To 32-year-old Neville Blakemore, returning to his hometown of Louisville, Ky. and owning his own telecom business is his modest life-long dream.
‘The goal, more than anything, is for me to own my own business in Kentucky. I would collect garbage if I thought I could make a [decent] living,’ Blakemore proclaimed.
Boston University School of Management junior Aksel Chernitzky’s plan is to someday launch an eBay-like website for college students called oncampusauctions.com.
So Neville and Aksel have invested their time, energy and money into Boston University’s entrepreneurship program, hoping the skills they acquire will prompt others to invest in them.
The entrepreneurship program, run by SMG’s Entrepreneurial Management Institute, equips students with the skills to turn their novel ideas into full-fledged, profit generating, operational businesses.
‘EMI has been through the roof fantastic,’ said Blakemore, who has been in the program since January, 2001.
‘[It’s a] whole network of programs and activities and events around entrepreneurship that we try to use to create ways of helping students and alums who are interested in starting businesses,’ said Pete Russo, the department liaison for the entrepreneurship program.
This semester the three-year-old program has diversified its clientele by including undergraduates in its team of impresario hopefuls. Russo, a graduate of Harvard Business School, created the new concentration after noticing a growing interest among undergraduates in entrepreneurial activities.
‘Undergraduates were becoming involved in some of the activities that were designed for the MBAs, so we felt we really should address their needs as well,’ Russo said.
Russo immediately began contacting venture capitalists, local entrepreneurs, alumni from SMG and alumni from other local universities and invited them to lecture and mentor undergraduate students.
‘We have got about 70 alumni entrepreneurs who are now willing to take a phone call from a student at anytime and offer assistance and advice,’ Russo said.
Courses for the undergraduate concentration not only familiarize students with the financial particulars of starting a business; they also educate students on interpersonal skills. Students must take two electives. Among them is a new course specifically designed for female entrepreneurs, which is being taught by Professor Candida Brush, who heads the Council for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership.
In addition to electives, students only have to enroll in two required courses: entrepreneurship, taught by Russo, and small business management.
‘Entrepreneurship talks about characteristics of successful entrepreneurs,’ Russo said. ‘It sort of helps the student do a self-assessment as to whether they would be happy as an entrepreneur. ‘
‘The first thing they tell you is you need to be sure you are an entrepreneur, that you like the risk and you want the challenge,’ said Mario Pani, a graduate of the program who now owns Bonsai Ventures, an Allston-based company which imports and exports handmade furniture from Mexico to retailers in Canada. ‘You have something in your hands and you have to convince people it’s going to work. The main issue is to be able to generate enough energy around your idea and your business and to attract enough people.’
Russo says the program places a special emphasis on communication, which is key to entrepreneurship.
‘The first and most important interpersonal skill for being an entrepreneur is being a good listener, and the second is probably being able to sell and communicate well,’ Russo said. ‘The small business management course actually deals with all of the organizational, managerial issues that you face once you’ve got the company started as you go through the early stages of growth, so you deal with issues of building an organization and hiring the right people and growing pains that you might face.’
Students also use class time to take a business idea through a feasibility plan to see if it could actually become a company.
‘As they are walking through that process, we kind of use that as a live case to think about all the issues you’d have to think about, [such as] how do you sell this idea to someone? Who would you want to have on your team? And what are the problems you are going to face?’ Russo said.
In addition to concretizing their own visions, students use class sessions to dissect the underpinnings of real businesses that have failed.
‘We fill all six of the black boards with notes analyzing [each] case,’ Blakemore said. ‘[The] point is [to] dig deep, go to the numbers, [do] a bottom-up analysis. ‘
There are currently 70 concentrators in the graduate program and already 39 in the new undergraduate program this semester. Russo partly credits the success of the programs to BU’s prime location in a community rich with resources for entrepreneurs. Russo and his colleagues frequently organize events and activities in collaboration with neighboring colleges like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Babson College, who also offer entrepreneurship programs. In addition, Russo has already contacted 27 faculty members from the Harvard Business School who are willing to share their entrepreneurial course syllabi with him.
‘The EMI tries to create a community of students, teachers, and entrepreneurs from the Boston community who want to share ideas, experiences and network,’ Russo said. ‘Probably the only place with more entrepreneurial activity than Boston is Silicon Valley.’
EMI also sponsors networking events, such as the upcoming 1K event, which puts students in contact with venture capital firms, companies which invest in startup businesses in return for equity.
‘A student has the opportunity to come in and make a five-minute pitch about a business idea. We have a group of venture capitalists in the Boston area who will read those business plans and eventually even invest in them.’
Russo said he has recruited several of the top venture capital firms in Boston, including Highland Capital, Charles River Ventures, General Catalyst and BU’s community technology fund.
Russo and his colleagues also distribute a graduate level resume book to startup companies in the Boston area to help students find employment.
‘The [startups] typically are too small to come to here to recruit, but if they see a resume that they like they might make a hire, so we’ve placed students in the entrepreneurial community by doing things like that,’ Russo said.
Since Boston is a small city, Russo said it is easier for students to get guidance and attention for their ideas from local professionals.
‘Networking is such a big part of entrepreneurship,’ Russo said. ‘If you are really trying to start anything significant you are competing with the rest of the country and the rest of the world anyway. So competition isn’t the thing you worry about, but getting all the resources together to make it happen is. It’s easier to do it here.’
Networking is definitely not new to Russo, a CPA, who had little entrepreneurial-focused education or experience prior to attending Harvard Business School. Russo worked as an intern for Data Instruments Inc., a manufacturer of pressure sensors and sensor-based safety equipment. With the help of a Harvard professor, he wrote a business plan to help the company acquire funds. After graduating from Harvard, Russo was hired, and just three years later, he was promoted to CEO and president of the company, which employed 500 people and had sales of $54 million in 1997. Data Instruments Inc. was acquired by the Honeywell Corporation for an undisclosed amount in 1999.
Russo was invited to join the 13-year-old EMI three years ago as a full-time faculty member, as a result of his success. He has since created a vast network of some of the top professionals and richest entrepreneurs in the world, making them readily available to BU students.
‘The most interesting person that I met was Sheldon Adelson,’ said Chernitzky, who is the president of the newly formed Undergraduate Entrepreneurial Organization for students. ‘He founded Comdex and sold it for $800 million and subsequently built the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. His advice was that you have to constantly break the status quo.’
One of the program’s most recent speakers was Jack Gill, cofounder of the technology focused venture capital firm Vanguard Ventures. Gill, the former Executive Vice President of the world’s largest manufacturer of scientific lasers, also founded Autolab, a leader in laboratory automation computers with $70 million in market share.
‘Jack Gill is a big guy, and Pete got him to BU,’ Blakemore said.
While Blakemore said Russo is great at bringing ‘world class, high-tech individuals’ to speak, he said he also brings more homely businessmen to discuss how they turned their practical business ideas into million dollar operations.
‘The last speaker we had was an underwhelming, unimpressive, unassuming short little stubby man from New Jersey [who started] a limousine service to the airport,’ Blakemore said. ‘It’s a totally bread and butter, ‘Mom and Pop’ thing, and he has made it into a $7 million business in the NJ area. If he replicates it across the country, it could be a billion dollar business, but when he goes on to talk about his business theory he doesn’t have any ego. Pete is great at bringing in people like that.’
Russo said he exposes students to a diverse range of speakers because a great majority of the students enrolled in the entrepreneurial program are merely expecting to inherit a run-of-the-mill family business, rather than join or start their own industrial or technological Mecca.
‘[The program is] perfect for entrepreneurs,’ said Pani. ‘It’s very down to earth, and it’s very simply approached. They teach you how to find and start a family business through friends.’
Blakemore said he enjoys not only the great networking events and guest speakers, but more importantly, the personal attention he receives from the faculty.
‘Pete is holding me to a higher standard but at the same time he is working with me so I can accomplish my goals,’ Blakemore said. ‘He prepares you to do the venture capital level yet at the same time he understands if that’s not where you are going and he doesn’t punish you for that. He’s flexible enough.’
While the program is motivational and instructive, it is also realistic inthat it prepares entrepreneurs for the worst.
‘You hear many success stories but there are also failures and you are exposed to those as well through the program and that is very important,’ Pani said. ‘They teach you that it’s not easy and you have to really put all of your efforts into it.’
Pani was just one of the many graduates from the entrepreneurship graduate program who tried to start an Internet-based company upon graduation and failed.
The recent dot com bust beginning in the late ’90s, which sent several large-scale startup Internet companies into bankruptcy, now has many investors branding red flags on online business plans and making it harder for new entrepreneurs to attain funds.
‘You have to be honest and analyze your idea candidly, [and say] ‘who would be interested in it and who wouldn’t’?’ Blakemore said.
But how will any entrepreneur and his business idea realistically fare in the midst of the current economic downturn?
‘It’s a very difficult time to start a company from the standpoint of raising money,’ Russo said. ‘On the other hand we find that a lot of people are starting companies because their opportunity cost isn’t very high either if jobs are scarce. So people are willing to put the sweat equity in to get a company started.’
Even so, Russo said students shouldn’t intend on succeeding immediately.
‘We advise people that it’s not a short term thing,’ Russo said. ‘If you have a compelling idea and you really want to be an entrepreneur you don’t worry about ‘this is a bad six months or bad year.’ In the long term you look back and the opportunities will be there. I think our program here is a very practical program.’
‘Entrepreneurs are risk takers, but some entrepreneurs don’t see themselves as risk takers because they are so sure that they are going to succeed and that motivates other people to succeed,’ Chernitzky said.
Despite the dreary economic forecast, students like Chernitzky and Blakemore are confident the money is out there, and it’s not just the idea that sells but more so the people who fashion it.
‘Smart venture capitalists invest in people, ‘ Blakemore said. ‘Ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s what you do with it that counts. That’s a driving principle for me.’