COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA295A-11

COURSE TITLE: Entrepreneurship

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Mark Coopersmith, Neil Rogers & Paul Rogers

E-MAIL ADDRESSES: Mark, Neil, Paul

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Saturdays, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

PREREQUISITES: EWMBA203 - Finance

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of cases, lecture and guest speakers

REQUIRED READINGS: There will be no text but there will be a large collection of copied articles and cases.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: The main requirement for the course will be a business plan on a venture of the student's choosing. Students will work in groups of four and will produce a written business plan. They will deliver a presentation based on their plan to a panel of instructors supplemented by representatives of the business community. This presentation will be a "pitch" for funding as one would do it for venture capital or as part of an initial placement offering.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: This is a course about how to start and grow a successful high potential enterprise. Since the Haas School is principally about professionally managed businesses, the course will focus on businesses that are not small by design, but with hard work and good luck can be expected to develop into complex, major enterprises. A key vehicle for this effort is the business plan. The plan helps the entrepreneur attract support from others, because it tells them what the business is about and what its strategy will be. It helps the entrepreneur to manage a growing and necessarily complex set of dynamics by providing mileposts and indicting the resources that will be required to achieve them. And it provides a continuously updated set of standards against which to compare actual performance. The course will deal with opportunity recognition and assessment, venture capital, marketing strategies for the start-up, benchmarking success, corporate governance and going public.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Mark Coopersmith (Haas MBA ’86) has built and led successful companies through complex start-up, turnaround and high-growth cycles. He has held senior roles at leading firms engaged in media and consumer products (Sony), software and e-commerce (WebOrder-Netopia, Sony), and professional services (Ernst & Young Consulting).

Throughout much of the 1990’s Mr. Coopersmith was a co-founder and EVP at Sony Signatures, Sony’s marketing, licensing and e-commerce business. He worked across all of Sony’s major content and consumer businesses while building a $150mm division. He also spearheaded Sony’s groundbreaking online commerce initiatives.

Mr. Coopersmith left Sony to become CEO of WebOrder, an e-commerce software company and payment platform. At WebOrder he led the firm through funding and growth to a merger with publicly-traded Netopia in early 2000. Mr. Coopersmith integrated the two firms and became Netopia's top marketing executive.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Coopersmith was a strategy and marketing consultant with Ernst & Young, with clients that included Compaq Computer, Bank of America, the Pacific Stock Exchange and Pacific Telesis/SBC. He has also led several restructurings and turnarounds.

Currently, Mr. Coopersmith advises companies on their business strategy, corporate and business development, and marketing. He consults with companies primarily in the software, e-commerce, media/content and consumer products sectors. Clients include Sony, Primedia, BoardVantage (software for corporate governance), and EM.TV/KirchMedia Europe (media and consumer products).

Mark holds M.B.A. and B.A. degrees from U.C. Berkeley.

Neil Rogers (San Jose State MBA ’95) provides supply chain management consulting services and special projects management for Business Logistics (www.buslog.com). He has nearly thirty years experience working in technology companies, principally in supply chain management. From 1974 - 1996 he was associated with National Semiconductor Corporation, where he served in a wide variety of positions managing the supply chain, from strategic planning, order fulfillment, and information systems to operations management across several business units. These included the first large scale shipment of 16 K Rams in the late 70’s and the first 32 bit microprocessors in the late 80’s. During the early 80’s he was the Operations Manager for advanced products in the Military-Aerospace division, focusing on moving leading edge products into the Mil-Aero market. He helped design, implement, and manage National’s planning and product data systems. Additionally he led a team focused on redesigning the supply chain processes across eight global manufacturing sites in preparation for an ERP implementation. More recently Neil managed a team of analysts at Adaptec, the global leader in SCSI technology, responsible for all aspects of the Supply Chain business applications. He received a B.S. (1973) from the University of California at Davis and an M.B.A. (1995) from San Jose State University Business School.

Paul Rogers (Haas MBA ’88) currently serves as General Counsel and Vice President for Business Development with Instancia, Inc. (www.instancia.com), a provider of next generation adaptive application systems based on a codeless objected oriented application architecture. He has over 22 years of experience in working with technology companies, including nearly 15 years as a corporate and technology lawyer. From 2001–2002, he was a partner with Preston Gates & Ellis, LLP; from 1994-2001, he was a shareholder and director with Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco (and was an associate with that firm from 1988-1994). As an attorney and business counselor, he has worked closely with both emerging growth and established companies in a broad spectrum of industries, from high-tech to life sciences to digital media. Having acting as outside general counsel to dozens of business ventures, he has advised them at critical junctures in their life cycles, ranging from initial organization to financings – both public and private – as well as strategic business deals, mergers and acquisitions. He has also negotiated major strategic licensing deals, such as the interactive video game rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Paul started his first tech company in 1981, developing and deploying database-driven transactional software applications for small businesses.

Paul holds J.D. (1988) and M.B.A. (1988) degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.S. degree (1983, with highest honors; Phi Kappa Phi) from the University of California at Davis. He is a frequent lecturer at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley where he has taught in courses such as “Entrepreneurship” and “New Venture Finance” to MBA students.