COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA295A.1

COURSE TITLE: Entrepreneurship

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 Units

INSTRUCTOR:  Christian Puscasiu

E-MAIL ADDRESS: cpuscasiu@berkeley.edu

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION: https://bspace.berkeley.edu/portal

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Monday, 6:00pm-9:30pm

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA Core

CLASS FORMAT: Case-based learning with guest speakers and lecturettes.

REQUIRED READINGS: Course Packet; no textbook

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Because the course focuses discussion driven by class readings and case studies, a substantial portion of the grade will be class participation.  The process of idea formulation and validation individually and within a group will also constitute part of the grade.  There will a final exam as the third component of the grade.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
This course teaches the approach entrepreneurs use to identify attractive opportunities and to design and build new ventures. The pedagogy in the course includes case studies, vigorous classroom debate, video, and in-class visits from case protagonists. In addition to conveying frameworks for opportunity identification, business model development, raising financing, building founding teams, and growing nascent ventures, one of the major objectives of this course is to model the work life of a variety of entrepreneurs so that you will have the chance to personally reflect on your desire to pursue this type of career. Throughout the course, the cases and our discussions will have as their focal point the entrepreneur who, in the face of great uncertainty, must make decisions and take action.

The course focuses on the entrepreneur as a leader. In practice this means that in every case there is a person who must make and implement decisions. The issues facing the entrepreneur are typically multi-faceted and require an integrative perspective. You should come to class every day prepared to think and act like the protagonist in the case. You will need to present the analysis that leads you to make a particular decision and to explain the plan you have for implementing your decision. Your goal should be to persuade your classmates that this is the appropriate plan and decision for the situation at hand. Entrepreneurs have a bias to take action, and this course is intended to help you develop this attitude.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Mr. Puscasiu has been a private and public equity investor for more than 15 years as founder and as Partner across all different stages of a company’s life from seed investing to growth equity to leveraged buyouts, IPOs and public block investing and finally turn-arounds and restructurings. He is the founder and general partner of Three Bridges Ventures, a seed fund focusing on early enterprise platform technology companies. Prior to that he lived in Germany and was a Partner at EQT, one of Europe’s premier investment firms with over 15 billion EUR under management, having led the German team of the Opportunity Fund and the Munich team of the Expansion Capital fund. Before EQT, Chris co-founded Prides Capital, which focused on small and mid-cap public and private investing, and led its private equity practice. He started his investment career at AEA Investors in New York and also spent a few years at Blum Capital in San Francisco.

Among his more notable investments, he led Blum Capital’s investment in CB Richard Ellis, the world’s largest commercial real estate services company which involved becoming the largest public shareholder, then taking the company private in a public proxy contest, acquiring its largest competitor and then taking the company public again. Mr. Puscasiu also led the refinancing and restructuring of Pegasus Solutions, the world’s leading hospitality IT company and was the interim-CEO of Sanuwave, a spin-out from Healthtronics Inc. At EQT we led the financing of EQT’s largest public buyout of Securitas Direct right during the financial crisis and also conceived of and led the consolidation of nine digital media agencies to form United Digital Group in Germany. He also had to restructure a number of companies to ensure their survival including SmarteCarte, TitanX and Strauss Innovation.  As an active “angel” investor in early technology companies, he currently serves as the Chairman of System Insights and as a board member of 21Diamonds and Contacts+.

Prior to his investment career, Mr. Puscasiu was a consultant with Bain & Company in San Francisco, a software engineer with Geoworks in Berkeley, and an entrepreneur. He received an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He’s a former member of the Cal tennis team and an avid marathon and ultra-marathon runner.