Again, time flies. Last week is a very “relaxing” week since we only have three days for class. Monday is Columbus Day and Friday is the 5th Babson Forum of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Besides, I also attended two interesting meetings. One is a workshop organized by Highland Capital Partners in
More and more time spent on evaluating, developing and refining my business ideas. The annual Babson Rocket pitch will be held next Monday as well! I consider launching my next start-up during my two year study at Babson the most important goal. Indeed it’s much easier for me to meet an investor, angel investor or venture capitalist, in US. The opportunity could not be any better. Meanwhile, the pressure is inevitable strong. It’s a feeling of competing with time.
A good lesson learned from the Highland Capital Partner is to do my homework before attending important event. I had the chance to speak with the founder and CTO of a portfolio company but the talk with be much more interesting and meaningful if I can ask some good questions… I learned the lesson and did a though preparation of the Boston Harbor Angel group meeting. Though I didn’t have much opportunity to speak with angels, the homework made me feel more comfortable and confident during the meeting. By doing the homework, I learned a lot about angels who are member of the group, their portfolios and their selection criteria. The most useful parts came from the close discussion among angels. After four selected start-up, one Internet start-up, one laser chip manufacture, one new disease test device manufacture and one new fire alarm system manufacture, finished the 10-minute presentation, angels asked the founders to leave the conference room and started discussing the positive and negative part of each start-up. Even though I’d read many online resources about the questions/criteria investors will consider, it’s totally a different feeling to be in the meeting. That could be a very valuable experience.
The Babson Forum of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, FEI, is valuable as well. As a small college, the overall organization is not that great as more powerful institutes such as MIT (I assume as I’d never been the forum organized by MIT). But Babson did invite quite some interesting people such as partners from Highland Capital Partner, Battery Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, CEO of Digg.com and FOX interactive media group. Overall, I realized location advantage is really important. Most of the interesting people attended are either Babson alumni or living nearby. BTW, I found that in the Money-Tree Venture Capital Activity survey conducted by PWC, there are at least 15 Venture Capital firms nearby or around Wellesley Hills where Babson is located. And 20 or more angel investors are nearby as well. What I’d learned most from the event is the keynotes from the founder of Staple.com, who currently is a partner at Highland Capital Partners, Tom Stemberg:
1. Always be optimistic
2. Breaking the rules
3. Solving real problems
Is there anything else? Yes, I found out that among all classes in MOD 2, the toughest one is Data analysis. While, not really. Data Analysis has great sense to interpret large volume of data from a business perspective. How to make sales forecast? How to make certain business decision based on given data? It’s no doubt tough but if you understand the value behind it, you will have interest to master it. It’s really a willingness issue. I experienced this deeply. When you are open, it’s so easy to learn new things quickly since you don’t have any intention to block new things flow into your mind. MEIA is not that tough as long as I understand the economic value behind the mathematical formulas. In terms of that, MEIA is very similar to DA. But I suddenly realized that the CSCA and MODA, the two courses that originally I think not that challenging became really challenging. For example, with a given case materials, CSCA has very tough questions to require me to conduct systematic analysis such as what’s the competitive advantage of Maytag? Where it is in 1985? I have to use a framework to do the analysis otherwise I can not find out the key areas to focus. It’s the same for MODA since we need to adopt framework to analyze marketing strategy and practice as well. Marketing covers much broader area than I originally thought. It’s more than just promotion or advertising. It almost covers from customer survey, product development to pricing strategy and distribution. The 5P of marketing, product, price, promotion, placement and XXX, broadens my eyes. I need to take some time to better understand those things. The challenge is I’d never systematically learned those frameworks and it’s a challenge to your existing assumptions and perception. Luckily, I do not need to spend much on course such as FIBD. Even though I had no accounting or finance background, I found out it is relatively easy to gasp the concept of accounting and finance and use what I’d learned to solve given assignments.
Oh, one thing should I mention is my result of MOD 1 test. Babson adopted a different score system. Instead of giving traditional 1.0-4.0 GPA, Babson uses terms such as MP, MPS, EPS and ESC to describe your ability of meeting professional expectation. Generally, MP is about 2.3 and MPS is about 3.0. I got MPS in my joint exam of Law and FIBD and CMDO assignment as well. I am still waiting for the result of the LDO paper from JB. I just missed one point to jump from MPS to EPS which is about 3.5 but I am happy enough. Babson faculty prefers us not to focus on pure academic result and I completely agree.
And my fellowship professors still have not decided the research project yet. It’s good since I don’t really have additional 10-hour per week on that in MOD 2 but it’s bad since I definitely need to spend time during winter break to catch up. The Blank center is really a place with lots unknown (for me) wonderful people and I need time to dig it.
Last thing, I am quite satisfied with my social network strategy now. Partly I should thank EK who said “Bar doesn’t mean the only place for social networking. Playing soccer as I did is also.” Now my purpose for any social event is to have a meaningful discussion with two people at least. So there is no pressure to collect 20+ business cards. I find out this is very useful for me in recent social events!
Again, time flies. Last week is a very “relaxing” week since we only have three days for class. Monday is Columbus Day and Friday is the 5th Babson Forum of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Besides, I also attended two interesting meetings. One is a workshop organized by Highland Capital Partners in
More and more time spent on evaluating, developing and refining my business ideas. The annual Babson Rocket pitch will be held next Monday as well! I consider launching my next start-up during my two year study at Babson the most important goal. Indeed it’s much easier for me to meet an investor, angel investor or venture capitalist, in US. The opportunity could not be any better. Meanwhile, the pressure is inevitable strong. It’s a feeling of competing with time.
A good lesson learned from the Highland Capital Partner is to do my homework before attending important event. I had the chance to speak with the founder and CTO of a portfolio company but the talk with be much more interesting and meaningful if I can ask some good questions… I learned the lesson and did a though preparation of the Boston Harbor Angel group meeting. Though I didn’t have much opportunity to speak with angels, the homework made me feel more comfortable and confident during the meeting. By doing the homework, I learned a lot about angels who are member of the group, their portfolios and their selection criteria. The most useful parts came from the close discussion among angels. After four selected start-up, one Internet start-up, one laser chip manufacture, one new disease test device manufacture and one new fire alarm system manufacture, finished the 10-minute presentation, angels asked the founders to leave the conference room and started discussing the positive and negative part of each start-up. Even though I’d read many online resources about the questions/criteria investors will consider, it’s totally a different feeling to be in the meeting. That could be a very valuable experience.
The Babson Forum of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, FEI, is valuable as well. As a small college, the overall organization is not that great as more powerful institutes such as MIT (I assume as I’d never been the forum organized by MIT). But Babson did invite quite some interesting people such as partners from Highland Capital Partner, Battery Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, CEO of Digg.com and FOX interactive media group. Overall, I realized location advantage is really important. Most of the interesting people attended are either Babson alumni or living nearby. BTW, I found that in the Money-Tree Venture Capital Activity survey conducted by PWC, there are at least 15 Venture Capital firms nearby or around Wellesley Hills where Babson is located. And 20 or more angel investors are nearby as well. What I’d learned most from the event is the keynotes from the founder of Staple.com, who currently is a partner at Highland Capital Partners, Tom Stemberg:
1. Always be optimistic
2. Breaking the rules
3. Solving real problems
Is there anything else? Yes, I found out that among all classes in MOD 2, the toughest one is Data analysis. While, not really. Data Analysis has great sense to interpret large volume of data from a business perspective. How to make sales forecast? How to make certain business decision based on given data? It’s no doubt tough but if you understand the value behind it, you will have interest to master it. It’s really a willingness issue. I experienced this deeply. When you are open, it’s so easy to learn new things quickly since you don’t have any intention to block new things flow into your mind. MEIA is not that tough as long as I understand the economic value behind the mathematical formulas. In terms of that, MEIA is very similar to DA. But I suddenly realized that the CSCA and MODA, the two courses that originally I think not that challenging became really challenging. For example, with a given case materials, CSCA has very tough questions to require me to conduct systematic analysis such as what’s the competitive advantage of Maytag? Where it is in 1985? I have to use a framework to do the analysis otherwise I can not find out the key areas to focus. It’s the same for MODA since we need to adopt framework to analyze marketing strategy and practice as well. Marketing covers much broader area than I originally thought. It’s more than just promotion or advertising. It almost covers from customer survey, product development to pricing strategy and distribution. The 5P of marketing, product, price, promotion, placement and XXX, broadens my eyes. I need to take some time to better understand those things. The challenge is I’d never systematically learned those frameworks and it’s a challenge to your existing assumptions and perception. Luckily, I do not need to spend much on course such as FIBD. Even though I had no accounting or finance background, I found out it is relatively easy to gasp the concept of accounting and finance and use what I’d learned to solve given assignments.
Oh, one thing should I mention is my result of MOD 1 test. Babson adopted a different score system. Instead of giving traditional 1.0-4.0 GPA, Babson uses terms such as MP, MPS, EPS and ESC to describe your ability of meeting professional expectation. Generally, MP is about 2.3 and MPS is about 3.0. I got MPS in my joint exam of Law and FIBD and CMDO assignment as well. I am still waiting for the result of the LDO paper from JB. I just missed one point to jump from MPS to EPS which is about 3.5 but I am happy enough. Babson faculty prefers us not to focus on pure academic result and I completely agree.
And my fellowship professors still have not decided the research project yet. It’s good since I don’t really have additional 10-hour per week on that in MOD 2 but it’s bad since I definitely need to spend time during winter break to catch up. The Blank center is really a place with lots unknown (for me) wonderful people and I need time to dig it.
Last thing, I am quite satisfied with my social network strategy now. Partly I should thank EK who said “Bar doesn’t mean the only place for social networking. Playing soccer as I did is also.” Now my purpose for any social event is to have a meaningful discussion with two people at least. So there is no pressure to collect 20+ business cards. I find out this is very useful for me in recent social events!
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