Energy Business Plan Multiple Choice

I've been interested in entrepreneurship for a while now, and in fact my PhD minor is entrepreneurship, which allows me to take a bunch of classes over on the business side of campus. Between that and a variety of extra-curricular activities I've been heavily involved with entrepreneurship-type stuff for a while now, and energy entrepreneurship in particular for about a year. I've heard about every possible business plan known to man, and if you think that you, too, have the next big energy idea - let me help you out. Simply select your choices from the below, and it's a guaranteed winner:

I am going to provide a ____________
A) Software as a Service (SaaS)
B) iPhone app
C) integrated platform

that is ____________
A) green
B) in the cleantech space
C) ecofriendly

because it involves ____________.
A) wind
B) solar
C) energy efficiency
D) utilizing an alternative fuel
E) All of the above

My product includes features that are ____________
A) wireless
B) remote
C) automatic
D) in the cloud (triple points!)
E) provided by analytics
F) cell phone activated
G) networked
H) All of the above (why not, right?)

and my technology will be ready in ____________
A) 5 years
B) 10 years
C) It hasn't actually been demonstrated yet, but if it DOES work, it will be awesome
D) Engineers say it won't work, but I believe I have the core strengths to tackle these technological challenges

if I can get ____________.
A) 20 million dollars from VCs
B) a guaranteed loan from the feds (just like Solyndra!)
C) hired employees, to, you know, build the thing

The company is named ____________
A) Qwertzle
B) Kleirly
C) Wiflerta
D) Any other random combination of Web 2.0-sounding letters with a bubbly logo

and my team consists of ____________.
A) two MBAs and a sales guy
B) one MBA, one EE, and an "experienced entrepreneur" (his last attempt failed)
C) three MBAs (we'll just hire the tech talent we need)

We are planning to implement the product first in ____________,
A) Africa
B) India
C) the developing world. All of it. Isn't it the same everywhere?
D) the military

but I have not yet thought about ____________.
A) who will fix this if it breaks
B) how to actually make money from this idea
C) the fact that someone else already tried this six years ago

I have confidence that we can face these issues and challenges as they come because don't worry, we have on our advisory board ____________
A) Obama
B) The world's most famous VC
C) Hot entrepreneur star of the moment

and in fact, look at us, we've already got ____________.
A) a website and a Twitter feed with followers
B) an awesome sixty second elevator pitch
C) a prize-winning business plan
D) connections because we attended SXSW and totally hung out with famous people at the afterparty
E) interested customers (they said they'd take it if we gave it to them for free)
F) admission into an accelerator program
G) generated buzz created by networking and facilitating connections between people with mutually overlapping interests and core competencies and leveraging the synergies and oh I can't stand writing more of this...

Ta-Da!

You think I'm kidding, but oh sir, I am not. You think this is cynical (well, maybe a little)(maybe a lot), but I have personally seen each of the above options set out in a business plan or presentation with an entirely straight face. Please, energy innovators, do yourself a favor and find an engineer (even better if they have no interest in entrepreneurship and no business training) to vet your technology and give you a straight answer before you embarrass yourself. Or, you know, don't - because if you think about it a minute - these kinds of ideas are getting millions from VCs, and did you know you don't have to give that money back if you go under?

There are good ideas out there, let's make them easier to find amongst the noise!

Elevator Pitch Competition

I have pitched my business idea in a type of business competition called an Elevator Pitch Competition, and I'm pleased to report I made it to the top 10 in my category - making me a semifinalist.

All semifinalists are invited to the finale event, but only the top 2 from each category are actually official Finalists who will compete again in tonight's finale.

I have to say that this whole event is definitely not run with an engineer's touch. To wit:

- all semifinalists have to show up to the finale, even though 48 out of 60 are wasting their time (inefficient)
- the 12 who DO compete as finalists don't know they are the finalists until their name is called (unnecessary suspense and stress)
- you have to check in to this event an hour before it starts, otherwise you are disqualified
- you have to have an official wristband
- your teammates are not guaranteed a seat
- if you ARE called up as a finalist, you have to sit in a designated chair on the front of the stage for the entire duration of the event (and it's long - two hours)

Now I realize the point of this event is not to be efficient and low stress - in fact I'm sure it's entirely the opposite. But it all irritates my libertarian sensibilities - unnecessary production and hoopla, that adds no value. But I have my best attitude on tonight, because I know my idea rocks, I present well, and I have a decent shot of winning some money.

It's much easier to have a good attitude when there's possible money on the line. :)

But I'm here now, waiting to check in at this ridiculous early hour, and I have to tell you - there is a red carpet. There are photographers. There is a designated paparazzi area with a branded (logo-ed?) background where important people will shake hands and the momentous occasion will be captured.

SO out of my element... where is my sister (the family's charismatic camera darling) for this sort of thing...? :)

Keeping International Hours

So remember that entrepreneurship conference that I help organize? Two years ago it was in Iceland, and this year it was in Korea. Well I'm pleased to announce that next year, I'm one of the two lead organizers.

I've already been working hard setting the stage for next year's conference. It's all been behind-the-scenes so far, but now we're going public.

Tonight I was woken up at 1am by a cell phone call from my co-lead-organizer. Before I could even clear my throat (and gees... need to go pee, people...) I found myself on a three-way Skype call with our website designer, who is currently in Delhi. After working through some final details, in the middle of the night we launched an updated website for the 2012 conference. And at 3am, sent out an official press release announcing the location of next year's upcoming conference.

Some people brag about what they can do before lunch - I'll see that, and raise you what I can do before I even get up in the morning. :)

All I'm saying is, it's just a good thing I slept in PJ's tonight - not a forgone conclusion, given how hot it is these days...

Introducing Outlier Tech, LLC

I'm pleased to announce that I have formed my own company - let's call it Outlier Technologies, LLC.

This doesn't have anything to do with the business classes I've taken. I've just known for a while that I am interested in entrepreneurial activities, and I thought that having my own company can be useful for a variety of reasons. For instance, recently a classmate asked me to make a prototype for a business idea of his. Having an official business to fund various projects like that is helpful to me. I have lots of other side projects I'd like to explore as possible businesses, and now I have a platform to do that from.

And it sounds a bit silly, but another reason to have an LLC is that the sooner you open a corporation, the longer you can say you have been in business. It's a lot more legitimate to say to potential investors, "I've been around for six years" instead of "I filed the papers yesterday."

Also, some grad students eventually do consulting work. I don't have any consulting job offers or plans to do that at the moment, but if I want to do that in the future, I can invoice and charge my time from the company rather than just sketchily pocketing cash.

I used an online lawfirm to do the paperwork for me, and I've incorporated in Delaware. I'm the sole owner and member. I've opened a business checking account at Bank of America, and I have an official business debit card.

Bring it on!

Hatching an Idea

Last week, one of my classmates and I in the business/entrepreneurship class were working on the class project. After we finished our work, he tossed out this remark - "Miss Outlier, I was thinking. I have an idea I want to run by you."

I love when people toss out that kind of remark. Well, when CERTAIN people toss out that remark. This particular person I have really come to respect over the semester, (which is rare for me given my historical experience with the MBA students...). When I hear "I have a thought" from people I respect, my ears perk up. It's often those off-hand ideas that turn out to be something interesting.

In this case, he had an idea for a little widget he wanted to make. Basically, it's a specialty case for an iPhone. I thought his idea was rather neat (not going to change the world, but a cool little consumer product). He asked me how you would go about making that idea into a real product. I said, well, you need to make a prototype.

How would you do that? he asked.

Well, I said, it's actually not hard - I have the tools in my lab. I can have you a sample by next class period.

Done. Simple.

The key is that it's all in the tools - if you have the right equipment, projects become easy. What he wanted would be made out of polymer and/or rubber. In my lab I have a laser cutter which can cut polymers, and a waterjet which cuts rubber. And I have a setup and materials for casting rubber, and a micromill for making the mold for casting. And in my Craftsman toolbox, I just happen to have a variety of 6" by 6" squares of rubber. (I had a product development class a while ago, and we had to use rubber for the class project. We didn't know what kind of rubber we needed, so we bought a variety pack. I, of course, kept the extras. It wasn't like anybody else wanted rubber scraps... but see, now it might be useful!)

Figure: Variety pack of rubber leftovers. Just the sort of thing that helps me proudly uphold the engineering stereotype.

My classmate didn't know about all that, so my answer came as a surprise. He was incredulous. "Really?" he exclaimed, "Just like that? You just make it?"

Yes indeedy. That's my job. To make stuff.

"Man, I picked the wrong major." he said.

Yeah, that's what you get when you hang out too long in the business world - you get disconnected from actually PRODUCING something real. Instead of, you know, all that NETWORKING you spend your time on.

Now normally I wouldn't spend my time on a side project like this, but he was so excited and impressed that I could actually make a sample of his idea, that I kinda want to prove that I can. A bit of pride on the line here. :) It's the birth of an idea...

How Business is Done

Over Christmas break, I had the chance to go with my dad to a business meeting. I like keeping up with my dad's work - he's a mechanical engineer just like me, (or maybe I'm just like him?) so what he's doing is generally interesting to me. Plus, he's got an entrepreneurial bent (okay, so maybe I am just like him) so I enjoy watching how he handles all the projects and ideas he's got going.

This particular meeting was with several people besides myself - my dad, my dad's vice president, the interested finance guy, and the go-between who set the meeting up. We started by giving the interested guy a tour, and then we all went to lunch for more discussion.

Now, I was there for the whole thing. I listened carefully, I tried to understand everything that was said, and tease out the meaning behind the conversation. I thought I did a pretty good job of observation.

And then, the interested finance guy had to leave. So we sat around the table, and everyone discussed things about that guy. "Well you know, he really meant such and such...", or "His intentions are probably this and that....", and "Given his background in so-and-so, it's likely he will propose x and y....". Gees! I hadn't caught any of that during the whole morning.

A bit later, the go-between departed and my dad and his vice-president discussed the outcomes of the meeting. And again, it was all new to me. "We'll have to wait and see if they offer choice A or B, but we both know it's probably going to be choice C..." and "I'm not sure if that was really based on fact..." and "I wonder if they are trying to go behind us to do unethical thing 1 or 2...."

So I missed all of the business-speak. I am well versed in academic-speak, and parsing out the meaning of technical speakers or seminar talks.

But I think now, if I attend a business meeting again, I would be much more prepared. The probing questions by both sides, the feeling out of where each side stands. The suggestions, the ideas tossed out to test a reaction. The intentions behind the discussion, the information used for leverage.

I am hoping that my dad updates me on the outcome of the meeting and any further discussion, as I am interested to hear where things actually go.

Because after all, as my dad said as we drove home, "That's how it's done."

And I would love to learn to do that too.

Entrepreneurship Workshop

World's Best School has a club that organizes an annual workshop, which I'm calling the Entrepreneurship Workshop (EW), that is going on its 13th year. This conference is the world’s premier student run entrepreneurship conference, and this year it's being held in March in Cold Foreign Land, far away from here. The conference focuses on fostering entrepreneurship through the creation of infrastructure such as that epitomized at World's Best School. Originally founded to help inspire business plan competitions around the world, the EW has expanded and shifted its focus towards building sustainable environments for entrepreneurship.

I haven't mentioned this on the blog yet, but I'm on the organizing team for this year's conference. The conference is three days long, and it's full of keynote speakers, panels, case studies, mixers, and other exciting activities. I am in charge of one panel, and one case study. I decided to do the panel on the subject of "Young Entrepreneurs," because that's a subject near and dear to my heart.

I have lined up an excellent moderator for the panel, and three successful young entrepreneurs from around the world - Canada, the UK, and San Francisco. Actually come to think of it I did kinda skew that toward English-speaking countries, didn't I? Maybe I should add someone from the India/China region... My case study is on "Starting a Company without Venture Capital," and I haven't officially confirmed the speaker but I'm excited about the company I'm trying to nail down.

The organizing team is split into two parts - the team that organizes the content of the conference (event planning, recruiting speakers, organizing panelists, logistical issues, housing and transportation, etc.), and the team that does contacts (marketing, sales, cold calling, generally getting people to show up to this thing in Cold Land Far Away). During last semester, the content people (that's me) were very busy nailing down the substance of the conference. Now, the majority of the content is (or should be) settled. Now it's the other way around - the contacting people are very busy with the marketing and calling efforts.

The contacting people have to spend a certain amount of time each week manning the phone banks, calling potential conference attendees from our database. The content people ALSO have to do this, although only two hours per week.

So I've now done a total of four hours of cold calling people to come to this conference. I've never done sales before, I've never done telemarketing, or anything of the sort. I had a training session, but it's still completely new to me. I had some trepidation about this, because... well shoot, everybody feel squeamish throwing themselves out there to strangers and asking them to spend money.

Each person has an appointed a region of the world, and all the database contacts in that region are then assigned to that person. My region happens to be Africa/Middle East, and I have about 450 people in the database assigned to me. After I got into the swing of things, it's really not as bad as I expected.

It's actually kind of exciting knowing I am sitting here, comfortable in my chair at the phone bank, calling up Egypt and Nigeria and Tunisia and Morocco and Syria. I've only been hung up on once, and I've gotten a few good leads. A lot of the time the person answers the phone in some other language, but on most occasions when I pipe up "Hi, I'm Miss Outlier" they change over to English. Broken English, perhaps, but usually I can untangle it.

This morning I called Seychelles. I had to Google that before I called to make sure that's even a country.

So now I'm feeling very multi-cultural, very global, very small-world-after-all. 

Miss Outlier, meet world - World, Attention, la voici... [Watch out, here she comes... in French, the language of choice in Tunisia]

Turning to the Dark Side

I just wrote an email with the words "value proposition."

My transition to the dark side (business school) is nearly complete...

Crossroads

Life could be so easy. I'm on track for the PhD, I'm doing interesting research, and in two or three years I could be Dr. Outlier. Humming along, busily researching away in my comfortable niche.

I've always expected that after picking up my final diploma I'd go to work for a startup, or be somehow involved in an entrepreneurial venture. In fact, I've made my PhD minor "entrepreneurship."

And that has led me to take a class about how to start a company, where I am working on a business idea with a team. The good news is that the idea turns out to be a very good one, and throughout the class the signs have all been positive. Inspection of the finances shows that the business could be worth millions in several years. (And I'm an engineer, remember - so I don't throw those numbers around lightly or without justification.)

And now, dear internet, life gets complicated. I'm at the point now where I have to decide whether I want to take the idea from a class project into actuality. Now is the point where things become suddenly, frighteningly real.

First I have to decide if the idea is worth pursuing. Yes, I have decided, it is. 

Then I decide if the team I have is a) willing to go forward with the business, and b) the right team to work with. In the case of a), I think that all my team members are excited about moving forward. Unfortunately in the case of b), they are not the right team. For this idea, we need three people - a technical person, a business development/finance person, and a sales/marketing person.

I already cover the technical role. None of my team are sales/marketing people. And the two business people are not at the right stage in life to launch a company - they have wives, and jobs to go back to after they finish their MBA degrees. There is a thing called a "risk profile" or a "risk tolerance," and all founding members of a business need to have the same risk level. A married man with two small children will bail out long before a young, unattached grad student willing to live on beenie-weenies to make the company succeed. So am I prepared to hand out pink slips to my teammates?

And then, I have to think - do I know the right people for the team? And yes, I do. Would they want to work with me? Yes, I think they would.

So now the question comes down to me. Do I want to start this company? CAN I do this while still doing a PhD? If I get an investor to sign over a quarter million to me to start this business, I can't tell him I'm just going to work on the side - I have to be ready to dedicate myself to the startup. So am I willing to GIVE UP the PhD (even if only temporarily) to go after this? I mean, it worked okay for Bill Gates.

So do you give up the good thing you have going, to go after what might be a better thing?

Writing Papers for Business vs. Science

I am taking a class on entrepreneurship this semester, and I absolutely love it. It's my favorite class here yet. I've written before about how I gave an elevator pitch about my idea, and then how I got to form a team to work on my idea.

Well, a team has been formed. Two business students, and two engineering students (including myself). We spent a week or two doing market analysis and cold calling people to get reactions and feedback on our idea. It turns out that the idea might be worth something after all, and everybody we talked to was excited to hear about what we were planning. One person even wanted to know when he could see a demo, and offered his site for testing.

So all in all, the project is coming along swimmingly.

Two weeks ago we turned in an Executive Summary section of a business plan. The idea is that each week we turn in a different section of the business plan - Market Analysis, Advertising, Sales, Pricing, etc. The Executive Summary is the intro at the beginning of the business plan, and is usually the last thing you write, but the professors make us write it near the beginning so that we think about the big picture.

We got back that assignment last week. Overall, the grade was good and the comments were positive. The professor would reference various groups' papers during the lecture, to illustrate points. Usually to point out what NOT to do. For instance, when talking about focusing on the customer, the professor said, "Now let me read to you from Group A's report. Here in the section on customers they say that there are X thousands in area 1, Y thousands in area 2, Z thousands in area 3, and then in addition there are even more in area 4. WRONG! You need to pick an area and stay with it." Then the professor went on, "But contrast that with Miss Outlier's group. They say that they have identified 320 targets to begin with, and then 560 potential cutomers ready right after that. And look, I can check Appendix A for a list of contact information. Now THAT is focus."

So my group and I were sitting there feeling very pleased with ourselves.

But then later on in lecture, the professor was trying to make another point, and he said "Let me read to you from Miss Outlier's report again. Here is their very first sentence." He then proceeded to read the opening sentence in a monotone, all in one breath.

"Now how boring is THAT?" he asked. The class tittered, because indeed it did sound very dry.

"It lacks PASSION!" he cried, "Where is the enthusiasm?"

And I was thinking, SO? When was the last time you read a scientific paper with the word "fantastic" in it? What else did you expect when a bunch of engineers writes a report?

In a word, dear readers, I was unaware that my report was supposed to display passion. I quite distinctly remember designing the first sentence of the report to relay precisely and concisely the content of the report.

And of course, I do HAVE passion. I have that in spades. I hope it shows through in my face-to-face presentations, but I never have to portray anything beyond a subdued confidence in my writing.

So this will be an adventure. Apparently writing for business is a bit different than writing for science.

Or, rather:

Crafting compelling stories from a business perspective requires confidence and excitement to shine through the words, instead of stifling the passion with the dry prose of scientific treatises. I'm EXCITED! Vote for MEEEE!

Presenting My Company Idea

I have one of the coolest classes this semester - Starting a Company 101. In the beginning of the class, we all had to submit an idea for a company, and three of us gave practice elevator pitches for our ideas. The whole class rated the 177 total ideas submitted (from 120 people in the class), and the top 25 ideas got to give five minute pitches in front of the class. I submitted three ideas.

TWO of my ideas were in the top 25 - how cool is that! To give credit where it is due, the two ideas were actually rather shamelessly stolen from my dad. So, my dad's ideas are awesome!

There were two other people with two ideas in the top 25 (both engineers, ahem) and we all were instructed to just pick the idea we liked best.

So I chose the idea I liked and on Monday I had five minutes and one PowerPoint slide to convince the class that my idea was a good one. Five minutes is not a long time, but it's long enough I need to think about what to say and not just wing it like I did the elevator pitch.

I structured my shpiel with only three points: 1) I have a customer 2) they have a problem 3) I have the solution. I thought this would be the strongest way to present the idea. You have to start with the customer because that is the one key element that every single business needs to even be called a business. For my particular idea, I already have a first client in mind that is ready to buy my product, and then I have the target market in mind to expand the business. Then after establishing a customer, you have to show that they have a need. Without a need (even if it's a need they don't yet know they have) you will never make a sale. Finally, I showed that I had a way to satisfy that need that nobody else is satisfying.

I was one of the few people who actually had proof-of-concept for their idea. Most of the ideas were along the lines of, "It would be great if _________, and I'd really like people on my team who know how to make that a reality." My pitch was, "I've made this a reality, I'd like people to help me do something with it." Guess which one people responded to?

I also tried to make my short speech honest and concise; telling a story. I wore a nice skirt and blouse, and tried to show the "quiet confidence" that I have been told I possess.

It must have worked - both of the professors (they co-teach) came up to shake my hand after the class, and commented that I had presented nicely. That was flattering, but the real result showed in the cluster of people that gathered to talk to me. It literally formed a line - I practically had to take numbers! And I've also gotten a bunch of emails from people in the last two days asking to be on my team.

It's a good feeling. It's one I'm not used to.

I'm a little scared about today. Today the class period is entirely reserved for team formation. This consists of all the things I am not good at. Mingling with strangers, being constantly evaluated on non-tangible criteria, and promoting myself and my own idea. It's also a little stressful because the professors keep harping on the fact that the team is the most important aspect - sometimes more important than the idea.

Wish me luck - I'm on my way to choosing teams... and for the first time I have to be the one picking players, not waiting hopefully to be chosen...

Elevator Pitch

My minor is entrepreneurship, so this semester I am taking a business class which is basically Starting a Company 101. I am fantastically excited about this class; the teacher is engaging and knowledgeable and the material is fascinating to me. During the course of the class, the students will be divided into teams which will each develop a business worth 50 million in three years.

Our first assignment was to submit an idea for a business. Makes sense, I thought. I have many, many ideas for companies, but unfortunately I am only allowed to submit three ideas. I did my best to choose the three most promising, and with some trepidation I sent my pitches off into the cloud.

Everyone's ideas were available during last week to the whole class, and we all got to rate the ideas and comment. As I was looking through the ideas to rate them, it was painfully obvious that this was a class of business people. So many of the ideas were "Wouldn't it be great IF....." type of ideas with no way to make it into reality. Like, we should revolutionize air travel. Yeah, we totally should, because that's not capital intensive at all. Or, wouldn't it be great if we could have an online way to do all our healthcare records, so it's easily accessible to doctors. Um, yeah, and possibly accessible to more nefarious eyes as well. Fanciful ideas for mobile apps abounded, but I subscribe to TechCrunch so I recognized lots of those mobile app ideas that are already under development. Even if they weren't, who in this class could possibly make a website, let alone write a piece of software? My personal favorite: "The Rod of Moses" which would be able to turn urine into drinkable water. Yeah, buddy, let's see the engineering basis for THAT trick.

So I was pretty pleased with my three ideas, which I think have a firm basis in reality and which I have the necessary expertise to actually pull off. But my ideas have only been rated 3.2, 2.9, and 2.2 out of 5 by the class. Not great, I thought, but on the other hand after seeing all the ideas I'm not sure that I trust these people's rating skills anyway. :)

_________________________________

Today in class, I arrived and sat down with a few minutes to spare. The professor walked over to our side of the room, and asked "Does anybody over here have an idea?" Not wanting to be the overeager volunteer, I stayed quiet. Absolutely nobody raised their hand or made a sound.

Wait, did I miss something? Was not our last assignment to SUBMIT and IDEA? How do none of you have an idea? Is this a TRICK QUESTION, for crying out loud?

So I raised my hand and said, "Yes sir, I have an idea." "Fantastic!" said he, "Please come on down to the front."

Come down to the front? What now?

The professor gathered two other students and had us sit down in three chairs in the front of the room. "Now everyone here has an idea, right?" the professor said. Myself and the guy in the middle nodded. "Wait, I need an idea?" said the girl on the end. Um, HELLO honey, yes you do. It turns out this girl was "very excited to be working on an idea", all enthused and all of that, but had "nothing IN PARTICULAR in mind." Go sit down, my dear, apparently it WAS a trick question for her...

It turns out the professor wanted us each to pitch our idea to the class in a one-minute segment. Now, I know enough about business to know that this is called an elevator pitch. I also knew that I did not have one prepared. But, I figured I only have a minute so I only have enough time to pretty much blurt out the idea and why I think it's important. Can't possibly be that hard.

So I had to go first.

I was facing a class of 120 students, the vast majority of whom are business students and most of whom are in suits. I spent the day in the machine shop, so I tried to pick the aluminum chips out of my hair and wipe my hands on my jeans before I started. I took a deep breath and stood up.

I introduced myself, and used my most charming and confident personality while I explained one of my ideas to the class. I was short and sweet, although I stuttered once or twice. I was allowed to take one question, and then my turn was up and I sat down.

After the other two guys had given their pitches, the professor announced that he was holding a vote - which one of these students, he said, would you want to work for? Which idea do you think wins?

Ack! You gave an awkward engineer a single, lonely minute to impress 120 business suits with a highly technical startup idea, and now you'd like to submit her immediately to a popularity contest? Do you want to send me into THERAPY? But I suppose in the brutal world of business, this is how it goes - there are winners and losers and you have to deal with painful, honest evaluations of you and your work at every turn.

The professor wrote our three names on the board, turned around and said, "Okay now, the TA is going to help me count hands. Who likes Miss Outlier's idea and wants to work with her?"

This is the moment on American Idol when the last contestants are clutching hands, certain that in a few short moments someone is going to break into tears. Balancing on the wobbly line between success and failure, about to be shoved one way or the other by a merciless group of your peers.

And do you know, I peeked out from the hole I had just dug in the floor to avoid judgement, and I saw that something like 60-70% of the class had their hands raised.

"Umm, you got that?" said the professor to the TA. The TA just laughed, and the teacher put >50% on the board. The other two guys got 10% and 10%, respectively. (Yes, I see the discrepancy - I am aware. I repeat, it's a business class - the numbers don't have to add up...) It was an incredible ego boost to see that people liked me, and thought that I both presented myself and my idea well.

"And you are a PhD student?" the professor asked. Yessir. "In the engineering school?" he asked credulously. Yessir indeed.

"Wow," the prof said, "that's rare."

Yes, what can I say, I am an outlier.

Outlier: Entrepreneurship

I had the opportunity to attend an entrepreneurship panel this week, and it was fascinating. They had three current MBA students on the panel, who had all started one or more successful businesses.

One started a hedge fund and managed a billion dollar portfolio by age 25, and then he got tired of that, sold it, and started a company in Brazil doing the same kind of thing these guys do, although that's not his company. They give out paper hangers for free to dry cleaning companies, paid for by advertising on the hangers. It's green, saves the dry cleaners money, and the advertisers know the item will be looked at in the person's closet for weeks.

The other guy started a resale consumer goods company in the UK selling through eBay and Amazon and his own website. Then he got tired of that, and started something else, I've forgotten what.

The last guy started his first company while he was in college, trying to make beer money. He and his friends bought domain names in English that translated to common things in India, then resold them. Domain squatting, I think that's called. It worked when he did it because the Internet and globalization was new, but he got out of that because, well, there are only so many domain names. So then he started flipping houses in Chicago, and morphed into real estate.

And all these guys are still in their 20s! It's quite humbling. I liked hearing their life stories, although I was a little disappointed none of the businesses they started were technical in nature. It's a bit different to start a technology/engineering type company than to start selling things on eBay. But in the end, hey, if it makes you money what does it matter.

My favorite part was the questions and the answers. A lot of the things they said, I already knew.
1) It takes incredible dedication and focus to start a company - it's a high risk, high reward proposition, not for the weak of heart or mind.
2) You have to be really cheap. Nickel and dime every expense to minimize absolutely every cost. The only thing which you should not skimp on is people - if you have partners, pay them what they are worth. Pay them more than what they think they are worth, even. It's worth it to have good people who won't walk out on you.
3) It's not the idea that matters. Ideas are easy, every person who thinks can come up with ten company ideas a day. It's picking the right one that matters, and the execution. Someone asked the panel how they protect their ideas, and if they worry about someone stealing it. One reply particularly struck me: don't worry, somebody already has your idea, and you probably stole it from someone else. There are very few things nobody has thought of. And if they can execute it better than you can, then they are the ones who should be doing it, not you. And if you can execute better, then you shouldn't be worried.
4 5) It takes a certain kind of person to be an entrepreneur. It runs in the blood, you might say. These kind of people have the ability to focus to the exclusion of all else, a drive to be creative and innovate. They can't stand the idea of an industry job. Some just love the process of starting the company, and will work in any field. Some are motivated by the idea and could care less about the process. But all of them are passionate.

This entrepreneurship thing runs in my blood, for better or worse. I kind of knew this in college, but it has really solidified in grad school. I am one of those people who thinks of company ideas by the handful. I can't think of a single person I'd rather work for than myself. I don't mind not having job security in the form of a company salary. I know my mind, my skills and my ideas are security enough - I know I'm good enough to make a living, if not a fortune under the right circumstances.

I say all this because I know it isn't the typical direction a grad student takes. Most engineering students I knew in undergrad took jobs in industry after completion of the bachelor's. A small percentage went to grad school, like I did. Of the few people I know personally who went to grad school, a master's is all they were going for. Either an MBA to help to get a job in engineering management, or rarely an M.S. to get a better salary in an industry job. Only one person I know from undergrad is going for a PhD - and he only decided that because his industry job went away with the economy.

So here I am, going for the PhD. Why? I know it's strange to complete a PhD and not be interested in academia. I stayed for a PhD because it is exciting to me to work on a problem that nobody has solved. In classes, you solve problems, but they are problems with known solutions. How much more valuable to find an interesting, relevant area of research and make a significant contribution. Also, having a PhD from here will give me superb credentials - I can essentially prove myself by just writing my name.

So, surprise, surprise, I'm an outlier in my career path. I want to start my own company. Someday soon, before I leave this school. My favorite part of being here at World's Best School is that I am surrounded by brilliant people in all different fields, the cliche melting pots of minds, ideas, and money. Standing at the front end of an intractable problem is a scary place to be for most, but I do it every day in research. Not so different than standing at the front end of a company that isn't reality yet.

For some outliers like me, it's not scary - it's inspiring.