Fostering Student Innovation

What makes a successful enterprise? Does it depend on an individual entrepreneur’s business skill? The ability to identify an untouched market niche? Or does it all come down to having a brilliant idea or a wonderful product? 

Ashok Vasudevan, CEO of the vastly successful Indian and Asian food company Preferred Brands International (best known for its Tasty Bite brand), believes that all of these elements substantially contribute to an enterprise’s success. They all form part of what he refers to as the “Wheel of Fortune” for businesses.

Unique Outlook

After spending over 15 years heading Tasty Bite and several previously working for large corporations like Unilever and PepsiCo, Ashok has valuable and unique insight into what it takes to run a business. Ashok elaborated on the importance of the various components of his “Wheel of Fortune” but then emphasized the need for entrepreneurs to refrain from sticking exclusively to the component that they started with. Instead, he advised that they concentrate on working through the other pieces in order to complete the wheel and thereby build their businesses. He warned that many businesses fail because people do the exact opposite of this - they get attached to only one piece of the wheel and leave the remaining components unexplored and underdeveloped. 

Megatrends

According to Ashok, the key to ensuring the sustainability that all business leaders desire is to predict the future, building a business that is relevant and equipped to meet the changing needs of consumers over the next 10 -15 years. He explained, “If you don’t predict megatrends, you are playing blind.” 

One current business convention dictates that entrepreneurs identify consumer trends in the market, not consumer needs, and then ride them.  Conversely, Ashok asserted that it is important to look for megatrends, trends that have a half-life of about 15 years, and discover ways to drive rather than ride them. Ashok reminisced on the early 90s when he and his wife decided to enter the grocery business. Their decision stemmed from identifying three emerging megatrends on the horizon: the shift to healthier foods, more women entering the workforce (who would have less time to cook) and the changing demographics of the United States. Based on this, they predicted that Americans would soon develop a strong preference for natural, healthy and convenient foods from a variety of non-American cuisines. Tasty Bite thus found a necessary spot within this megatrend and enhanced its ability to thrive and sustain itself. 

Globalism

Ashok asserted that it was unwise to put local limitations on business. It is important to make sure that one’s business is global.  But this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to put your products in global markets – he pointed out that one’s ideas or even partners can be global. Positioning a business globally in this fashion gives it a solid comparative advantage, allowing it to focus on doing what it is good at and leave other activities for domain specialists. Building a strong comparative advantage is especially important for small businesses because it builds walls around them that are hard for competitors to penetrate – giving them a competitive edge. 

The Takeaway

Ashok believes that while we’re always told that entrepreneurs take risks, they really don’t. Rather, entrepreneurs know a great deal about their businesses; they are domain experts who spend time learning about their ventures and execute based on this knowledge. Effectively, their activities are not risky – they are strategic. In Ashok’s view, being strategic primarily comprises concentrating on the entrepreneurship “Wheel of Fortune” and working to predict megatrends and at crafting the business in a global fashion.

By Brita Belli

YEI’s June Meet and Greet with area investors and entrepreneurs, university representatives and venture mentors in the Greenberg Center was a resounding success. Though the student teams were just three weeks into their ten-week fellowships, they came prepared with elevator pitches that were sharp, persuasive, and even drew a few laughs.

Attendees from the surrounding community included investors like Elon Boms, managing director of LaunchCapital; Peter Longo, the executive vice president and chief investment officer of Connecticut Innovations; Rob Bettigole, the founder and managing partner of Elm Street Ventures; and Patricia Meagher, the managing director at the Business Council of Fairfield County.

As Managing Director Jim Boyle noted in his opening remarks, YEI has much to celebrate this year, including the launch of Tech Bootcamp, a 10-week crash course in software development for Yale students taught by Adam Bray (YC ’07), also the assistant manager of the Student Technology Collaborative at Yale. Wes Bray (YC ’74), YEI’s lead venture mentor, noted that this year also marked the launch of the Venture Creation Program, a farm team for the fellowship which, he said, has “allowed us to expand our reach,” and is turning great ideas into fleshed-out business plans.

The Teams Pitch to Win

The night began with TummyZen’s Fanni Li (SOM '14) and Srikar Prasad (SOM ’14) with a pitch describing her team’s novel antacid that would be marketed to infants through adults and could offer relief to the 10%-20% of Tums users who need a stronger solution. The neutraceutical is based on a Yale patent and, says Fanni, it will be “as safe as Tums.” She added that they hoped to have bottled product in three months and reached out to anyone with knowledge in consumer product marketing.

Dor Zaidenberg (SOM ’13) pitched Truly Protect – beginning with a surprising statistic: Four out of five game copies worldwide are stolen copies. His solution? Patented software that encrypts video game code and then decrypts it inside the CPU. “Nobody can read what’s inside the CPU’s memory,” Dor said, adding that he hopes to have a minimal viable product by the end of August.

Spylight’s Casper Daugaard (YC ’13) drew laughs from the audience when he began his pitch by pretending to lust after a handbag he saw on TV. His company would allow TV viewers to identify and purchase products from their favorite shows, and he’s already inked a deal with a major TV studio to launch the application on three shows this fall. Use of the service will entitle Spylight to a commission fee which can in turn bring benefit to the studio. “It’s solving three problems,” Daugaard said. “Consumers can’t find products. Studios are not monetizing beautiful products on beautiful people. And brands are missing out on increased exposure and sales.”

The Launchsite team has already found business right in the YEI workspace—the Isoplexis team is using them to build their website. Launchsite uses crowdsourcing to connect people and businesses in need of websites with developers who can build them. “You’d have a professional website at the end of the week,” said Daniel Qu (YC ’16) during his pitch, adding: “If anyone needs a website, please come talk to us!”

Olivia Pavco-Giaccia (YC '16) used a unique approach to her elevator pitch for Lab Candy, which is making stylish lab goggles and coats aimed at middle school girls. She began by asking everyone to close their eyes and imagine a scientist. She noted that they were probably picturing someone serious, wearing a drab lab coat – most likely a man. “We want to flip that image stereotype,” Olivia said. “Not everyone needs to wear the same lab coats and plastic goggles to read the periodic table.” She’s banking that fun options like leopard print coats and pink goggles will help shift the stereotype and allow girls to embrace their inner scientist and inner fashionista.

To sell potential investors on Isoplexis, Kara Brower (YC ’13) laid out the many milestones their novel single-cell immune analysis technology has reached. It’s the first company to measure protein secretions at the single-cell level and the technology holds promise for vaccine development, immune therapy and cancer and stem cell research. “Immunologists and researchers want to look at the complete picture,” said Brower during her pitch, adding that they already had 10 beta testers at Yale and validated proof-of-concept trials in four journals, including a cover feature in Nature.

David Luan (YC ’13) of Dextro let the audience know that computers aren’t always that smart – at least when it comes to visuals. In fact, he said, except for faces, “Computers can’t understand photos and videos.” They just see pixels. Luan and partner Sanchit Arora have developed a proprietary algorithm that helps computers draw insights from image data. Launched January 3, the team already has three partnerships in robotics and social media analytics with a huge potential market. Luan noted that the first-of-its-kind algorithm gets smarter the more it is used, putting distance between Dextro and any potential competitors with each passing day.

The Black Startup team made a compelling case for the need for greater capital to fund African-American ventures. “Access to capital in the African-American community is one of the main drivers in the African entrepreneurship gap,” said Nate Fleming. His team, which includes Elgin Tucker (FES ’14) and Olugbolahan Adewumi, has launched a crowdsourcing platform, BlackStartup.com, that supports “ideas, projects and causes that positively impact the African-American community.” Already 150 projects have been sent to the site seeking funding, and Black Startup has been written up in the Washington Post and other press.  

An Inspiring Class

Before returning the teams to their networking, Jim Boyle commented how inspiring it is to see YEI expand to include a broader range of ventures and partnerships with an increasing number of departments on campus, including the Yale School of Forestry and the Center for Engineering and Design and a host of corporate partnerships. Each year has brought an increasing number of teams applying for YEI Summer Fellowships, and increased maturity and development among the teams selected. The big success stories of previous YEI startups—such as data-analyzer Hadapt and Ancera, a platform for the separation of minute pathogens from bodily fluids—are now well-known in the Yale community and beyond. Teams who make it into the Summer Fellowship come armed with big ideas and well-formed plans, ready to do the work required to be Yale’s next round of startup success stories.

One of the most valuable things that an entrepreneur can gain and pass on to others is his experience in the field. And after spending life after college working on building his company, Scott Faber (YC ’92) had several important lessons from the “bottom of Silicon Valley” to share with this year’s fellows. Whilst delivering these entrepreneurial insights, Scott also shared the story of the rise of his Internet company, Ingenio. And one thing was clear  - there’s no smooth, direct path to success. The road is filled with ups and downs and one can only learn from the past and keep on moving forward. 

Inspiration

As a young man, Scott realized that the new Internet company eBay was essentially “revolutionizing” the world of goods sales. He wanted to build a company that worked with the same concept but focused on services. He believed that the world of services was bigger than that of goods and so there was an extremely viable business model to be explored. On a site that dealt exclusively with services, people could share their intellectual capital and time for a price. 

Driving Force

The difficulty was that in the early nineties, the Internet did not yet have capability to support the kind of network sharing that Scott envisioned. It was on a cab ride from Kazakhstan that he re-imagined his idea. The driver was having a multiple way conversation with other cab drivers like himself over his cellular phone. Scott realized that he had discovered a way to overcome the technological hiccups of the time by incorporating the phone into his business model. He decided to connect people to service providers through the Internet but still use phones. In 1999, he was able to build a version of the product, naming it Ether.

Important Lessons

Today, Ether has evolved into the widely used pay-per-call service, Ingenio, that was recently acquired by telecommunications giant, AT&T. Through the long and hard journey of building and sustaining his company, Scott learned many important lessons that made him a better entrepreneur. 

Firstly, like many tech startup founders, he emphasized the need to learn some computer science and coding - not only because it is useful in today’s marketplace but also because it is easier to learn when you are young. He also encouraged people to build businesses now because the current economy tends to favor younger rather than older entrepreneurs.

Other insights he shared included the following: 

• Going from 0 to 1 is the hardest part of business building so do not be discouraged if things seem impossible, especially in the beginning. It almost always gets better afterwards

• Your “train” must be leaving or you must be able to convey to others that it is leaving. This means that you should let investors and other business stakeholders understand that your project is going to move forward no matter what they do. This will surprisingly make it more appealing for them to get onboard.

• In pitching your business idea, try to tell a story. This is because stories are compelling and enable people to better connect with you and your product.

• Bottom-up beats top-down every time – Do things in an empowering way by involving people at the grassroots, such as potential consumers, when building or financing your product.

• Don’t be afraid to pivot  - Many successful businesses started off doing something completely different. Think PayPal. With a strong business team, there’s potential, not disaster, in trying something new.

The Takeaway

The path to a successful entrepreneurship is full of highs and lows; there’s no straight path to it. The good news is that you’ll eventually get there if you learn from your mistakes. In the end, “there is no good or bad – there just is!”

By Sybil Sam

Leadership is undoubtedly essential for all businesses.  Leadership and management could be the difference between a failing startup with unwilling, unmotivated workers and one that is thriving with a dedicated and motivated staff.  John Bockstoce (YC’ 99), a founder of Hotel Management Partners and former Yale College seminar lecturer , spoke to fellows about the difference between good and bad leadership and elaborated on strategies for effective management.

Examples of Good and Bad Leadership

John initially presented the fellows with some video clips of extreme examples of bad leadership.  In these clips, managers shouted obscenities at employees and were generally brash and condescending.  John mentioned that despite the obvious unpleasantness of this harsh and abusive management, some believe that you can adopt a similar style and still be an effective manager. In the popular media, Steve Jobs was known for his for his effective leadership and his often harsh managerial style.  John argued that there are ways to maintain high standards (and be a successful manager) without resorting to these tactics.

The Principles of Effective Management

John presented five key principles to effective management, compiled from FedEx founder Fred Smith and football coach Bear Bryant.  If one is a successful manager, one’s employees should have no difficulty answering the following questions:

• What do you expect from me? Employees want to know what is expected of them, want an opportunity to perform, and want feedback on their performance. It also enables leaders to employ appropriate rewards (and punitive measures) when expectations are (and are not) met. 
   
• What’s in it for me? In order to keep workers motivated, it is crucial to let them know what they stand to gain (pay, profit sharing, promotions, awards & recognition, etc.) from by subscribing to the vision of a leader and working towards his or her specific expectations.
   
• Where do I go when I have a problem? Employees must believe they will be treated fairly, and have the ability to appeal if they feel they are not being treated in a just manner. Informing individuals of the different mechanisms available to them for airing their concerns (ideally to an impartial management review board) is crucial to good leadership. This is because it indicates to employees that their grievances are important and have an objective means to be resolved.
   
• How am I doing? As above, employees want feedback on their performance. Giving constructive feedback to workers allows them to assess their own methods, for superiors and peers to congratulate individuals on good work, and find areas which require improvement.
   
• Is what I am doing important?  It is crucial to let employees know that their work is significant.  Showing how the tasks they are working on are linked to the larger impact of the business (and ideally) on the world can help to illustrate this.

Advice for Challenges & Setbacks

Simply sticking to these principles does not immediately mean that you will pre-empt all the issues that can arise in a workplace. Quoting from restaurateur Danny Meyer’s book, Setting the Table, he advised fellows not to get frustrated when problems emerge; management is a daily job, and so constant problem solving should be expected. 

The Takeaways

The principles of effective management are fairly simple, but putting them into action consistently requires discipline. 

Upholding high standards as a manager can be done in many ways—and can be done without resorting to harsh management techniques.

Team Name: BlackStartup    
Team Members: Christopher Hollins (YLS ’14), Elgin Tucker (FES ‘14), Nathan Fleming, Olugbolahan Adewumi, Kyle Yeldell
Industry: Tech/Crowdfunding
Website: www.blackstartup.com

The Pitch

BlackStartup is a crowdfunding site for the African-American community.  Traditionally, entrepreneurs within the African-American community have greater difficulty securing financing for their businesses when compared to other groups.  BlackStartup helps to bridge the financing gap by providing an outlet for entrepreneurs to raise capital by leveraging their personal networks and marketing to other interested parties.

The Team

Christopher Hollins graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Morehouse College. He is currently in a joint degree program: J.D. from Yale University and MBA from Harvard University. Both programs are considered the top program in the country, respectively. He graduates in 2013.

Elgin Tucker is a 2007 graduate of Morehouse College and a current student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  He holds a JD from the Vermont Law School and is interested in environmental law and sustainable development.

Nathan Fleming is a 2007 graduate of Morehouse College and currently serves as a Professor of Law at the David A Clarke School of Law.  Nathan received his law degree from the University of California-Berkely and holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Olugbolahan “Bola” Adewumi is a 2009 graduate of Morehouse College and currently serves as the Director of International Relations at Austin Consulting International.

Kyle Yeldell serves as Chief Communications Officer and received his Master’s of Professional Studies from Georgetown University’s Sports Industry Management program.  He currently works as Program Activities Coordinator for the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) Foundation in Washington, DC.  He is a 2006 graduate of Morehouse College.

What problems did you see that led you to develop BlackStartup?

Entrepreneurs within the African-American community are often met with extreme difficulty when attempting to secure capital for their business.  This problem severely limits the number of Black owned businesses throughout the country and in turn, has a negative effect on the community at large.  Crowdfunding is a relatively new technology that allows for greater access to capital. We began BlackStartup to create greater access to capital for those in our community and to attack the financial divide that plagues African American entrepreneurs.

How is the BlackStartup solution different?

BlackStartup separates itself by catering to entrepreneurs throughout the African-American community.  Through our platform, entrepreneurs will receive the guidance they need to be successful and an opportunity to market their project to scores of funders who have a grounded interest in Black business. 

Most crowdfunding sites take a "one size fits all" approach and market their services to any reputable project.  As the market becomes more fragmented, crowdfunding sites will become more targeted and focus on specific needs.  To that end, we created BlackStartup to cater to an obvious need within the African American community.

Do you have any advice to aspiring student entrepreneurs?

It is extremely important that all entrepreneurs study the market they wish to dominate.  Firm knowledge of your market will help your team avoid obvious pitfalls and assist you in forming strategic alliances with other players.