undergraduate students from the Leeds School, working with students from throughout the campus and all sharing a passion for social entrepreneurship.  The Deming Center and Leeds faculty have been collaborating on research and development of curriculum and programs, particularly though our relationship with SEED@CU; with CU Boulder's recent selection as an ASHOKA ChangeMaker campus, our students have become particularly involved with the program.
•    MBA Biotech Club - this group self-organized during the spring semester, and has already had several meetings with industry business leaders. Further, its work with our colleagues in the Colorado Initiative for Molecular Biology (CIMB)  has already expanded to include Ph.D. Science students from CU Boulder and from Fitzsimmons.
•    Outdoor Industry Student Group - having laid the ground work very thoroughly since last semester, this group has hit the ground running with approximately 40 members and great industry connections, especially with the Outdoor Industry Association  and the ActiveBoulder Business Cluster (supported by the Boulder Chamber.)
•    The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization - led by undergraduate business students committed to the entrepreneurial spirit, this group is open to all CU-Boulder undergraduate students.  CEO's focus is to provide an environment in which students can meet to share ideas, forge new friendships, and develop business skills. The organization, with insight from local business community leaders, strives to promote an environment conducive to brainstorming and new-venture creation. Members learn skills necessary to intelligently develop their own business. Through a series of guest speakers, roundtable discussions, and social and networking events, students have an opportunity to meet and learn from local entrepreneurs and community business leaders.

Of course, there's more. Our developing collaboration with Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology, our recently re-launched Deming Center Venture Fund, the increasing number of students involved with TechStars and their startup companies,  the success of this year's Venture Capital Investment Challenge team, the success of our March Sustainable Opportunities Summit and Cleantech Venture Challenge, and all that is going on with our role in the Renewable And Sustainable Energy Institute immediately come to mind. Not to mention that I'm sure I'm missing some things among my growing lists of other activities and progress that have come to pass this semester. What's most important is acknowledging and saying thanks to the organizations and individuals that make these student activities so valuable. Thanks, too, to our students who see the opportunities and take the initiative to make them happen.  It's been a great year.
 

Today's post is a guest entry by second-year MBA student at University of Colorado - Leeds School of Business, Beth Jensen.  Thank you, Beth.

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March 5, 2010

It's been less than a week since the 2010 Winter Olympics wrapped, and I'm finally beginning to emerge from the haze of triple salchows and McTwist 1260's.

The Olympic drama we've come to expect was present as usual: Shaun White's gold medal run, Bode Miller's triumph in the face of doubters, Lindsey Vonn's injury, the success of the USA men's hockey team 30 years after "Miracle on Ice."  For two and a half weeks, our Olympic athletes gave us water cooler fodder rivaling that of any television show.  The difference with this year's Games was that the water cooler was replaced by the Twittersphere, and the conversations were happening worldwide, instantly - in 140 characters or less.

And the Boulder entrepreneurial community was in the midst of it all.  Local startup Swarm Collective, a boutique social media and digital marketing agency, was selected to manage NBC's "Olympic Pulse" project for the 2010 Vancouver Games: a section of the official NBC Olympics website dedicated to social media feeds from athletes and fans around the world.  I, Beth Jensen (Leeds MBA '10), along with Neal Evers (Leeds EvMBA '12) were part of the cutting-edge project, charged with managing the content pushed through the Olympics "Twitter Tracker" - a real-time, visual representation of the Olympics topics being discussed on Twitter.

Key take-aways from the project:

1. Twitter is a truly revolutionary social media tool.  It allows information to be circulated more quickly and efficiently, and to more people, than any other method of communication in existence today.  Just yesterday, Twitter reached the 10 billion tweet mark, and says it now sees 50 million tweets per day - up from 2.5 million per day at the beginning of 2009 (http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html).

2. People love curling.  "Housework on ice" was the surprise darling of the Twittersphere, drawing a level of consistent Twitter traffic unmatched by any other sport.

3. Boulder is an emerging leader in social media innovation.  NBC's selection of Swarm Collective to head the project is indicative of the strength of Boulder's entrepreneurial community and its role as a significant player in thought leadership around new media.

 Aside from the sleep deprivation incurred by working many late nights of Olympics coverage and the few extra pounds gained due to steady consumption of snacks throughout the 17 days of the Games (provided by local Boulder/Denver sponsor companies like Justin's Nut Butter and Doc's Popcorn), the project was a great experience, on several fronts in particular: it gave me the unique opportunity to participate in pioneering a leading-edge social media tool, and more generally, provided real-world insight into how people are really communicating. 

Both of these will undoubtedly prove valuable (and marketable) to employers upon my re-entrance into the work world this May.

As interest grows and investment increases in support of the energy sector, a growing number of business leaders have expressed interest in gaining a better understanding of the technologies, markets and opportunities that exist--and lie ahead.

The Deming Center is now offering a four-day certificate program, known as RETool, that provides an in-depth look at all of these topics and more.  RETool addresses questions such as:

•    Which technologies are the most promising and in what time frames?
•    What is changing with costs and pricing of alternative energy sources?
•    What are some of the main challenges with the different technologies and in different sectors of the industry?

That, and a myriad of other topics pertaining to policies, market demographics, and geographical considerations - are included in the curriculum.

The program was created by and is led by our own Steve Lawrence, Professor and Chair of the Management and Entrepreneurship Division of the Leeds School of Business and Paul Komor, who is a lecturer in the Environmental Studies Department, and also a researcher, author, business advisor, and the Energy Education Director for RASEI (Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute).

The energy industry is undergoing a transformation, the complexities and scale of which are  almost unimaginable. ReTool provides a terrific opportunity for people to substantially advance their understanding of this emerging industry. We're proud to offer it to the community and our colleagues in the energy sector and beyond. 

Learn more about RETool.

Today's post is a Leeds School of Business breaking news item:

"MBA candidates from the Entrepreneurship and the Venture Capital Process course at the CU Boulder-Leeds School of Business are now sourcing potential deals for the recently revitalized Deming Center Venture Fund.  Students are looking for local companies in seed and early stage development that are seeking growth capital and are willing to engage with CU MBA students throughout the funding process.  Investments could range from $25,000 to $100,000, with the fund designed to facilitate the creation of strong relationships between entrepreneurs and Leeds.  The fund is supervised by faculty from the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship as well as an advisory board of venture capital professionals (to be announced.)

To be considered for investment or learn more, please send your business plan and/or an executive summary to deals@cudcvf.org."