Before I get ahead of myself, I should say that I just updated my about page. There isn't much there, but you'll notice I'm in school for an MBA (about half way through at this point). You'll also notice that I've got quite a few different interests across a fairly wide spectrum (i.e. engineering and photography & DJing aren't exactly 2 peas in a pod). So as I continue to explore various career paths and try to align my experience (and dare I say, expertise) up to this point with my relatively diverse interests to create a career where I don't feel like shooting myself in the face with a shotgun every time I show up for work, the more I realize I'm pigeonholed into the kind of jobs that my academic background would suggest I take. On paper, I'm a one-dimensional number cruncher, deployed as a specialized cog in a large convoluted and disorganized system of industrial inputs and outputs. The above lays the groundwork for the following post. I might have to break this up into several sections to keep things organized and on point.
Entrepreneurship and New Venture Development
For the sake of maintaining my beautiful face (what with all the shotgun blasts), I'm finding that I'm most likely going to have to start my own venture, or at least highly consider this option in lieu of the mythical perfect job where everyone has an oversized beanbag of an office chair, lunch is catered daily, and there's a whole arsenal of nurf paraphernalia in the board room. And cold beer on tap in the cafeteria. Oh, and your to-do list has cure world hunger. And... well, you get the point. Basically a place like IDO, not that they have beer on tap, but it's basically the kind of place I'd like to work if I could work anywhere I wanted. Last semester I had probably the best class that I'll have in the entire program. As much as I like Porter's 5-forces and to use terms such as paradigm shift and functional frameworks in my daily vernacular of BS MBA mumbo jumbo, a lot of the shit thrown at MBA programs and MBA candidates is pretty fair: Great business leaders business school does not make. But last semester, I took a class on business formation and new venture development. My professor was a seasoned venture capital manager and financier as well as an accomplished entrepreneur; this class was almost more about life than it was about business. The key take home message, at least for me, was that you can't be taught entrepreneurship as much as you can learn from other peoples entrepreneurial exploits. Basically, you get to learn about all the myriad of ways a financier/partner/your own mother will screw you when it comes to starting a venture - I'm being dramatic, but you can really get the idea of how wisdom comes with age when you've got old timers telling how many times and ways they've been duped (or even how they did it on sending end).
We had a speaker every week who shared all their war stories. I'm not going to get into too many details about the stereotypes associated with the personalities of entrepreneurs and the details debunking those stereotypes - like everything else, they come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. I'm also not going to cover how they they were all pretty smart, creative, and so on. However, I will note that, in almost every case, these entrepreneurs all made their mints through impeccable timing. One rode the telecom deregulation wave of 70's the, another got great deals on some real estate in the 80's. The point? Timing is everything.
I think I'll continue on this topic sometime in the future, but for now, this is a good segue into the next part of this three part series. Social-media, Web 2.0, whatever you want to call it, the timing is right for this whole thing to make a mint for some people.
Stay tuned and leave a comment with your thoughts.