The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UC Berkeley offers a seminar for its MBA students which has the goal of discussing the ups and downs, pros and cons of the entrepreneurship. The lectures are given by entrepreneurs who have “been there”.
Every Tuesday an experienced entrepreneur is invited to this Life as an Entrepreneur seminar to talk about how they created something out of nothing: searched for an opportunity, became passionate about an idea, searched for resources and launched in the market. They explain how their organizations were created and share the lessons they learned. Additionally, the class participates in active group discussion of a new venture idea facilitated by the student coordinators with the input and guidance of the guest speaker and/or second year MBA students with relevant industry experience.
The interesting part of this MBA course is that students at the Entrepreneurs Association lead. They are responsible to select the speakers and make the arrangements to have them talk about their experiences. After the class a small group of students has the opportunity to share a dinner with the speakers.
In the first weeks of this Fall Semester 2008 some very interesting entrepreneurs have been invited to talk about their personal experiences. This speaker series was opened by Will Price who is the CEO of Widgetbox. Will talked about his professional transition from a VC firm to his current position. He moved from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners –a VC firm specialized in seed and Series A investments of SaaS, opensource, on-line video and consumer web companies- to Widgetbox which is a San Francisco-based start up which enables people to find, make and distribute web widgets for blogging, social networking services, and personal websites. His experience as a VC gave him the opportunity to learn the best practices of the start up process.
The interesting part of this MBA course is that students at the Entrepreneurs Association lead. They are responsible to select the speakers and make the arrangements to have them talk about their experiences. After the class a small group of students has the opportunity to share a dinner with the speakers.
In the first weeks of this Fall Semester 2008 some very interesting entrepreneurs have been invited to talk about their personal experiences. This speaker series was opened by Will Price who is the CEO of Widgetbox. Will talked about his professional transition from a VC firm to his current position. He moved from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners –a VC firm specialized in seed and Series A investments of SaaS, opensource, on-line video and consumer web companies- to Widgetbox which is a San Francisco-based start up which enables people to find, make and distribute web widgets for blogging, social networking services, and personal websites. His experience as a VC gave him the opportunity to learn the best practices of the start up process.
In a next session Bambi Francisco (in the picture), Founder and CEO of vator.tv used the information of her interviews with entrepreneurs to list 10 key pieces of advice to start a new company. Vator.tv is a useful internet tool which consists of short videos of interviews with managers of the most innovative and important companies in the Silicon Valley. The interviews are done by the founder Bambi herself who worked as journalist at Dow Jones MarketWatch.
Another interesting speech was the one given by Dean Drako, co-founder, president and CEO of Barracuda. Dean explained all the steps of his entrepreneurial career started in 1998 with Design Acceleration, Inc. –acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 1998- and followed by Boldfish - acquired by Siebel Systems in 2003- and Velosel Corporation.
Another interesting speech was the one given by Dean Drako, co-founder, president and CEO of Barracuda. Dean explained all the steps of his entrepreneurial career started in 1998 with Design Acceleration, Inc. –acquired by Cadence Design Systems in 1998- and followed by Boldfish - acquired by Siebel Systems in 2003- and Velosel Corporation.
Follow the series at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events.php?group=A.+Richard+Newton+Distinguished+Innovator+Lecture+Series
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