TheBerkeleyMBA - Full-time MBA Program, Haas School of ...

Entrepreneurship
at Haas
Courses and Programs
A sampling of courses:
Entrepreneurship
New Venture Finance
High Tech Marketing and the Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship in Biotechnology
An Overview
Special Topics in Entrepreneurship
Certificate in Entrepreneurship
Requires three courses in entrepreneurship and internship
with local startup or a project, including developing
a business plan for a new venture.
Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Studies and promotes entrepreneurship and new enterprise
development. Founded in 1991 with endowment
from W. Howard Lester, chairman and CEO of Williams-
Sonoma. Lester Center activities include:
UC Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum
Monthly networking event at Haas that features top entrepreneurial
speakers and serves as meeting ground for Bay
Area entrepreneurs, investors, students, and faculty.
Berkeley Business Incubator
Provides office space and telecommunications capabilities
to promising new ventures of current Haas students
and recent graduates.
Venture Capital Internships and Fellowships
Offers selected MBAs hands-on experience with leading
firms such as Morgan Stanley Venture Partners and US
Venture Partners.
Price Institute Fellows
Awarded each year to Haas MBAs who show great
promise as future entrepreneurs.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Annual recognition of outstanding entrepreneurs.
Previous winners include:
• Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni, founder of several remarkable
medical/pharmaceutical firms such as ALZA.
• Arthur Rock, pioneering Bay Area high-tech
venture capitalist.
Entrepreneurs Association
Student-led umbrella organization that includes:
Haas/Berkeley Business Plan Competition, an annual
event to develop plans for new enterprises that are
judged by venture capitalists. Prize money is awarded to
the best plans; several plans have also attracted venture
funding.
Partners for Entrepreneurial Leadership (PEL), which
organizes paid summer internships at high-growth firms.
150 members and over 50 internships.
Berkeley Solutions Group, which provides MBA student
consultants to local new enterprises, small businesses,
and nonprofit organizations that cannot afford
professional consulting fees.
New Business Club
Internet Business Club
Social Venture Business Plan Competition
Recent startups founded
by Haas/Berkeley graduates:
12
CompareNet.com MyPoints.com
BigNetwork.com
RentNet.com
Ascribe Inktomi
Vermeer Technologies
(creators of Front Page software)
The study and practice
of entrepreneurship
is booming at
the Haas School. The
Berkeley MBA Program offers its students
the skills and knowledge to
launch fast-growth, high potential
enterprises. It sponsors a series of
innovative programs and activities that
provide students with networks and
connections, mentoring and advice
from experts, and the infrastructure to
actually begin a startup. And increasing
numbers of Haas students are
doing so by beginning their own firms
even while in school or by launching
startups at graduation.
In all of this, the Haas
School forms a microcosm
of the San
Francisco Bay Area, the
premier hotbed of new
venture creation. The
adrenaline rush of entrepreneurship
is palpable
here. Says James Hong,
MBA 99, who launched a
venture, “I chose to come
to Haas over other topranked
business schools
because there is an entrepreneurial
‘buzz’ here
that I just did not feel
anywhere else.”
One of the first business
schools in the nation to
offer entrepreneurship
courses, the Haas School
now features an array of
these courses. The curriculum
emphasizes the
integration of classroom
learning and connections
to the local entrepreneurial and venture
capital communities. Courses
may be taken as individual electives,
or in a coordinated program culminating
in the award of a certificate in
entrepreneurship. Executives and
advisors experienced in the creation
and growth of new companies join
Haas School faculty to teach in the
entrepreneurship program. Among
the faculty are authorities such as
Adjunct Prof. Mario Rosati, a partner
at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati,
the preeminent Silicon Valley hightech
law firm.
The locus of these activities is the Haas
School’s Lester Center for
Haas: Where Entrepren
Haas second-year MBA
students who take at least one
entrepreneurship course:
150 (out of 240)
Number of Haas MBAs
who complete entrepreneurship
certificate each year:
10 to 15
Members of the student
Entrepreneurship Association:
200 MBA students
(out of total 480)
Number of faculty teaching
entrepreneurship (which has
doubled in three years): 12
Maximum number of startups
in the Berkeley Business
Incubator: 8
Firms in incubator sold
for seven figures while
student founders were
still in school: 2
First startup to receive
venture financing from a
major venture firm while
students were still in school:
zipRealty.com, $1.7 million
in May 1999
Entrepreneurship and
Innovation. By participating
in the center’s
many activities, students
meet and learn from
leaders who manage,
advise and fund entrepreneurial
ventures.
“What a startup often
needs most is access to
know-how, to people
who know about technology,
markets, raising
capital, or building a
management team,”
says John Freeman, a
professor of entrepreneurship
and research
director of the Lester
Center. “Faculty and
business people
involved in entrepreneurship
here can provide
valuable mentoring,
useful contacts,
and constructive criticism
of business plans.”