Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Get that Job!

Right now at my school, students are deeply into the process of finding a job. And since the interview is a critical component for getting hired, here is a video that portrays one way to get that job:

http://www.omgsoysauce.com:80/3319/how-to-nail-your-next-interview/

Thanks to Allen Kupetz for sending this along.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Help is Available

Maybe it’s because I’m a closet “foodie” but whenever I run across a story in the press about the food and hospitality industry, I always read it. In the Wall Street Journal, the story titled, Sweet Returns, I also liked the message. In particular, note the issue of reinvention and seeking out of resources from the community.

So, instead of hunkering down and hoping the economic downturn would be short-lived, Mr. Gottenbusch reinvented his business. With the help of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program partially funded by the Department of Commerce and designed to give small firms access to manufacturing specialists and other advisers, Mr. Gottenbusch looked for new customers in unusual places, created unique products to drive store traffic, joined a purchasing association to keep costs in check and took advantage of the real-estate slump to scoop up a new store location on the cheap.

The result: Servatii not only survived last year, it thrived, with sales rising 15% to $8.5 million. Mr. Gottenbusch declined to give profit figures.

As an entrepreneur, one of the biggest mistakes I made was in trying to do it all on my own. I never once turned to the colleges or universities in my home town of Orlando, and never once did I turn to the resource providers such as the SBA, Department of Commerce or others that could have helped me. Now that I’m in the academic world, I always remind entrepreneurs that there are resources out there in the community, many at no or very low cost, that can help you grow your business. The challenge for the resource providers is to find ways to reach the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur needs the help; they just can’t spend the time trying to look around the town to find it. The resource providers need to find ways to reach their potential client and make accessing their services simple and easy.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Entrepreneurs and the Recovery

Nasir Ali of the Syracuse Technology Garden passed to me an article about entrepreneurship from Newgeography. The article was entitled, Entrepreneurs Ignored in Recovery Plans, was posted on April 22. The article detailed results from a Kaufmann survey on entrepreneurship and the government. The key findings of the Kaufmann report included the following:

By a margin of three to one (63 percent to 22 percent) Americans favor business creation policies as opposed to government creating new public and private sector jobs. In fact, 79 percent of respondents say entrepreneurs are critically important to job creation, ranking higher than big business, scientists, and government.

Only 21 percent of all survey respondents say that the stimulus package supports entrepreneurial activity and 33 percent believe it will retard entrepreneurship.
While 78 percent of survey respondents say innovation is important to the health of our economy, only 3 percent say they believe the stimulus package will encourage innovation.
Americans think the government does little to encourage entrepreneurship, despite its importance; 72 percent of respondents say the government should do more to encourage individuals to start businesses. Almost half of respondents think the laws in America make it more difficult to start a business.


The article also discussed the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and the STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs, advocating at the conclusion of the piece that the USA should be “doubling if not tripling the investment in both of these programs. At a minimum a $5 billion SBIR program should be put in place. It will get us much more in growth than the Treasury bailouts of the banks, or General Motors. It represents both what America wants – Small Business Innovation – and needs in these times of economic stress.”

Thursday, April 23, 2009

US News Ranking in Graduate Entrepreneurship Programs

I’m pleased to announce that the US News and World Report released this morning it’s list of specialty programs in MBA schools, and the graduate entrepreneurship program at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University was ranked 15th (tied with Duke) in the nation! For us, this is particularly good news as we’ve moved up three places and ahead of outstanding schools such as University of Michigan, Northwestern, Dartmouth and DePaul University.

Rankings, while always interesting to those in academia, are for me a time to reflect on all the people who’ve helped us achieve this honor. In particular, I think of all of the entrepreneurs who’ve reached out to our program and helped our students by judging business plan competitions, speaking in our classrooms, all the way to just having a cup of coffee with interested students. While I’m very pleased that entrepreneurs have provided so much help and support to the Syracuse University program, I also know that entrepreneurs are helping colleges and universities across the country. Thanks to all of you for making a difference in the lives of so many students who are excited about entrepreneurship. We couldn’t do it without you!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Starting a Business... with $10!

Allen Kupetz, author of The Future of Less, sent over this from the International Council for Small Businesses. This comes from University of Alabama professor Craig Armstrong who challenges students in an experimental class to start their own business… as long as they spend $10 or less! Now before you start to laugh, think about the valuable learning that will take place launching a business on ten bucks. In my old days at Disney, usually over a couple of beers, we would debate the merits of who is more creative: someone who spends $50 million on a great attraction, or someone who delivers a very good attraction for $2.5 million. In Dr. Armstrong’s class, students have to be very creative in accomplishing something that still fits a need in the marketplace, while doing it for very little money.

The $10 Business, developed by Dr. Craig Armstrong of the University of Alabama, is an experiential learning exercise that requires students to start their own business using $10 or less. A member of USASBE, Dr. Armstrong won the Third Place Prize in the 2009 3E-Learning Competition for the $10 Business. One key rule of the exercise requires students only allowed to spend or invest additional funds in their business with profits earned. In the execution of their business plans, students are responsible for keeping a weekly diary that details the thoughts, actions, and responses throughout. Dr. Armstrong notes a very favorable response from his students, who claim this exercise as the highlight of their undergraduate education. A strong sentiment indeed, especially considering that Dr. Armstrong uses the exercise with his first-year entrepreneurship students.

Some $10 Business stats include;
Dr. Armstrong's highest earner made over $2,200; Student used wine corks to make framed displays and magnets for customers.
Same student continued to operate the wine-cork business for the rest of the semester and earned over $3,000.
Two students earned over $1,000 after 5-weeks.
In a class with an enrollment of 47, the average amount of profits earned per student was $200.
This same class generated about $9,400 of wealth on an initial investment of $470.
90% of all students make mor than $10 in five weeks


Dr. Armstrong's inspiration for developing this exercise lies in his entrepreneurship research regarding the resourcefulness of entrepreneurs. The $10 Business is intended to identify resourcefulness and expose the entrepreneur's creative side. According to Dr. Armstrong, “This exercise raises the type of research questions that we need to ask in entrepreneurship.”
The $10 Business is truly a test of the imagination. Especially for entry level entrepreneurship majors, this exercise produces an initial shock that soon fades away after some thought and discussion about the ways to start a $10 business. The initial question is always; do I start a service-oriented business or develop a product offering? The answer to this question will undoubtedly be affected by given limitations, but real success comes when a student can most effectively maximize the impact of their initial investment.


Dr. Armstrong does point out, however, that there is a lot of heterogeneity in students' imaginations. Some business ideas are bland, some are really innovative and others fall into the undergraduate party mentality of creating a beer delivery service. All things considered, students turn to service-oriented businesses more frequently than product offerings. Some past service-oriented businesses include dorm room cleaning, home delivery for beer, house painting, and babysitting. One student started a business that supplied out-of-town condo owners with food, supplies, and labor to stock and prepare their homes prior to arrival. As Dr. Armstrong points out, “College service-oriented businesses such as food and drink delivery are much more representative of the majority as opposed to those selling home-made gift baskets.”
The $10 business is also a result of Dr. Armstrong's past experiences with students who have often expressed their desire to learn how to start a business. This experiential learning exercise gives students' the chance to see first hand what it takes to execute such a task. The experience gained is invaluable for the entrepreneur, particularly considering that they began with only ten dollars!


In the lecture that immediately precedes implementation, Dr. Armstrong expresses to the entire class that there are no ground rules for the creation of your business. The only requirements are; the daily maintenance of a journal that includes ideas and business plan initiatives, and observation of the $10 maximum initial investment. Dr. Armstrong encourages the inclusion of emotions and thought in the journal because it serves as a great way to track progress over the five-week process. The journal is graded for completion and weekly maintenance as apposed to quality ad success which will be difficult to judge. The goal of the exercise is to award completion and thoroughness and not to punish students for unsuccessful ventures because successful entrepreneurs often have stories of failure.

Over the course of the exercise, Dr. Armstrong will only share a few journal entries with the class for guidance. The journal does have a very informal style. Dr. Armstrong even recommends creating a separate Gmail account for email all correspondence and accessibility to the gChat and Google Groups features.

Students who have participated in the exercise have started a wide-array of businesses that cover a multitude of industries. The real joy for the professor is to see the spark of imagination among students and their commitment to making it work. Dr. Armstrong told me that, ‘Pushing the initiative is really fun to watch and after 5 weeks, when they want to take the business farther, then I can help.'

Quotes from Students
"Our professor gave us the seemingly impossible task of starting a business and running it for the semester... with a start up budget of only $10! How do you start a business for $10? I started making crafts with wine corks. I started out small making wine cork boards and refrigerator magnets, and it has been a very good experience so far. I started collecting wine corks from local restaurants and wine stores on a weekly basis to build up as much inventory as I could. Once I got to the point where I had enough capital to start buying corks in bulk, things actually took off."
"This is one of the best activities that I have done during my tenure at the University. I enjoy practical experiences. I wish the University would place more emphasis on activities of this type."
"I really thought that it was a great learning experience because when you first think about starting a business with just ten dollars, it seems impossible, but when you gather information and find a problem that can easily be solved then you can start your own business."

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

At the Intersection of Art and Technology

One of my favorite blogs is written by Daniel Pink. Never exactly sure what he is going to write about, but it usually makes me think of things I haven’t thought of. Today, he gave me five very nice minutes at the intersection of art and technology. Enjoy the Internet Symphony Global Mash-Up.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

VC's Raising Money

Dave Berg sent this article over from the Washington Post titled, Fewer Funds are Raising Capital for Startups. The article by Kim Hart begins with these stark figures:

Only 40 venture capital funds nationwide raised money during the first three months of the year, marking the lowest level of institutional funding in six years.

The funds raised $4.3 billion in the first quarter, an increase over the $3.5 billion raised the previous quarter but down nearly 40 percent from the corresponding period last year. Nearly twice as many funds were able to raise money in the first quarter of 2008, according to data released yesterday by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Making Lemonade

In today’s economy, businesses are failing—that’s a fact. But as you can see from the Wall Street Journal article written by Timothy Aeppel, As Manufacturers Buckle, Winners Emerge from Havoc, there are ways to take the lemons that the marketplace is throwing you, and create lemonade. The article is a long one, but it’s a good read and certainly worth your time as you think about your business and how it will need to change in order to grow and prosper.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Brand-Yourself.com Wins Award at Kairos Summit

I’m delighted to post this information on a group of very talented students from Syracuse University and members of the Couri Hatchery which is located inside the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship. It comes from the Brand-Yourself.com blog.

Brand-Yourself.com won the marketing award at the first annual Kairos summit this past weekend in New York city. We were selected as one of only three companies to receive an honor at the summit, which brought together the top 100 most innovative student startup companies in the country at the Intrepid Air, Sea, and Space Museum in New York City. We were presented with the award by Admiral Owens and the president of Adaptive Marketing, Jay Sung.

The Kairos summit was a groundbreaking event which brought together the most passionate, professionally minded students and world leaders from across the globe in the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Congratulations to RJ, Pete, Trace and Evan.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Women Entrepreneurs' Rock!

Yesterday was a spectacular day here in Syracuse. Yes, the weather was cold but the conversation on entrepreneurship was red hot as we hosted the seventh annual WISE (Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship) Symposium. Over 1,000 women entrepreneurs attend this wonderful event. The group heard from a wide range of speakers which include three inspiring keynotes from Cindy Solomon, Linda Dulye and Melissa Aronson (Emme). What was particularly interesting was to watch those in attendance use the day to learn from our speakers, learn from each other, and enhance their personal networks. The business expo, which was added to the program for this year, sold out and will be a permanent addition to the event. This program also was a great opportunity for those in attendance to hear more about our WISE Center, which is a permanent location to help women entrepreneurs take their thoughts and dreams of a business, and turn them into an entrepreneurial reality. As one of my staff is so fond of saying: women entrepreneurs’ rock!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Angel Investors Recap 2008

From Jeff Cornwall of Belmont University and his excellent blog on all things entrepreneurship.

Angel investors were just as active in 2008 when measured in terms of deal flow, but the money they pumped into these deals was down from the previous year according to the annual summary conducted by The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.
Some additional findings from this report:


§ 55,480 firms received angel investments in 2008, a 2.9% increase over 2007 -- as I have been telling folks, there is still money out there
§ Dollar flow into these deals was down 24% from the previous year -- an indication of a more cautious stance by investors
§ Healthcare and software led the way in deals -- no surprise here
§ Exits in 2008 were mostly through mergers and acquisitions (70%). 26% of exits were through bankruptcy. Only 4% of exits happened via an IPO -- thank you Sarbanes-Oxley for killing this as an option.
§ Most of the angel deals were still seed stage or early start-up
§ Yield rates for these angels were down to 10%. Just as comparison the yield rate in 2005 was 23%.


Thanks to Jeffrey Sohl at UNH for putting this report together each year.

The Real Credit (Card) Crunch

On Wall Street and in the popular press, the words “Credit Crunch” have taken on a life almost of their own. And while it means one thing to the investment banks, the car companies and other large Fortune 500 businesses, to the entrepreneur it can mean something entirely different, something entirely more focused on the day to day aspect of running a business. Take a look at the article that ran in the Saturday Wall Street Journal by Jane J. Kim, Credit Woes Hit Home.

Friday, April 3, 2009

We're Cool!

Oh, it’s good to be cool. But are you cool when the Economist magazine say’s you’re cool or does that automatically make you, well, less than so. In any event, a friend from the left coast sent this to me and made me promise that I would post it on the blog.

But here it is, in a subheading to the piece that is a special report on entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurialism has become cool. The lead of the article begins with:

VICTOR HUGO once remarked: “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” Today entrepreneurship is such an idea.
The triumph of entrepreneurship is driven by profound technological change. A trio of inventions—the personal computer, the mobile phone and the internet—is democratising entrepreneurship at a cracking pace. Today even cash-strapped innovators can reach markets that were once the prerogative of giant organisations.


The piece brings an interesting international flare to a subject that is all too often US-focused.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Twitter

I’m trying to get Twitter…I really am.

For me, as someone in the halls of academia, I use Twitter as a source for interesting articles, posts, video’s etc that will help me in my classes, my discussions with students and my conversations with entrepreneurs. I also get the value if I’m a political candidate or someone working in the Beltway. But if I was back in my hard-driving days of running a business, I’m not sure if I would see it the same way, which is the reason that I’m trying to understand the value of Twitter.

After reading the recent blog from Josh Bernoff, perhaps I’m a bit closer to getting the value of Twitter. Take a look at see what you think.