This morning kicked off the latest instance of a dozen-year-strong tradition for Entrepreneurial Management Academy students at the Kelley School: We traveled to the Bay Area to learn about, at ground zero, the most vibrant startup culture in the world. The Velocity Conference is put on each year to expose entrepreneurially-minded IU MBA students to the culture, the industries, and the financing environment of Silicon Valley. Why this particular place? As the mastermind of the Velocity Conference pointed out in his kick-off talk, the last 30 years in the Valley has seen more value creation than in any other place in any other time period in the history of mankind.
That mastermind was Dr. Jack Gill, founder of Vanguard Ventures, former faculty at Harvard, and IU alum. He gave us a talk on his research into understanding the relationships between intelligence, leadership, and entrepreneurship. As he posited, "intelligence" as we normally understand it is concerned only with the left hemisphere of the brain (logic, analytics, verbal skills), and thus our education focuses almost exclusively on developing left-brain skills. However, an analysis of all Fortune 500 CEO's revealed that, in general, they do not possess superior left-brain skills, but rather they possess superior interpersonal and intrapersonal skills associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. In other words, they are confident in themselves and they have the ability to build positive lasting relationships, and they are merely "good enough" at the core business subjects we learn in school.
We also heard from Andrew Smith, Founder and CEO of Advanced Transit Dynamics, a company that produces the Trailer Tail, a contraption that mounts onto a tracker trailer to reduce drag and therefore improve fuel economy by 5-6%. Starting from his idea getting launched by winning the Rice business plan competition in 2006, he took us through his journey coming out of business school as an entrepreneur, and offered nuggets of advice that he has picked up along the way. He uttered numerous quotable lines, including, "Entrepreneurship is mobilizing resources that you can't control." How true: The art of entrepreneurship (in both a startup environment and a corporate environment) lies in inspiring people to help you achieve your goals with the least capital possible. Need a prototype built? Find some mechanical engineering students at a local university and see if they want to build one for a class project. Getting a lot of money early can turn out to be a burden if you lose sight of such valuable frugality.
Other speakers included Greg Oslan, President and COO of Narus (now part of Boeing), and Rick Johnson, CEO of Johnson Ventures. Greg took us through his experience successfully crafting turnaround situations, while Rick gave us his perspective on what makes a good business. Our final speakers of the day, Sanjay Subhedar (founder of Storm Ventures and IU alum) and Tim Walsh (VP at Silicon Valley Bank and IU alum), shared with us their thoughts on financing in the Valley. They lamented that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find good deals out there, not because there is a lack of ideas, but because there is a lack of need for funding; hardly anyone needs to build a manufacturing facility or even a storefront anymore so venture capital is limited to later-stage, high-growth period companies. What I found particularly intriguing about their talk was their nonchalant acceptance of the beginning of a new tech bubble, something with which I'm concerned. Sanjay half-joked that he was really looking forward to the bubble, because his companies would stand to be acquired for top dollar by big players like Google and Facebook.
Tomorrow we're on the road, visiting Google (to learn about corporate innovation), SonicWall (to learn about the rapid growth stage), and Plug and Play Tech Center (to learn about the world's largest incubator).
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