Entrepreneurship 101: Foundations for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

[Music] 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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 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

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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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

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

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 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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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

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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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

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 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

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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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 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

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

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

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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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

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

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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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