EMGT 373 Technology Entrepreneurship

Weekly Guidebook Summary

Week 2 – Team Formation and Development

Rafael Pereira

Email: ralvespereira@scu.edu

Have Good Contacts

Most people feedback by telling theirs friends they were taking Entrepreneurship class was positive. It was odd to hear that a classmate had a negative feedback of someone, that all his ideas were bad. I expected that people would feel tempted to discuss all their marvelous ideas hidden for year of how to make people live forever or to make infinite money. I enjoyed a lot talking to friends about the class, most of them were very interested in knowing what we were supposed to learn out here, specially for being in the Silicon Valley, my Brazilian friends got so excited and wanted me to keep reporting about the class, maybe some ideas may come up from those discussions, which is exactly the intention of spreading the news around. Again, good contacts, better chances of coming up with the new best idea in the world. Every big solution was created from small ideas.

Entrepreneurial Events

With the thoughts in mind that people can be both an enemy and a partner about our so special ideas I started trying to make my mind working towards sharing them. I attended a very nice Robotics event where I could see a few companies and a lot of other groups of hobbyists that created their own robots. Just like the companies that were showing their products, these groups were showing their ideas of a possible future product, some of them were even in a startup process to develop a robotic solution. I had a chance to talk to a Ph.D. student at Stanford who showed me his prototype live and we talked about how the idea was born. It was nice to see that even a person like him started small like all of us! He took his knowledge from since his undergraduate time, software, hardware, everything and put up into a unique idea, that now may be in the market for selling anytime. That was great for realizing that every step we make now is preparing us for a bigger achievement in the future.

Self Exposure

Events are all made focusing a single objective, but nothing keeps you from making your own objective achievable in that event. Step up in that important speech given by a VP and expose yourself. Introduce yourself, ask questions, make yourself seen. People that share the same idea you have but don’t have the power or will to debate that in open public may come to you and share their ideas. That is a great chance of learning and even making future partnerships. Beyond that, what if that VP likes your thoughts and want to talk more to you about that. Business are made everywhere and every time. By changing business cards you increase your chances of contacting that guy specialized in something you may need in the future. But be prepared, before an event take a few minutes and read about the person

Rafael Pereira 1

EMGT 373 Technology Entrepreneurship

or organization holding the event, that may put you a step ahead in an interesting talk, other than being just someone else watching it.

Dealing with Failure

Many times in life we have faced a dead end problem, no matter how hard we pushed, we were always pushed back until we give up. When is it time to give up on that and move on? There is no cookbook for that timing, experience is what teaches us things like that. I could see myself in some of the examples given in class about it and realized this is a big weakness of mine and it is time to improve that. First step towards it, learning how to say no. No is a tough word, may hurt or heal someone, but first of all, it may relieve you from a huge amount of time wasted. As people say, time is money.

How to Move On after a Failure

Who would ever say “I am so happy that I failed that exam!”? But sometimes the odds of a failure is exactly what you needed to put you back in the right path of success. Remember that admitting a failure doesn’t always mean it was your fault. Take the best learning from that experience a live up with the failure, even the best companies in the world have had their bad days. Project Management best practices dictate the lesson learning process, tried by several companies that see a failure as an opportunity of improving but still just a few of them have the expertise to really learn from the mistakes.

Team Importance

Two people working together are better than three working as individuals. Some people may think it is hard to work as a team, or even feel unconfident of telling their ideas, but be sure that together you can achieve much more. We may find several different sorts of partners, some just like you, who attended the same school and everything else, and others so different that you think it will be impossible working with. But there is no theory for team founding, sometimes that guy that thinks so different than you may be the solution for when you get stuck in a problem. In an entrepreneurial venture every knowledge is worth, since the business guy that knows a little about everything, until the computer guy that has spent years only writing code. Keep your mind open and you will see an opportunity in every single thing.

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