Business Students Launching Companies
I am in Rexburg, Idaho today at BYU-Idaho (formerly Ricks College). Yesterday I had the privilege of meeting Kim B. Clark, the president of the University, who until last year was the Dean of the Harvard Business School. The slogan at the university is “Rethinking Education.”
I also met with Fenton Broadhead, Dean of the Business School, and met many students here. Something very special is happening at this university. President Clark works with two other former Harvard Business School professors, Clark Gilbert and Steven Wheelwright, as he seeks to reinvent education at this school.
As I spoke with students and faculty members, the excitement here is tangible. Traditional textbook study with its emphasis on recall is is being replaced with a new approaching that focuses more on understanding and experience. For example, business students take a full semester integrated core of finance, marketing, supply chain, and operations classes, which gives teams of 20 students a chance during the semester to launch an actual business.
Many of these business turn a profit before they are shut down or sold/turned over to the bookstore.
There is a vision here about what kind of students a 21st century university should turn out. They should not be spectators, they should be proactive participants in solving problems.
BYU-Idaho has no intercollegiate sports program; but they do have a football stadium, uniforms, and cheerleaders. The difference is that any student that wants to participate in football can do so for fun or competitively in the large activities/intramural program here. And that goes for all kinds of other sports and extra curricular activities as well.
The students I met are all involved in so many things, getting hands on experience, and real world experience. The business schools internship program is incredible, placing students at big 4 accounting firms and other major corporations.
So keep your eye on BYU-Idaho. For years we (in the Utah community) have heard talk about BYU striving to become the “Harvard of the West.”
For the first time, I’m thinking, maybe that will happen in Rexburg, not in Provo.
BYU-Idaho Entrepreneur Conference
I am excited to attend the BYU-Idaho Entrepreneur Conference this week, to help judge the entrepreneur of the year competition, and to talk to students there about entrepreneurship.
While I’m there, I may scout around for some office space in case we want to expand Provo Labs Academy, our academy for entrepreneurs, to Rexburg, Idaho. I’m going to do the same thing on my trip to BYU-Hawaii next week. (Although, I’m not sure how much available office space exists in Laie, Hawaii!)
Apparently the enrollment at BYU-Idaho jumped this year, somewhat unexpectedly, to 13,500 students. (See Wikipedia article on BYU-Idaho.)
Under the leadership of the Kim Clark, former dean of the Harvard Business School, I hear that some real innovation in education is happening at BYU-Idaho. I hope to learn about it on my visit.
Business Week Top 25 Under 25
BusinessWeek.com is highlighting 25 of the best young entrepreneurs in the country on its web site this week.
One of the nominees is Utah’s own Cammon Randle of Copperrain Productions. The company does “promotions, training videos, and creative shorts “. He is 25 and is a member of the Provo Labs Academy, along with his wife Lorri.
You can vote for Cammon online and help him get even more national exposure.
Congrats Cammon and Lorri!
Provo Labs Academy is Heating Up
Okay, so our building on Ninth East in Provo is not quite finished and we still have a portable heater or two. But the energy level is definitely growing, and things are starting to heat up.
Today an article came out in the BYU Daily Universe about Provo Labs Academy. We are so excited to be so close to campus and to be getting noticed already.
Yesterday we held a two-hour training session for about 12 Academy members on how to do pay-per-click marketing on Google. Two of our members thought we were going to teach “paper clip” marketing at first (and they weren’t too embarrassed to admit it!) but by the end of the training they totally understand the power of bidding on keywords at the world’s leading search engines.
Today we had a dozen people in a session about using the internet to generate leads. We reviewed or mentioned several web sites that have been very successful at capturing email addresses from prospective customers.
- OneMinuteMillionaire.com
- Lifeminders.com
- MarketingSherpa.com
I suggested that perhaps we could have someone from Allegiance.com visit us and share with us the presentation they are going to give at the MarketingSherpa B2B Demand Generation Summit. We could let them do a dry run on us!
We also discussed ways to communicate with leads after they have been captured. One of our Academy members does a lot of lead generation for clients, and he showed us some sites that he has built, and how he used very targeted direct mail (postcards or letters) to send people to these web sites where a very high percentage of visitors sign up for more information.
Also, two members had experience with auto responder email campaigns and online email solutions that help you manage the leads once you get them. One uses Aweber.com (Alexa ranking 257-wow!). The other likes Streamsend.com. Both are very happy with these services. Streamsend apparently keeps up with all the spam laws, so you don’t get blacklisted when you use their services.
We have set up a group web site for all the Academy members so they can communicate with each other at any time, ask questions, vote on topics they want to learn about, and which guest speakers they want me to invite. They can also schedule the two conference rooms for their own business meetings or to have brainstorming meetings with other Academy members.
Next week, I think our wireless internet will be more stable. We got 100 more chairs this week. More computers are being ordered. The 2nd floor is almost completed, so the WorldVitalRecords.com genealogy team will be moving upstairs next week, leaving more room for startup entrepreneurs.
Visit the Provo Labs Academy website if you want more information or would like to schedule a visit/tour.
Team Formation Summit for Worldhistory.com
Filed under: Companies to Watch, Entrepreneurship, Events, History, Provo Labs Companies, Recruiting, Utah Entrepreneurship, Utah Events, Utah Jobs
Last year I wrote in Connect magazine that I would be trying a grand experiment in team building. I would be trying an idea I got from The Entrepreneur’s Manual, a very popular book for entrepreneurs published in 1997. I would hold a 2-day retreat with a couple dozen executives to brainstorm, network, plan, and then vote on the Founders Team for Worldhistory.com.
Sometimes I have too many ideas, so I can’t get around to all of them. Sometimes ideas just go away. They stop bothering me. I almost always write every idea down, so that I won’t forget them forever, but they stop getting current brainshare.
But this team formation idea has been popping up its head every month or so. So I’ve decided to go ahead with it. Instead of a 2-day summit, we’re going to try a 1-day retreat to a local cabin. The date will be Friday, October 20th. I’m going to invite 15-20 friends developers, marketers, consultants, strategists, and entrepreneurs to meet for a day (probably from 9 am to 4 pm) to determine the future of Worldhistory.com.
So far, I have invited several individuals who know about the Worldhistory.com mobile subscription business model and love it. 100% of the people invited so far have said they will come.
But since I don’t know everyone (yet), I thought I should also blog about this Summit and invite others to apply to attend it. Even if you aren’t looking for a new job, consider coming. We need advisory board members as well as a group of founders who can make this company happen.
If you are interested in being invited, please contact Pat Sheranian at 373-6565, our Provo Labs office manager, talk with her about your background and interest, and email her your resume. Or, email me your resume if you want. (paul “AT” provolabs.com)
This will be a great networking event, and you’ll meet some fantastic people and hear some very interesting discussions about the future of mobile location-based services, the delivery of text, audio and video content to cell phones and other mobile devices, and see the very beginning of what I hope turns into another Utah business success story.
The first half of the day will be devoted to Corporate Alliance type networking, where you will have a chance to meet every other attendee and connect with them on a personal level. After lunch, which will be provided, we’ll break into teams and do some planning and brainstorming.
Finally, there will be some sharing of the best ideas and plans of the day, and we’ll have a discussion about how to form and fund a new corporation with all the assets that Provo Labs currently owns in the history space (including data, web sites, and software code).
I don’t know if we’ll actually hold a vote on who the Founding Team should be; but if the attendees want to this, we will.
I’m excited about this summit. Read the Connect article about team formation, and get your hands on a copy of the original team formation ideas in The Entrepreneur Manual. You can buy it used on Amazon for as little as $5.74.
I really believe this idea is a big one. I believe that millions of people worldwide will one day subscribe to a mobile history content subscription service, so that whereever they travel in the world they will be able to pull up text, audio, and video clips that describe or explain the history of that location. If we get the right team in place, and can get the right content and design the right interface and market this service through the right carriers (or “off portal” if necessary) I think we can pull this off right here in Utah.
I guess that makes us a Four Domino business model, right Josh?
But if we get the right team together, then we’ll be down to Three.
I also think that “history” is way down the list of the content types that all the biggest players have on their radar, and so it won’t be immediately launched by the larger players. History is kind of like genealogy–it’s not a multi-billion dollar category like travel or finance or real estate–so it’s not at the top of the list for the carriers or internet media companies.
Like I said in Connect, I promise to write an article about this experiment and what we learn from it.
Let me know if you want to come. We can only take a few more people, but if you think you are qualified and have a lot to offer here, please apply, and we’ll let you know.
Mark Cuban on Becoming a Billionaire
Filed under: Advice for Startups, Blogging, Entrepreneurship, Video
Last night I caught part of Big Idea with Donny Deutsch on cable. Donny was interviewing billionaire Mark Cuban, who is one of the smartest entrepreneurs I’ve ever followed.
The best written article I’ve seen about how Mark turned Broadcast.com into a multi-billion dollar company is the chapter in Net Entrepreneurs Only, published around 2000, to highlight a dozen or so successful online entrepreneurs. The work ethic that Mark and his partner Todd had back then is nicely described there. Mark talked about it again last night. He described a typical work day.
He works from home most of the time. Never lets anyone call him on the phone (except his wife). If they want a phone meeting or if he needs to have a meeting in person, he arranges it through email. His wife has 2 girls, including a 6-week old girl, so Mark describes a typical day as involving playing with his girls, feeding them in the morning, he even mentioned watching the Wiggles and Stanley with his older daughter. He had a great daddy-gleam in his eye as he talked about his girls. He seems to care more about his family than anything else.
I think there are at least three major lessons we can learn from Mark Cuban. (I happen to have almost the exact same approach to work that he does, and is has taken me places, but not nearly as far as Mark. Not even close. So we’ll use Mark as the reason why internet entrepreneurs should adopt these practices.)
1. He reads like crazy and uses email like crazy and has access at his fingertips to all his correspondence for the last 15 years. The way he described it on the Big Idea was really cool.
(I have used Folio VIEWS for 16 years as my full-text database, and now I use gmail for my email archive. Someday I’ll combine the two into a single seach engine.)
Mark dives in deep to any new technology. He learns everything he can about it and talks to all the pioneers in developing it. He knows his stuff.
2. He is willing to do the blocking and tackling to build a business, even if it means thousands of hours of what others might think is tedious work.
He described launching AudioNet (the precursor to Broadcast.com) and working crazy hours doing nothing but posting on forums and emailing and doing everything possible to generate interest and usage of his internet sports radio channel.
3. Like Warren Buffett, who claims that being an investor made him a better business man, and being a business man made him a better investor, Cuban obviously does both, does them a lot, and loves them.
The reason he was able to sell his internet company at a peak valuation of $5.7 billion is that he had seen the hardware industry, the networking industry, and the software industry all go through bubbles. He sold a computer software company for $6 million in 1990, and started investing. So he knew some of the macrotrends in the investment industry and saw the internet bubble for what it was. He got out when he could.
He said, and he is 100% right, that most entrepreneurs aren’t willing to do the required blocking and tackling to build a successful company. John Bresee, at BackCountry.com, describes pretty much the same approach in the first few years of BackCountry.com. It was mostly going online all the time, trying to get links to your site, posting in usenet groups, on message boards and doing email. Same thing for the 2nd person at eBay. I remember reading that he used to answers something like 1,500 emails per day.
Most of the internet millionaires I know and the internet billionaires I’ve read about were completely willing to work 12-16 hours a day doing the most tedious possible things, like email and guerilla marketing, in order to get their companies in a position to win in their market.
How many of you are willing to do that? Have you ever spent till 2 or 3 in the morning working on your web site, visiting and posting on message boards, looking for the hundreds of online directories that should be linking to your company, finding email lists to advertise on, and visiting thousands of sites looking for the ones that ought to be your affiliates?
How many times have you done that? Would you be willing to do it many times a week, for several months, or even a year or two, to get your company in a position to succeed.
For some people, it might not be worth it. There is definitely more to happiness than financial success. And sometimes the pursuit of financial success costs people their health, family, friends, and peace of mind.
So it’s definitely not for everyone. But it is an essential ingredient in most entrepreneur success stories.
Another lesson I’ll point out, is that Mark Cuban is an avid blogger, and probably has one of the most interesting and controversial blogs in the world. He is never afraid to say what he thinks, no matter what fine the NBA might throw at him. He is incredibly smart and outspoken.
I have said before that every CEO should blog. It is so healthy for CEOs to be in touch with customers, employees, and to get feedback from everyone. And I love the transparency of blogging. That is healthy for companies.
If you are an internet entrepreneur, definitely check out the Mark Cuban blog regularly. He talks about trends that most people ignore. He got into HD TV when so many people ignored it, partly because he saw computer pricing drop over the years which led to a huge adoption rate, and he saw the same thing coming with plasma screens. He knows that we will all have amazing high-definition screens in multiple places in our homes in the coming years, and so just like with Broadcast.com where he and Todd went on a rampage and signed hundreds of licensing deals for audio content on the interenet in the first years in business, he repeated that approach with HDNet, and he is a leader in that marketplace now.
He has more ideas that he can handle himself, so sometimes he’ll throw things out that he won’t be doing personally, like this post about “3 ideas that are all yours.” Not well received by some of his readers (he has a TON of comments on his blog.)
Company and Product Launch Events
Filed under: Advice for Startups, Companies to Watch, Entrepreneurship, Events, Investing, Startup Capital
Startup companies with finished products need publicity, media and blogger coverage, and analysts and reviewers to take note of what they are doing. They also often need investor interest. Since investors often flock to the same hot deals, it can be good to have a large number of investors exposed to your deal at the same time.
Some launch events give startups a chance to reach all these audiences at the same time.
DEMO is a semi-annual event that has featured pitches from some of the remarkable technology companies of our time. Investors and the media pay a lot of attention to the companies that get selected to present at DEMO. At every DEMO, conference organizer Chris Shipley chooses a number of DEMOgods that are worthy of special attention.
Yesterday and today, about 70 hot companies have been introducing their products at DEMOfall 2006, including Pluggd, a Seattle startup with a podcast search engine that I am very interested in, whose video presentation you can watch here.
At Demo, your presentation will be recorded and stored in the Demo Video Archives permanently. So there will be a long tail of publicity and potential interest in your company.
I wish I were at DEMO, but at least I get to watch videos on all the companies that I’m interested in.
Besides DEMO, what other launch events are possible for high tech startups?
Someone ought to do a directory or Wiki of launch events, if one doesn’t exist already. I know of a few.
FundingUniverse.com offers speedpitching events in several states. They aren’t so much a public launch event, but they are a great way to reach local angel investors.
Where can you find a way to reach a group of early stage VCs all at once, rather than making the trek to Sandhill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley or hanging out at Buck’s Woodside Restaurant, where more venture deals have been done than anywhere else on earth?
The VC Forum brings a number of Silicon Valley venture firms to cities around the country to meet local entrepreneurs and look at potential deals. One Provo Labs company is actually presenting on September 28th at VC Forum in Salt Lake City.
Another option is the Silcon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. I received an email yesterday from Jennifer, who represents SVASE, and she asked me to publicize one of their upcoming events. So here it is:
SVASE is hosting an event called Launch: Silicon Valley (www.launchsiliconvalley.org) occurring on November 8, 2006 at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, CA. The event will bring together the Top 30 best and brightest A and B round startups and will provide these start ups with a chance to showcase their products in front of an audience of leading Silicon Valley VCs looking for their next investment, and companies seeking to leverage business models and technologies as customers, strategic partnerships and potentially acquirers.
As an advocate for entrepreneurs I was hoping you could spread the word about this great opportunity that many of your readers might appreciate. If so here
Advice from Shawn Nelson
Filed under: Advice for Startups, Blogging, Entrepreneurship, Retail, Uncategorized
Kelly Anderson blogged about her lunch visit with Shawn Nelson of LoveSac and his wife Tiffany who owns a shoe boutique at the Gateway in Salt Lake City. Shawn gave her advice about retail and brand building.
Kelly has an excellent blog. I love how she gets so many other women entrepreneurs to guest blog on her site. One example is the guest blog from my friend Erika Wilde of StopDirt.com, who post some excellent advice about finding products to sell online.
$31,000 in Prizes at BYU Student Entrepreneur of the Year Competition
Filed under: Advice for Startups, Entrepreneurship, PR, Utah Entrepreneurship, Utah Events
Kevin Willeitner, one of my BYU Internet Marketing students asked me to blog this:
Student entrepreneurs now have their change to win a little money to put into their business. The Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization of BYU is now accepting applications for the 2006 Student Entrepreneur of the Year. So far, they are planning to give out a total of $31,000 to the winners with $12,500 going to first place. Contestant get prizes all the way down to 12th place, so the chances of winning something are quite good. Last years winner was Jayson Edwards of J-Dawg’s (a small hot dog shack on the edge of the BYU campus.)
Here is the official BYU Student Entrepreneur of the Year website.
Other previous winners include Adam Edmunds (CEO of Allegiance), Dave Bateman (CEO of Property Solutions), and Jonathan Coons (CEO of 1-800-Contacts). All of experiencing great success in their businesses.
Business competitions like this are a great way to get publicity which can be leveraged in a variety of ways to help your company succeed. The cash prizes don’t hurt either!
I read recently that in the 1970s there were something like 20 university entrepreneurship programs in the U.S. Now there are something like 2,000. Many of them have business plan competitions these days. I wish there were a central directory of these competitions. Here’s an incomplete one.
I know our team at FundingUniverse.com is interested in making sure that the winners of business plan competitions and the winners of Entrepreneur of the Year competitions like this one get a chance to meet with local angel investors when the time is right for them to raise capital for their business.
This one will be fun to watch, because I’m sure I’ll know quite a few of the students who will be in the running.
Teaching Internet Marketing at BYU and all over
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing Tactics
I’m starting my internet marketing class today at BYU. It’s Bus M 457. The class is Thursdays from 3:30 – 6:20. There are currently 29 students enrolled and room for more.
Today Marty Fahncke and I did our first Conference Call University teleconference call. We had 22 registrations for the call. Our next call will be in 2 weeks and we are hoping for 100 callers. Callers submit questions to Marty in advance and then he asks and I answer the questions, although he provides some great input as well. Today there were questions about fundraising for startups, pricing strategies, books to read, and how to focus on the most important things in a startup. The call was fun. I look forward to future calls. (Sign up for the next call)
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