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Jason Calacanis - Legendary Angel Investor

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 17:56:00 +0000

Jad Esber (MBA 2020) and Bryce DeFigueiredo (MBA 2021) talk to Jason Calacanis. Jason is an entrepreneur and legendary angel investor. In the dot-com era, he started a company called Weblogs, Inc., which he sold to AOL. Later, he got into angel investing and invested at the earliest stages in companies such as Uber, Thumbtack, and Calm.

Topics on this episode include:

- How Jason learned where power resides and how wealth is created

- His philosophy on capitalism and building companies

- His advice to MBA founders

- Why we all need to learn to take more risks

Eric Paley - Founder Collective

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 20:29:00 +0000

Jad Esber (MBA 2020) speaks with Eric Paley (MBA 2003) about his career as a startup founder and venture capitalist. Eric is a managing partner at Founder Collective, an early stage venture fund in Boston. In this episode, Eric tells stories from his days as a founder and gives advice on working with co-founders and VCs.

Karen Mills - Obama Administration, Harvard Business School

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 02:29:00 +0000

Today's guest is Karen Mills, a professor at the TEM (The Entrepreneurial Manager) unit at Harvard Business School. Karen was the administrator of the US Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013, serving as a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. She is also a venture capitalist and private equity partner, and the author of Fintech, Small Business, & The American Dream.

Topics:

How Karen drew inspiration from her entrepreneurial family
The impact of regional innovation clusters, and how she got her job at the SBA
The importance of small business lending to society
Karen's advice for people who want to work in the public sector
How automation will affect the future of work, and which industries it will show up in
Does fintech have an innovator's dilemma? Who might the eventual winners in that space be?
A lesson Karen had to learn the hard way

Quotes:

"A meeting is not an outcome. Once you say okay, this is an outcome we want to get to, then we can say: how do we reverse-engineer success?"

"Small businesses play a critical role in the economy and in the social fabric of our lives."

"When your friend gets a great job, I say to everyone, think: good for them, irrelevant to me."

Joel Peterson - JetBlue, Peterson Partners

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 04:10:00 +0000

In today’s episode, we speak with Joel Peterson, current chairman of JetBlue and Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Joel’s career got a big boost from being the CEO and CFO of the world’s largest real estate development company, after which he left to start a private equity firm.

Tune in to hear us discuss Joel’s experiences working as the chairman of JetBlue and how his career path has been quite serendipitous.

Topics:

A moment in his career where forgiveness played a large part
Early on, Joel thought you could use “spin” to get out of anything
Why keeping someone on when they’re not working out can be detrimental
How he became the CFO of a private equity firm
The terrible end to his tenure at the private equity firm
Why Joel thinks he is offered leadership positions
The importance of building trust in business
Which world leader is Joel’s role model

Quotes:

“Early on in my career... I learned that you can’t talk your way out of problems you behaved your way into.”

“This was a $750 Million decision for a little start-up airline, so we knew we had to get this terminal right.”

“It would be hard to run a business without people trusting you.”

Resources:

JetBlue

Matt Oppenheimer - Remitly

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 14:41:28 +0000

Alex Spencer (MBA 2021) and Bryce DeFigueiredo (MBA 2021) talk to Matt Oppenheimer (MBA 2009), co-founder and CEO of Remitly. Remitly is the largest digital remittances company in the world. They transform the lives of immigrants and their families by providing financial services for folks looking to send money back to their home countries. We discuss talk about Matt’s background and what led him to entrepreneurship and fintech, his experience at HBS, and his path to starting Remitly. Special thanks to Joseph Lee (MBA 2021), our executive producer.

Warren Hogarth - Sequoia Capital And Empower

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 18:47:43 +0000

Bryce DeFigueiredo (MBA 2021) and Alex Spencer (MBA 2021) talk to Warren Hogarth (MBA 2008), former partner at Sequoia Capital and current co-founder and CEO of Empower. Empower is a fintech startup whose mission is to empower consumers to retake control of their financial lives. We discuss Warren's background in engineering and at Sequoia, the mission of his current startup Empower, and how he's managed to build such an impressive company with a lean team.

Navid Nathoo - The Knowledge Society

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 03:29:40 +0000

Alex Spencer (MBA 2021) and Rahim Noormohamed (MBA 2021) talk to Navid Nathoo, co-founder of The Knowledge Society. The Knowledge Society is a human accelerator designed for students age 13-17. Their mission is to build the next generation of global leaders who have a strong sense of purpose, tenacity, resourcefulness, leadership, and vision. We cover human potential, Navid's philosophy on education, and how we can develop leaders who will tackle the world's toughest problems.

Ben Lyon - Hover

HBS Entrepreneurship Club — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 01:25:27 +0000

Alex Spencer (MBA 2021) and Bryce (MBA 2021) talk to Ben Lyon, co-founder and CEO of Hover. Hover is a fintech startup that enables developers to integrate with any mobile money service worldwide in an afternoon. We cover Ben's background and journey to launch Hover, as well as fintech and mobile money in Africa.