October 2010

On Monday, I had the privilege of guest lecturing in two entrepreneurship classes at Emory University’s Goizeuta Business School. Here’s video from the first lecture.  It’s about 1 hour and 20 minutes.  Please pardon the funky camera angle…

And if you’re still awake, here is the video from the first 30 minutes of the 2nd lecture, before the camera ran out of battery life…

During the 2 classes, when I polled the audience, here’s a run down of what they wanted to learn more about:

1.  Adwords / Paid Search – How’s it work?

2.  Monetizing a site with Ads, is tough, what other ways are there to monetize?

3.  How do you come up with good ideas?

4.  How to gain technical expertise – e.g. how the internet, search, and websites work?

5.  Social Me Me Media!  How do you use it to your advantage?

6.  How has a background in accounting helped?

7.  How to get started with a business.  What are the first steps?

8.  How can you attract customers and content providers?

9.  How much does it cost to make an iPhone app?

10.  How to keep content providers happy in the early stages of a business?

What stuck out the most from the experience was how interested the students are in learning about “How to Get Website Traffic“, a topic which I’ve blogged about here before.  This leaded me to believe that every business school should have a class on internet marketing, as an overwhelming majority of the discussion became geared towards paid search, organic SEO, and social media.

Another interesting discovery occurred when I asked the class “How many of you are on Twitter?“, to which only 1 student out of a classroom of around 40, raised their hand.  I’m not sure whether this indicates that Twitter has either (A) a lot of room to grow or (B) it’s peaked. I’m inclined to vote for (B).  When I asked the class “How many of you are on Facebook?”, the entire room nodded in acknowledgement.

During the discussion I provided a list of free resources to help get them started, including TechCrunch, This Week In, and my favorite entrepreneurial / VC blog, BothSidesOfTheTable.

Since the lecture, I’ve had a number of students follow up with me seeking advice.  I’m very excited by the opportunity to give back to the community by helping them get their businesses off the ground and on the right track. Thanks to Andrea Hershatter for allowing me the opportunity to speak to her class.  I am truly honored to have been a part of their business school experience.  It’s the least that I could do to give back the the institution that has help me so much in my own career.

Later today I have the privilege of guest lecturing in the Entrepreneurship and New Venture Management class at my alma mater, Emory University, where the undergraduate business school presently ranks #7 in the country.

Sometimes I wonder, if I had to go back and apply to college today, whether or not I’d even be accepted to Emory.  The school has been climbing the rankings year after year and the admissions process is no doubt harder than ever.

What’s funny about today is that I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be discussing in the two lectures.  I’ve pretty much got free reign to discuss anything.   But forget what I want to talk about…what will the students want to hear about?

To answer this question, I’m trying to imagine myself back in business school and what would be the ideal lecture – i.e. now that I’m 10 years out of school, what would do I know now that I wish I’d known then?

The following quick list comes to mind:

1.    You have to have thick skin, patience, and determination in order to survive. Business is hard.

2.    Nothing happens fast; however, things eventually do happen – i.e. progress is not noticeable in one day, one week, or even one-month intervals.  It really takes about 90 days to show measurable progress and more even noticeable progress is made in 6 month, one year, and multi-year intervals.

3.    Since progress does not happen overnight, a major contributor to success in business is your ability to hang in there for the long haul.  As cliché as it may sound, the longer you stay in business the better.  There’s little such thing as a quick in and out, especially in today’s environment. Persistence is key.

4.    Financial Success in the real world is not just about intelligence.  What’s more important (aside from luck and timing) are salesmanship and connections.  The ability to market oneself is what often makes the difference between not having a job and having a job that pays well.  College grades and raw intelligence alone will only get you so far in the business world.  Communication skills, a knack for networking, and persistence will take you much further.

After jotting down these “fartherly” tips, I ultimately came to the notion that if I were an undergraduate business student today, I wouldn’t want to hear someone preach to me about how I should act.  Instead, I would want to hear someone talk about topics that I was genuinely interested in.

So how am I supposed to know what these students are genuinely interested in?  Take a survey, that’s how…

I’ve prepared a fairly comprehensive slide deck complete with the usual background info, how to secure funding, elements of a pitch deck, how to size up the competition, market size analysis, and many more; however, to better nail down the items to focus on in the lecture, I decided that I should poll the class at the beginning of the discussion to find out what they’d like to hear about.

I’m hoping that through polling, I’ll get some good solid feedback to help guide the discussion towards a meaningful place and that we’ll just skip over the slides / topics that are of little interest to the class.  This should be an interesting experiment.  If you’re a college student and you happen to be reading this post (the readership on this blog is massive – wink wink), then I’d love to get your thoughts.  Which topics that are of interest to you?  What would you want to learn about in an entrepreneurship class? Please leave your input in the comments section below.

Later this week, I’ll post video of the lecture here.  Stay tuned until then and wish me luck…

Related articles:

• Your Business School Is Great, But Is It Fun? (huffingtonpost.com)