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, danner@haas

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Thursday, 8:00-11:00 AM

PREREQUISITES: None

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of cases, lecture 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 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.

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. 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 indic ating 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 SKETCH:

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:

Executive Director, THE LESTER CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION, University of California at Berkeley, 1991 - present.  As founding Executive Director, responsible for the creation of an institution that coordinates all of the university’s activities in the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation. 

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 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.