This is a
first-year gateway course and is not available for second-year bidding.
Second-years must wait until the add/drop process begins in January to add this
class.
COURSE
NUMBER: MBA295A.1
COURSE
TITLE: Entrepreneurship
UNITS
OF CREDIT: 3
INSTRUCTOR:
Jerry Engel, John Danner
E-MAIL
ADDRESSES: engel@haas.berkeley.edu,
danner@haas.berkeley.edu
MEETING
DAY(S)/TIME: Thursday, 8:00-11:00 AM
PREREQUISITES:
None
CLASS
FORMAT: Mixture of cases, lectures and guest speakers
REQUIRED
READINGS: There will be no text; articles and cases will be available in the
course reader.
BASIS
FOR FINAL GRADE: The main requirement for the course will be a business plan
and presentation on a venture of the student's choosing. Students will work in
teams 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.
FACULTY
AUDIO CLIP: Click here
to listen to the instructor giving a brief overview the course.
ABSTRACT
OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
This
is a course for students curious about, considering or committed to starting a
new venture. It is focused on 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 that can open new markets, change the world or both. 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, what it
will become and what its strategy will be to get there. It helps the
entrepreneur to manage a growing and necessarily complex set of dynamics by
providing mileposts and indicating 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 address the key challenges
facing a startup venture: from opportunity recognition and assessment,
strategic positioning and business model selection to marketing/sales,
financing/venture capital, assembling the venture team and harvesting
alternatives. We will also have experienced guest speakers from time to time to
add their perspective on the venture development process.
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCHES:
JERRY
ENGEL
Jerome
S. Engel has been involved with the formation and growth of entrepreneurial
ventures for over twenty five years.
Active in academe, venture capital, business consulting and community
affairs, his current positions include:
Faculty
Director, THE LESTER CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION, University of
California at Berkeley
Adjunct Professor, Walter A. Haas School
of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Instructs in both the School’s MBA and Executive Education programs
specializing in Entrepreneurship, New Venture Finance, Corporate Innovation,
Venture Capital and Private Equity. Director of the
Entrepreneurship Program of the Haas School.
General
Partner, Monitor Venture Partners [the venture capital affiliate of the Monitor
Group]
Board
of Directors of Jupiter Systems, MedAmerica, Adaptive
Planning, and Electrascan
Faculty
Co-Chair, U.C. Berkeley Venture Capital Executive Program
Faculty
Co-Chair, Global Social Venture Competition
Faculty
Chair, Intel+Berkeley Entrepreneurship Education Innitiative
Advisory
Board, National Association of Corporate Directors, Northern California
Faculty
Advisory Board, Kauffman Fellows Program
Chair,
Board of Directors, Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory
From
1979 through 1990 Mr. Engel was the San Francisco Bay Area Director of
Entrepreneurial Services for Ernst & Young.
Promoted to Partner in 1982, Mr. Engel specialized in consulting on
capital formation, corporate strategy and management organization of
entrepreneurial ventures, with an emphasis in software and biotechnology. In 1990 Mr. Engel was appointed Ernst &
Young's National Director of Capital Resources, where he directed the firm’s
efforts in raising capital for its emerging business clients nationwide. From 1992-1995 Mr. Engel served as a member
of the Board of Directors of Maxis Corporation (The Sims), and oversaw the
company's financing activities which included venture capital and a successful
initial public offering. In 1995, Mr. Engel was a founding General Partner of
Kline Hawkes Capital, a venture capital firm based in
Los Angeles. In addition to Mr. Engel’s
current positions, he has served on the Boards of a number of emerging
companies including LeapFrog [NYSE: LF] MicroNet Technology [acquired by Ampex],
Transoft Inc., [acquired by HP], and Centric
Software, a leader in 3-D visualization and virtual product prototyping. Earlier, during his career with E&Y, Mr.
Engel helped a number of entrepreneurial firms go public, including AutoDesk and Fair Isaac Companies. In 1998 Mr. Engel co-founded AllBusiness.com,
which he grew to over 150 employees and sold to NBC in March, 2000, returning 13x to his Series A investors. But most important in Mr. Engel’s career has
been his endeavors for the last eighteen
years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has lead the
creation of the of the country’s foremost entrepreneurship programs.
JOHN
DANNER
Mr.
Danner is an experienced entrepreneur and management consultant across a number
of industry and organizational settings. He has advised senior executives of
multi-billion-dollar international enterprises on issues of strategy, value
management and business growth; as well as management teams of emerging
ventures on matters of competitive positioning, marketing and product
strategy. His clients over the years
have ranged from leading companies in the healthcare, energy, entertainment,
food products, telecommunications and information
sectors to startups in newer markets like biotech, personal digital assistants,
e-commerce and supply chain integration.
He
also has firsthand experience developing ventures, having co-founded a national
business newspaper in the healthcare industry as well as having designed and
successfully launched several new business initiatives for client
organizations. He has served as advisor
to several new companies, including a leading business portal, web-based
enterprise resource management and affinity marketing ventures. He began his
entrepreneurial career in college, when he co-managed a market survey, library
research and foreign language translation business.
Earlier
in his career, Mr. Danner practiced corporate and regulatory law for Morrison
& Foerster, a multinational law firm based in San
Francisco. While there, he successfully represented clients in a number of
unusual settings, including coordinating MCI's state-by-state regulatory agenda
following the breakup of AT&T, troubleshooting several major downtown
development projects in the Bay Area, negotiating a multi-billion-dollar energy
purchase agreement and drafting legislation in the pension investment arena.
His
public service career includes work at both the federal and state levels,
having created and managed the Executive Secretariat in the newly-organized
U.S. Department of Education during the Carter Administration; and having
served as Executive Assistant to then-Governor Bill Clinton during his first
term in Arkansas. He is also a senior
moderator for the Aspen Institute's Executive Seminar and other leadership
programs.
Mr.
Danner earned his J.D. degree from Boalt Hall at the University of California,
Berkeley, where he also served as Associate Editor of the California Law
Review. In addition, he holds the
M.A.Ed. and M.P.H. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated cum laude from Harvard College.