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Silicon Valley Trip - Day 2
The second day of the San Francisco trip began with a sort of déjà-vu: Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) Ventures invited us back for a meeting with associate Joshua Raffaelli to get a different perspective on the firm’s operations. After arriving at Menlo Park a half-hour early, we took a detour back to The Sundeck for a cup of coffee before starting our day. Sitting in The Sundeck dining room with a 270°-view of the surrounding mountains I thought, “This would be a pretty nice way to start every morning.”
After breakfast, we returned to the Millenium Falcon Conference Room at DFJ to meet with Joshua. He was kind enough to bring us some swag (DFJ pens, notebooks, hats and bags) while he talked about the day-to-day deal-making and due diligence processes of the firm. The day before we had met with the Don Wood, a Managing Partner at DFJ, who focused more on DFJ investing strategy including its global network of affiliates.
Our next stop was at Garage Tech Ventures—home of startup-guru Guy Kawasaki—in the heart of Palo Alto. Here we piled into a small conference where a picture hung of the eponymous garage (located just a few blocks away from the Garage Tech Office) where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard got their start. Managing Director, Bill Reichert, discussed the firm’s history: how it began as an accelerator and became one of the most important Silicon Valley early stage VC firms of the past decade.
After lunch at Il Fornaio, the group made its way to the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. Incidentally, the research center (which is a retired Navy base) is adjacent to the Googleplex property in Mountain View. Here we met with Tim Collins, CEO of KleenSpeed: a resident research company at the center which is developing electric racecar technology. After touring the KleenSpeed facility we met with Lisa Lockyer and several of her colleagues at the NASA Technology Partnerships Office.
Finally, we made our way back to the place where our two-days-in-Silicon-Valley started: the law offices of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) for an attorney panel. Professor Oglevee, an organizer of the trip, had suggested that we use this opportunity to do a venture capital “term-sheet” workshop. A term-sheet is the non-binding document signed by an entrepreneur and venture capital firm when entering an investment deal. Daphne, Alison and Phuong (the attorneys on the panel) gave us each three different term sheet templates and we discussed the differences between them and what to look for when signing one. As it turns out, the keys are: READ YOUR TERM SHEET and ASK QUESTIONS.
After the panel we had one last chance to thank Jim Terranova, Fisher alumnus and Director of WS investments at WSGR, for organizing the trip and supporting the next generation of buckeye entrepreneurs. Thanks again Jim!
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life blog and Fisher Entrepreneurship Association blog.
See more pictures at flickr.
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Silicon Valley Trip - Day 1
I’ve spent the past 24 hours in San Francisco and Silicon Valley on an educational trip with the Fisher Entrepreneurship Association visiting venture capitalists. The trip was hosted by Jim Terranova who runs WS Investments, the VC arm of the Silicon Valley law firm WSGR.
Yesterday’s itinerary included
- Breakfast with Jim and Mario Rosati (the “R” in WSGR)
- Don Wood, Managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) Ventures
- Lunch at the Sundeck
- Sven Strohband, at Mohr Davidow Ventures
- Several Representatives of The Sand Hill Angels
We’ve got another packed day today, with events including a visit to NASA’s Technology Partnerships Office at the Ames Research Center.
Pictures coming soon…
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life blog.
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TechColumbus Innovation Awards
Last night TechColumbus held its annual Innovation Awards at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. I got the opportunity to attend as a representative of The Fisher College of Business Center for Entrepreneurship.
The event, attend by more than one-thousand prominent figures in Columbus business, has seen 40% grown since last year. The primary purpose of the event was to announce and celebrate the finalists and winners of awards in the following categories:
- Green Innovation
- Minority Owned Enterprise
- Outstanding Service
- Outstanding Product
- Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery
- Executive of the Year
- Outstanding Woman in Technology
- Inventor of the Year
- Outstanding Start-up Business
- Outstanding Technology Team
- Student Innovation Awards
However, the event emceed by 10TV’s Andrea Cambern and Jeff Hogan also included several special guest appearances including one by Resource Interactive Founder and CEO Nancy Kramer.
TechColumbus’ web marketing team made creative use of social networking technology to engage the audience at the Convention Center as well as those that did not attend. A “tweetpit” was setup next to the stage with three web marketers who live blogged, tweeted, updated facebook and posted live video of backstage interviews with the winners. A giant display showed a live twitter stream of the Innovation Awards twitter hashtag (#IA09) which the “1100 geeks in a room” drove to a regional trending topic.
It is interesting to see what happens when you encourage the twittersphere to embrace your event. All the conversation certainly attracted attention from people outside the physical event, but it also gave a voice to people with negative opinions of it.
Congratulations to all the winners and nominees and thanks to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Dave Shaw for the invite.
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.
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Internal Case Competition
This weekend, Fisher hosted its annual first-year internal case competition. A case competition is essentially a mini-consulting project. An actual business situation, as summarized and published by prominent business school publications (e.g. The Harvard Business Review), is presented to a group of students who have a relatively short amount of time to analyze the case, synthesize a recommendation and present and defend it to a panel of judges (representing executives of the company from the case).
Many case competitions are held as intercollegiate competitions (e.g., the Big 10 Case Competitions) or are sponsored by outside interests and organizations (e.g., the Proctor & Gamble Case Competition and The National Black MBA Association's Case Competition). However, Fisher is relatively unique in that it holds its own internal case competition for MBA’s only. By holding our own competition, we can cost effectively (without travel costs and registration fees) allow everyone that wants to to participate. Additionally, our internal case competition is used as a sort of audition for the aforementioned intercollegiate competitions.
The case revolved around Microsoft’s place in the internet search industry (from the perspective of September 2008). We were fortunate that this was a company, industry and product that we were relatively familiar with. We were given the case on Friday morning at 8:00 AM and were required to submit a finished PowerPoint deck by 8:00 AM on Saturday. The first teams began their presentations at 8:45.
My first experience with a case competition was a bit unusual. Due to illness and other unforeseen circumstances our four-person team was reduced to only two. Despite our best efforts to manage our time, sleep was definitely sacrificed in order to put forth the best product possible. We did not win, however our efforts were rewarded with a “Best Q&A” award.
I want to thank my teammate, Angela, here for convincing me to compete despite our disadvantage and pushing to put together the best solution possible.
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.
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Fisher Corporate Mentorship Program
This week marked the kickoff of the 2010 Fisher Corporate Mentorship Program. The program, organized by the Leadership and Professional Development office, goes to great lengths to match over a hundred fist-year MBA with professional mentors working in fields that the students are interested in. Like all mentorship programs, the participants (both mentor and mentee) get out of this experience as much as they put in. The program lasts ten months (through October 2010) and as a guideline it is recommended that both parties set aside time to meet every month.
My mentor is David Brownstein a partner in UVG Ltd (a Columbus venture consulting firm), involved with the Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (TEC) Institute and veteran of the Fisher Corporate Mentorship program. I got the chance to briefly meet him at the reception hosted at the Blackwell this week. I’m looking forward to building a relationship with him and learning more about his professional experiences over the coming year.
Reposted from Fisher Grad Life Blog.
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