Harvard i-lab | Entrepreneurship 101 with Gordon Jones

thanks for being here this is entrepreneurship 101 the workshop we put on a number of workshops here in the Innovation Lab over the course of this year you can expect 75 to 80 really skill based workshops where we try to get very practical and very real around a variety of topics or a variety of subject areas that 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 about there are resources to you for tonight's workshop you can expect really three things that we want to cover with you one is and I keep saying we and I'm going to introduce Jodi Goldstein my colleague in a moment but there's three things we're going to cover one is there's this is called entrepreneurship 101 because there's a presumption that you're 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 may have more experience than that but you're really interested in what some of the foundational insights or foundational thoughts are from those of us who are running the iLab so I'm presuming you're one of those one of those two groups tonight if not enjoy a soda and a piece of pizza and hopefully enjoy what you're going to hear so there's three things we're going to cover off here one is 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 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 I'm leveraging a lot of ernst & young's research on entrepreneurs second area is going to be taught by Jody and it really gets more practical around ten 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 and or the resources that are available to me here at Harvard most of you I presume are Harvard students it was really a targeted for our university audience here at Harvard 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 G SAS let's see other schools the law school ed school ok good component of Ed's School Graduate School of Design folks ok anyway from the medical or dental school ok and am I missing a school what was school divinity Kennedy I'm sorry I should have had that one Kennedy that's also another good good participation ok terrific I'm sorry yeah business school who what what's the business school never heard of that you know what I think I think that was the wrong thing for me to lead down because quite honestly we're governed by ten of the Dean's here at Harvard so you're putting me on the spot to remember off the cuff so apologies to business and Kennedy so a little bit of an intro I am Gordon Jones managing director of Innovation Lab I also were being taught here I think this is on a play screen Jodie Goldstein is my colleague director of the iLab and Jodie and I really represent a lot of the leadership when it comes to our work within the university the various programming we do Jodie spends a lot of time and effort and I give or a ton of credit for the the workshops the mentorship a lot of the programming that's designed and the partnerships we do with the innovation community Jody has a very robust personal history as an entrepreneur that she'll give you in a moment from my standpoint I also come out of industry I've been with four different startups in my past I've also done a lot of work within larger organizations more as an intrapreneur and I've also been an educator as well I've been an adjunct lecturer at a different University but all of that's been in the physical goods space of physics consumer products 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 I think it's a real compliment when we look around the university there's a lot of different interests that span these these areas anneal 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 will 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 and I pulled these these these are easily searchable on Google but 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 Western Union talking about the shortcomings of this thing called the telephone can't be seriously considered as a means of communication it Herron has no value 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 you've gone to meet someone a Western Union or if you had sat down with Harry Warner you'd be sitting amid submit someone who you would've had a lot of respect for in that day they knew that industry they knew that business and 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 interest and respect because these folks do have interesting insight at the same time too often and 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 and entrepreneurs that data talks about it said 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 in 1927 about their new idea to have sound incorporated with moving pictures they might actually been right and he was wrong this is a famous one Lord Kelvin talking about heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible more more recently the founder of 3m talking about how if he had 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 example said you can't do this so with that and before I get into the data I'll just say innovation is something that I like this description it comes from a colleague over at MIT and I wanted to share with you innovation it should be cultivated entrepreneurship can be taught if you think about the two the two words innovation it's really about the invention the there's somewhere in there is a unique insight whether that's a scientific definition 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 it gets combined with commercialization your ability and commercialization is not some of you in this audience maybe more not focused on necessarily making a million bucks and retiring to an island I don't know sometimes you daydream about that but the reality is commercialization is more about the comment about bringing forward your eye 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 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 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 your innovation has but it needs to have those two components I thought that was really really helpful entrepreneurship we think of that as a set of skills that's industry knowledge practice it's it's ultimately that individual who's able to apply and carry forward that innovation 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 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 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 a successful entrepreneurs look like hopefully teach you to look at new ways as a career in entrepreneurship and we'll talk about ways that the Innovation Lab can assist you 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 being an entrepreneur so our agenda I want to review this report on entrepreneurship this really is relying on research Ernst & Young does they've 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 ten things that every aspiring entrepreneur should should know and then there I lab 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 five key findings one is it entrepreneurs are made they're not born you know unless there's a few of you fella you were just born ready and maybe they 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 taught 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 it's there's a lot of work you can do to develop expertise there are three key barriers to entrepreneurial success that were identified funding people and know-how I think there's some interesting insights that come from that entrepreneurs do share common traits when you look at the personality types Merson young calls out and then lastly for those of you who may say boy these entrepreneurial things interesting but how can I be an entrepreneur within larger organizations or what things can all larger organizations learn from entrepreneurship there's some insights as well it come from this research let me jump into it entrepreneurial leaders are made not born there is no entrepreneurship gene ironic when you look at these entrepreneurs around the world 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 you know gone off to be teal fellows or are 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 to to basically in some form of expertise you deploy it's a skill set and it's 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 the insight I don't see a lot of your peers medical school excluded who walk through the door from the college saying you know what I got new idea for a cranium drill I'm going to corner the market for a cranium drill you know why is that it's because you probably haven't been in an operating room or really thought through 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 business-to-business telephony 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 I think 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 yeah 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 just ultimately this is a long journey and and I think the data tells us that that that's hopefully reassuring more than half of entrepreneurs are transitioned from employees I think this reinforces my earlier point about expertise that 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 and the data talks about this and again my belief is that that's about developing expertise a lot of people 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 the 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 the corollary to what many folks are doing in the market place 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 will inform them being entrepreneurs so I want to what does that all mean in the end is you may be someone who ends up choosing between now and being an entrepreneur and stepping into this so I'm going to take some 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 choice 'fl and what that is if you think that you want to ultimately end up in some entrepreneurial endeavor so that's point one one or that's the second part two part one is 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 to was higher education and three was Mentors I'm going to jump right to the second point the bottom three factors investors friends and c-level executives and your board I'm going to start on the second point that I'll come back to the first a lot of people presume that you know 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 the bottom three that are reported is helpful why is that oftentimes 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 you name it a product or you put somebody on line to try your your service they're going to tell you it 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 that's a great product Gordon you know how hard you you know in the mines they're saying I know how hard you worked what they're telling me is that yeah of course I'd buy it and you know you got to know and overtime to either develop really insightful ways to get your friends to give you more objective feedback or ultimately need to turn to other less biased ways I think on the top reported factors the experience you're getting is 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 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 ten years from now but you never know and I've seen in my own life how I have taken different classes at times it'll be the craziest things will pop up it could be serendipitous or it could actually be meaningfully insightful to the product you're doing there could be something very serendipitous in mentorship I think this one is key it's something that I know Jody you've worked hard to develop here and it's something that's really a key component to resources that are available to to individuals in residence here in the AI lab 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 in advisory capacity in a mentoring capacity third point here is value the big organization or corporate work for the experience in training the catch is and this is a point I want to make the longer you stay the harder it is to leave so it's 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'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 getting raises you know what they're having there 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 $14,000 a year there was a lot of jobs a lot of entrepreneurial activity people could offered me and I have taken it because I was given up $14,000 okay 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 that 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 I really did want to get out I kind of liken it this is my own personal analogy stick with me if you don't like it I apologize working in bigger organizations a little bit like 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 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 and I think that it'd be really tough after 20 years in the zoo to be let go in the middle of Arnold camp jhatka 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 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 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 in a career choice and I think the iLab as an organization is really designed to try to represent to 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 the data here has 10% of entrepreneurs starting between a quarter and almost a third of new businesses one in five start one and two new businesses what does that tell me that tells me that you develop expertise in doing this if you start to get into 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 and on several entrepreneurs who are quoted here towards the end of this and many of them are multi time multiple time entrepreneurs and there's that expertise they develop 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 grow and kill there's individuals who are kind of unwilling to ultimately let go and I've seen this here in the iLab we've had a hundred and sixty-five student teams in our first year come through in our residency program and like many startups many multiples of those Jody and I have counseled 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 really 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 the many of these will fail because they're they're ultimately 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 I'm thinking of one team in particular I won't mention but it's just really difficult a number of team members ultimately fell off because I 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 and I guess the last point I'm a skip point three and go-to for only a small core of entrepreneurial entrepreneurial leaders make a successful transition from startup to mature company this is interesting because it's the app it's the opposite there's at the same time you're going to learn entrepreneurs are very talented but you'll develop 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 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 it is twenty five million dollars in revenue is very different than someone who's got a million dollars in revenue and those skills ultimately require greater scaling and structured thinking process starts to work its way into the organization how you actually think about your business is very different and so I can only think of one person I know who grew a start-up from two co-founders to now I think it's a five billion dollar 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 it's called roadside rescue and it started as a little business that would kind of almost like Triple A the car service if you if your car breaks down it's a service that came through your credit card for free and that company has changed so much since roadside rescue it ultimately got in they started to realize what we're selling this service we can actually all start to 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 a nine 12-month extended warranty this business has changed so much over time it's very very special that when 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 also know where your own limits lie and when you need to hand off three funding people and know how are the biggest barriers to entrepreneurial success so access to capital was the number one reported biggest issue so funding people and know-how there's an interesting formula i sat with a VC when I started this job 18 almost 18 months ago and he said to me Gordon he said you know you want to know what how I think about business startups and entrepreneurs I think of he gave me a formula he said GF + GI + what is it t BT or trajectory equals F I said ok unpackage that for me he said well good founder + good idea + trajectory meaning up you're growing you're growing your idea you've got people adopting it equals funding you guys you need two out of those three - 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 taught gi+ 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 miss read that I think it's just more a sense of people who are putting a lot of other people's money and do ideas actually fairly risk-averse and they want to know that you're onto 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 think about that equation is you think about access to funding others that's thing you'll come across as you as you go through your journey but think of these three things you think about funding people in no house so entrepreneurial leaders need to choose between being rich and being king no moss room and Harvard Business School students here you may have known or you'll be able to choose noam your second year 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 richer do you want to be a king is what he says and he says if you want to be king you're going to ultimately pursue the you're going to you're going to so pursue your dream 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 a hundred percent of your idea coming to fruition and again he's not using the word rich or King in in a and he's a very broad ecumenical definition of that as 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 launch with him here last year it's a really interesting dichotomy the second point about about people finding people skills are difficult to find but keep finding people with the right values is even harder when you're in a start-up 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 that's important but if you're not working well as a team I use the I lab the I lab itself is a start-up in a sense it happens to be a start-up within a very low large organization being Harvard we're a four-person team our days are very crazy but we really are very complementary 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 ours that you know will often be very odd and and different than most other employees to Harvard University and we've replicated that and other teams that I've been on some teams that were awful I mean I've been in I've been on one startup this was an ink magazine fastest growing company and I sat and my jaw must hit the ground as I watched a fight almost break out between our lawyer and our chief scientist 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 after doing it very well early on but 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 make one point on this and I want to I'm going to hustle this along because I think that I think there's a great list coming here 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 or they have an internal locus of control they call it it's a belief that your actions lead to outcomes okay not that external forces control and this is really interesting because it's there's going to be times when ultimately you may not see things as having an opportunity you think the economy is down you think that you know this is a really difficult time the entrepreneur will often have a viewpoint which is 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 and you know gosh it you know it's been terrible the last month you know our businesses whether dependent you know it's just there's a sense of fatalism that is not what I think entrepreneurs bring and the research they talk about really brings that forward they also see opportunity where others see disruption again this speaks to people's risk tolerance to their willingness to ultimately see opportunity where others see disruption and I think it's pretty self-explanatory that viewpoints so my hope here is you're thinking about this 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 is it not a not trying to create a 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 rescue version I think it's one that that often will trip a lot of us up there's times that I've made choices that have been more risk-averse than risk seeking so I don't want you to think that 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 you're going to ultimately if you choose this path forgo a fair amount of upfront salary or cash if you choose to step into it right away and I think it's this this willingness to basically have a confidence in yourself and ultimately have a level 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 or that is proportionate to your risk you've taken on but I think that's important to be aware of and I do want to acknowledge there's cultural influences here the United States is a very as a culture is very supportive of this kind of environment of trying failure is is in many cases at times celebrated at certainly it's not something that people wear is shameful I think there are certain cultures where you structurally the country is setup that it's more difficult to practice being entrepreneur laws may may prevent you from writing off a bad bad business in the United States if you set up as a court as an entity that's separate from you as an individual that entity fails you move on the government has set up a system that supports you taking those risks without feeling like you're putting yourself in any financial harm for long term you may be in a culture where just more culturally it's something that is difficult to do people don't necessarily look upon taking risk as something that's positive it may be something you're risking you may be in more of a community culture where that brings some level of discomfort to those who identify with you so I acknowledge that and those are factors that also you need to be thinking about if those apply to you then lastly a lot traditional companies can learn and if for those of you are looking at large organizations meritocracies you're going to hear a lot of companies if you do go to other career nights talking about the meritocracy and we give you all the responsibilities you can handle 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 intrapreneurs 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 is being progressive and new organizations and structures very often it's very difficult to be an intrapreneur your very self it's very lonely existence much like being an entrepreneur there's not a career path that's designed for you and I think that if you end up do going into a more larger organization how can you be that that that manager or 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 concludes my section I've got a couple quotes and then I'll hand it over to Jody but I'd 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 I obviously keep working at it what are the characteristics that go into 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 AI lab 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 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 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 McNeil his fourth start up he actually since he wrote this is named Ernst & Young's entrepreneur of the year in the Northeast he's on his fourth start up here he's done three very different previous startups but he talks about the leap is a lot less scary than it looks 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 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 in pet income in compact incoming 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 later I can't imagine doing anything else job Brent cleamen climbing went to HBS 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 the spending hype you can be really creative in a more budgetary fashion don't waste your time 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 if they don't want to help you 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 what why aren't they willing to what's the issue and then lastly Antonio Rodriguez Antonio started and sold a company in the late 90s for those of you that were studied that bubble or been a part of it that was a very frenetic time a lot of activity was startups and then the bubble burst in 2000 so he talks about I wish I'd known that being entrepreneur is a career choice and that is such you want to have a bunch of experiences he sold his first start up really quickly Thank You 1999 that was his reference to the bubble I assume the whole thing was more of a hit based lottery process that 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 and now I turn it over to Jodi to talk about 10 things you should know okay can you hear me my tool oh 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 talking about really resonated with me in my career but hindsight is such a beautiful thing I didn't know I wanted to be an entrepreneur starting out so what I was going to do today I had 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 I find that I'm good at being an entrepreneur but not so good at teaching it but I will share with you my personal experiences and you can do with it what you want 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 to because I like to travel and I took a job that would enable me to travel it was a General Electric one of the biggest companies in the world how ironic and I liked it because every three months they plopped me in a new GE business and I'd get to see the world and be an 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 and I did that for a couple years and then I started looking around at my boss and my boss is boss and their boss and what I was supposedly aspiring to be and realized I didn't really want those jobs and to take Gordon's analogy you know it I don't think I was a tiger that was willing to roar when someone told me to roar I kind of wanted to control my own destiny and didn't like being told what to do and often got into trouble by executing on something without asking permission and I was told in 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 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 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 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 all those types of things that are involved in a start-up 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 so then I went to business school I graduated in 96 right before that 99 bubble that Gordon was talking about and when I was at HBS I took a lot of entrepreneurial courses there weren't that many at the time it's a much more robust department now I'm happy to say but those were the the classes that enter stood me and I was one of a handful of my classmates that actually took a job in a start-up at that time had 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 my classmates laughed at me because I took a huge pay cut but I went to work for a start-up 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 baek's and the consulting firms I just could not bring myself to take one of those jobs so I knew there was something different about me and you know in hindsight I realized I came from an entrepreneurial family I didn't realize it at the time but my parents owned a hotel and restaurant in Vermont and 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 there was something about me that these more conventional jobs just didn't appeal so I took a job in a startup and learned a ton I since done about half a dozen startups mostly in the technology space starting with the Internet at the early stages of the Internet and then moving over to mobile when the internet got to mature and wasn't as interesting to me my first company was called I market it was sold to done in Brad Street it was originally a cd-rom software company and we transformed it into a web company I'm going to talk a little bit about that and my lessons learned the second company was called planet all sold to Amazon for 100 million in 1998 again thanks to the bubble luck and timing had a lot to do with that I can't take a lot of credit and my third one was hotel luxury oh no thermal Mohsen comm which was originally cen wine.com and I'll talk a little bit about that in a minute and then I did Hotel luxury which is a a website that built portals for luxury boutique hotels to sell their furniture and then I did a mobile company called Mobius which then transformed to snap my life and again I'm setting the stage to talk talk to you about what I learned from all these and then the the last one 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 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 where I was a co-founder and that was called drink and it was a mobile app for wine so where is the clicker thing so again no data to support any of my lessons learned I am just sharing with you with hindsight being 20/20 things that I've learned from my mistakes and my successes I have to say that 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 and you know a lot of the successes were luck and timing so you know I can't take credit for all of those but 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 and if you have an idea that's going to transform the world all the power to you but more often than not you don't have that great idea 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 and you know there's a lot of that that you'll see in my slides is very similar but you know try to innovate in a way that does something that's already being done but do it better most of my startups change their original idea anyway I had a company that was send wine calm and it was wine gifts and we morphed into CENTCOM and it was a completely different business model and we became a giant gift company and the reason I joined the company originally is because I liked wine but you know you morph your idea morphed because of the market and Moore's because you can't raise money and you know whatever it might be send calm happen to be resonated with the investors they thought it was it going to be a bigger market cap and we own that URL and they thought let's be send calm so the idea is going to morph no bishop's was another one it was a mobile app it was a way to index mobile apps before the App Store even existed we were way too early to market we realized that 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 a completely different idea than what originally 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 at 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 yeah 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 it's a marriage 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 at the same time don't have ten co-founders because then it makes it really hard to split up the company and figure out who's in charge 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 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 but things can get ugly and things can change 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 a lot of my startups were creating a new market that didn't exist and it's a lot harder when there's not an actual market that you're playing in and all companies are going to fail if they don't create something that customers wants I think Brent had that in his lessons learned 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 even if it's not in the technology industry 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 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 as we realize that either there wasn't a customer there was a market or no one was willing to buy it 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 and then here's my really big one and again hindsight being 20/20 I learned so much about this focus keep it simple don't try to be everything to everyone make sure it's a really easy thing to explain to people what you do if your friends asking you what you're doing with your company and and what does it do if you can't explain it you know something might be wrong and don't try to take over the world you know pick a small market a niche market and do things really well you know you can always grow and you can always expand into other markets but make sure you have an idea that resonates with a particular market space again this is similar to the other one but don't reinvent the wheel opportunities for disruption or everywhere build a business and existing market try to do a better cheaper another lesson learned again just through my personal experiences start the low end of the market you know it's a lot easier to make a cheap product better and move up the market and 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 and here's another big one you know a lot of times 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 in 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 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 competition validate your industry my my mobile app why drink wine when we first started there weren't a lot of competitors there were a couple and we had a really hard time talking to investors and validating the concept and we launched in the app store there about five of them and then me and then about six months later there are probably 20 different wine apps I think there's 60 now the more competitors we had the easier 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 it's really hard to have those conversations so I like competition Gordon also alluded to this the hole do you want to be rich or do you want to be king this is another big thing for me I've seen a lot of my co-founders go down the wrong path because they didn't want to give up equity you know you'd rather own less of something that's worth a lot than all of something that's worth nothing my company plan at all that was sold to Amazon we had a lot of equity starting out and 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 a hundred million dollars and you know I don't think if we didn't do all of that that the company would have been worth anything so you know in the end it was the right thing to do someone also told me this trade stock for something that improves your chances of success so bring in investors co-founders employees anyone who you think's going to increase your likelihood of success trade stock for that you know I think it's going to be the the best way to go in the end and this is the other thing about the passion part you can't do it for the money I mean there's so many people you look at the successes and you look at Facebook and you know all these companies that have had successes and they're they're the anomaly they're the minority that succeed you got to do it because you love it you believe in what you're doing you're passionate about it it's always going to cost a lot more and take a lot longer than you ever imagined be so much harder and you know as Gordon said it's lonely and it's hard so you got to love what you could you're doing and you got to do it for that reason only not for the big win the other thing again I think this goes back to the ego issue 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 so you have to be confident you have to be 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 our mentors or advisors don't pretend that you know everything I mean they're there to help you and I think to be humble and to ask questions it makes a much better entrepreneur but you know at the same time you know be willing to fight for what you believe in and you're going to get 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 but at the same time you know 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 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 listening to feedback from people who are experts in the area 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 I think it made me a better person and you know most of them are going to fail you're gonna you got to do it again because you love it you got to enjoy the process and you got to be doing it because you love to do it and you know assume that it's probably going to fail and I hope that hope that you succeed so with that I think we're going to start talking about what the iLab can offer you again this is my personal experience my laundry list of lessons learned with the 15 years of entrepreneurial experience I've had and I'm happy to talk to anyone on a one-on-one basis going forward and you know this all of this background that I've talked about brought me to brought me here today and what drew me to the iLab is that I love entrepreneurship and I'm one of those people I think according to Gordon's data I like the really early stage I like the idea and figuring out what you want to do and as soon as the company gets big and you need a management team and I had people reporting to me in a job description I was no longer interested so the stage at which all of you guys are at and our AI lab teams are at is is my favorite stage and I love helping companies get off the ground and that's why I came here and I'm really excited about what the AI lab has to offer and we're just getting started ourselves as Gordon said we're a start-up but we've got a lot of great programming and a lot of interesting resources that can help entrepreneurs get started so what would he have here do you want to get up and talk with me so the first things first the AI lab itself I don't know if you guys have all spent time here or been inside the AI lab 30,000 square feet of space people can come and use it on a day use 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 we also have I get into the programming stuff where do we want to mom won't you talk about it to the next one she talked about the programming that you've worked on kazama and then and and then we can talk about how people actually might have Kate talk about ways people get connected with our program okay so we have the space and you can use it on a day use 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 each semester and we currently have about 75 teams working out of here and it's it's a really great way to get entrenched in the entrepreneurial community at the AI lab from a programming standpoint the workshops are a really great way to get involved if you don't have an idea you're just interested in entrepreneurship we offer 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 you can go to our website and find out about all those different workshops we also have thus ours we have experts in residents who conduct office hours and have one-on-one meetings with students that 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 we have amazing experts and residents from all the different school from different schools represented as well as experts in individual fields like venture capitalists and lawyers we also have a mentorship program and again this is for vent students who have ventures that are a little further along and can benefit from that ongoing relationship with a mentor and you can sign up to have a mentor assigned to you to work with you throughout the semester and beyond and then there's all sorts of other amazing opportunities to get involved there's a 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 we have challenges that you can form a team and compete for resources and monetary rewards and what am I forgetting there's all sorts of other one-off events we have emergent events this January Term trips you can apply for we've got a trip going to Silicon Valley's or faculty-led trips really interested if you've got an idea you want to pursue that Silicon Valley is the right destination the other is we're going to New York City for the more of a cultural entrepreneurship theme so the arts food fashion design media 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 I spent my almost my entire entrepreneurial career joining startups we also do a startup career fair in early February for students who are looking to join a startup that don't necessarily want to start a company on their own these are all companies that are actively hiring for internships and full-time employment and so that's a really great way to figure out if you want to be an entrepreneur let me let me also add to from a different angle we've had a chance this last academic year to really see there's really three areas of student interest that ideas and teams form around and we've we are organizing as we continue to grow as a start-up around those three areas and we one of them is social and cultural entrepreneurship there's a lot of students who have ideas that generally fit under this whether they be education related they may be social justice they may be you name it a lot of different ideas and teams secondary health and Sciences we have a number of teams that have been in residence that are looking around either Diagnostics or more bringing health care under the home there is some more more heavy science involved the VAX is being won some of these spin out of courses the third area is what we're calling more tech or consumer it's really anything from mobile web physical goods and services it's just it's a clustering we do as we think about programming but it typically has a consumer in mind some end user that you're looking to aggregate lots of individuals together and these practice areas you're going to find some of the workshops that Jody's put together are a little more tailored towards one of those three than others although a good number are also intentionally designed for any practice area we think what we're building here is trying to be a resource that's University Y that's both the programming but also this facility where we believe in the strength of these three areas actually intermingling and being around each other and we've talked a lot about forget the programming we're doing the stuff that happens when we're not doing programming where students are meeting each other in the break area people are meeting each other at workshops I can't tell you the number of stories we've seen and heard of where people like I met some I never would have met at this university and we both now are working on a project together or this person really you know I one of the ones I've talked about a lot was I had a student from the EDL D program in the Ed's school here working with to to college students who had a financial services startup and they had a charitable component that was meant to support schools that they'd half-baked and a lot of their customers were really interested in it and if it wasn't for that EDL D student from the ed school who sat down she's been at new schools ventures before if you know Beth rabbit and and Beth and a half an hour had unlocked for these students a whole new way they were thrilled their customers were happy not that this has to be the end of the story but that team rolled out with venture funding in the low millions to now go commercialize that idea and and those two students all agreed we never would have bumped into each other if it weren't for the kind of convening ability that a place like the iLab has so part of this is just about getting into the game to jump in the other thing we missed was faculty or teaching courses here and that's very foundational and a lot of students meet each other that way too so workshops by night courses that are taught we've had I think this term eight different courses from six different Harvard schools faculty teaching courses that have to do with entrepreneurship or innovation and their disciplines so intentionally it may be a little bit feeling like oh my gosh there's all you know how do they all fit together you know what we're a marketplace we're not a we're not an escalator or a jungle gym and you know get ready to climb on that jungle gym but it requires you to also actually move what move along and it's a very participatory journey and you know what I wouldn't have it any other way because if you're going to be an entrepreneur if there's one thing you've hopefully heard Jodi and myself talk about is it requires you to be willing to go through obstacles in this journey you're going to face them everybody's going to face them so it would be unfair of us to set up such a friction free environment that you felt like wow this is pretty easy kind of fun you know you guys really take good care of us or you know we want to make it something where you have to kind of make choices but there's a lot of resources we do think we pull together for you and as Gordon said earlier our mission is really simple to help students take their ideas as far as they can go you know our job again we have no ulterior motives we're not we're not like an accelerator or an incubator or we don't take equity we don't charge rent we're here to support you in your likelihood of success we want to unlock the resources of the university and unlock the resources of the greater entrepreneurial ecosystem for you and you know I like to tell people we want to give you a an unfair competitive advantage we want to make sure that you succeed and resource you in every way possible and that's what all of the programming is set up to do but as Gordon said so well it's also the the intangible the the secret sauce to this space I think is the interactions among all of you and facilitating those interactions so we want to create opportunities for you to find each other and pull together teams that will ultimately be successful let me introduce Kate Range she's the fourth member of our team she works with Neil and operations Kate is the number one fan of many students she's certainly one of our biggest were certainly biggest fans of hers kate is someone you will see a lot if you choose to spend time here Kate is someone you can ask any question at any time of day when you're here and we've asked her to just kind of walk you through really practically the last slide we have which is how do I get connected okay thanks Jody and Gordon what can I actually do what are you recommending is my next step so let me turn it over to you you've got a handheld mic Maya in my life all right yep and just walk all right so I am part of the operations team with Neil who couldn't make it tonight but I want to talk to you about how to get involved practically so the first thing I would tell you to do is sign up for the newsletter the link is on the slide it's also the far right tab on our webpage and that's going to be delivered to your inbox the latest and most updated events eeew our appointments legal office our appointments events going around Boston and it's just a lot of information that I think is is really good way to digest what we're doing on a weekly basis you can also like us on Facebook we have Facebook page and follow us on Twitter Neil is daily tweeting and updating and sending out more kind of fun pics and information so events we put on that I really think are helpful for students according to the feedback we get our workshops so every Tuesday and Thursday six to eight you probably registered for this event so there are other Eventbrite pages and so check out on our iLab events calendar which is also on the webpage you can go just browse through everything and register for events that interest you so in like Jodi said you know a week and a half we have the startup scramble which is going to be an all weekend event where students with ideas pitch and students who want to join a team can pick an idea and then at the end of the weekend hopefully some teams have formed and some progress has been made on some ventures and I think it's really exciting I'm really looking forward to it and you can check it out also on our web page so something near and dear to my heart is the President's Challenge which is an initiative we ran in the spring semester of this past year for social entrepreneurship we disbursed one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of funding to student teams who addressed one of five global issues this was my project it's my baby and we're going to be running it again this year getting a little bit earlier start so stay tuned there will be more info on the website as well and there are lots of clubs around the university that maybe are particular to a school particular to your school that are focused on entrepreneurship and innovation so look at those club listings as well and they're going to have different information hopefully you know talk about what we do here as well but you know it's a good way to connect with people in your school so so check those out as well okay let me let me add to this because I think this is also the other point here is there's a lot of club activity that happens here in the iLab we are an extension when I started this I talked about ten schools there's ten Dean's that I report to we really consider ourselves an extension of your campus we're not we are cross governed in this university you are you your ID gets you in the door here and I want you to feel that sense of an extension of your campus there's a lot of clubs as Kate is referenced so a lot of club meeting it will happen down here that are intentionally open to broader audiences than just the school whose club that Club comes from so there's a lot of programming that you may hear about that doesn't hit our calendar but again we view ourselves as a node in the network so we're presenting a lot of the programming we serve up but we very much support a lot of these clubs and so that's why we put it up here it's a great way to get into the unofficial current it works within the iLab and if you're looking for names of clubs you're not sure come ask Kate or Jody or myself and we can certainly give you some ideas as well so back to you so also what I think students find really helpful is sitting down with an expert we have experts in residents and we also have legal office hours with lawyers these are half hour appointments they're free you can go in with a problem that you're having and get individualized specific advice you can always email me for those appointments as I said earlier they're also on our newsletter so that's even more incentive to open up that newsletter when it comes in to get an appointment and if you're already on a team and you're looking for a way to move forward I would suggest you apply for long term residency in the spring those applications will open up later in the semester so we have about 70 65 70 teams per term who move in meet other teams work on their ventures and take full advantage of our resources even if you're not part of a team and you don't feel ready for residency I would say the most important thing is to come here you know come work out of here because there are incredible connections that are happening organically in the kitchen people sharing ideas as they you know open a bag of almonds and talk about how great it is to have free Fritos and coffee so really you know come down here meet other students and share your ideas alright thank you so that really is a wrap on entrepreneurship 101 you

Channel: Harvard Innovation Labs

Views: 135,457

Rating: 4.8625627 out of 5

Keywords: Harvard Innovation Lab, i-Lab

Id: 7IoBUOsy_ew

Length: 75min 12sec (4512 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2013