Yesterday I spent the entire day (8am to 7pm) at the 2006 Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference down at the Union League of Philadelphia in Center City. It was my first time at this conference and well worth it. I heard some great wisdom from very successful entrepreneurships (Sam Hamaeh, CEO of Vault, Inc. and Darius Bikoff, CEO of Glacéau), connected with some new people here and there, and overall had a great time. You can really feel the "passion" from these true entrepreneurs. It's so contagious.
The key pieces of advice I took away from the day:
- Don't recruit on campus: This is the ironic truth. Because we go to Wharton/Penn, our chances of becoming an entrepreneur immediately decrease. We become actually more risk averse since our opportunity cost is greater. If you got an idea, start now. Don't wait. Whatever you do, don't go into banking or consulting. After 3, 4, 5 years, can you really get away from making six figure Wall Street or consulting salaries? Will you be willing to give up the luxury life and nice car?
- Bootstrap your business: Sure, being backed by a superstar VC like Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, etc. may sound extremely sexy (and it does!). The truth of the matter is that VCs take away your equity ownership! Lucinda Holt, CEO of Commerce360, provided a list of sources of funding to consider (in order):
- vendors
- customers
- personal (yourself!)
- government
- debt
- angel investors
- venture capital
Note that venture capital is last on the list. Though of course, this depends on the type of business you are in and at what stage you are in. Sometimes you must rely on VCs to really ramp up your business and start growing..fast.
- Be passionate about your idea: You must believe in it in order to convince others to share the same vision. Like I said, entrepreneurs have that aura of passion, energy, and excitement around them. I must admit -- I'm definitely a victim to that (for better or worse).
- Be persistent: One entrepreneur said, "If you haven't failed, you haven't tried." Farhad Mohit, Founder of Bizrate/Shopzilla.com commented, "Luck is everywhere." You just need to seize the right opportunities and go for it. He also stressed: "Prioritize your time. People who hedge shouldn't be entrepreneurs. They should be hedgefund managers." Farhad was a blast to have on the panel.