Confessions of An Entrepreneur: Building Value From 0
It was spring in Southern California. I was sitting in an undergraduate entrepreneurship class at USC, barely able to maintain focus on the class’s teachings. My ADD was prioritizing the concave and convex design drawings in my notebook, when the professor abruptly announced a semester long entrepreneurship competition. It was then that my focus sharpened and I began to actively listen…
The Competition
Every student in the class would be given the semester to build a team and generate as much revenue as they could with a pre-allotted $500.00 of capital. By the end of the semester, each team would have to present their concepts, strategies and results for 15 minutes to a panel of seasoned judges. All of the teams would be placed in competition with each other and the group with the highest ROI would be victorious.
After the competition was announced, our teacher allowed everyone to utilize remaining class time to divide ourselves up into various groups. Over the next 2 hours, the classroom erupted with noise as everyone tried to find the most optimal partners for their respective ventures. Students shifted up and down the aisles as the traditional “alphas” in every group herded teams together and clamored for attention. Students scribbled ideas in their notebooks until the lead from their Ticonderoga…
