The Anderson School at UCLA’s largest student-run event
attracted a crowd of about 300 who listened Friday to speakers and
panelists who discussed the challenges of entrepreneurship.
Hosted by the Anderson School’s Entrepreneur Association,
the fifteenth annual EA conference gave students an opportunity to
network and learn outside of the classroom.
“It’s really “¦ a pretty good vehicle for
students within Los Angeles to make the most of what the
Entrepreneur Association will offer,” said Nishen Radia, the
EA’s director of events and a first-year MBA student.
The conference offered 15 panels on subjects ranging from real
estate and biotechnology to legal issues in the business world.
The panel sessions were intersected by speeches featuring Terry
Semel, Yahoo! chief executive officer, and Paul Orfalea,
Kinko’s founder and chairman emeritus.
Panelist Stan Berman, a controller for Nanostream Inc., said the
purpose of attending the conference for him was two-fold.
“I can help other people, entrepreneurs, in understanding
what the challenges are,” he said. “On my side, I want
to make some connections, see if we can meet some investors or
potential new customers.”
Pat Palleschi, principal of P.D. Palleschi and Associates, spoke
on a panel about developing “human capital.”
Palleschi described the conference as “simply
fabulous.”
“This is like a shot in the brain ““ food for the
brain,” she said.
Building enduring value, the conference’s theme, was meant
to address entrepreneurship in a slow economy, Radia said.
Semel spoke about building enduring value as related to
maintaining Yahoo!’s sustainability in a field filled with
competitors.
As CEO, Semel restructured Yahoo!’s marketing strategies,
looking into how to improve Internet services.
“I want to see research. What’s moving the
Internet?” he said. “Look: we can’t be in every
business. “¦ Let’s try to handpick the areas that have
the biggest potential growth. “¦ Let’s own some of those
verticals.”
Semel said a pervasive problem Yahoo! faced was a lack of
structure in dealing with advertisements, the company’s main
source of revenue.
After taking a more professional stance with advertising
agencies, Yahoo! saw increased ad sales and began focusing on how
to make its advertising more user-specific.
“Every day has been a challenge. … We had to take risks.
If we stayed still, we would have been sure to fail,” Semel
said.
Orfalea spoke about balancing “work, love and play,”
and highlighted satisfied employees as a necessity to business
growth.
When he hired his first employee, Orfalea said his first
reaction was thinking, “I’m so happy you’re here.
What can I do for you?”
“The worker has the last laugh. They can steal from you
“¦ and you think you’re the boss,” Orfalea said.
“If you want to bring sustainable value, it’s with your
workers.”
A successful entrepreneur, Orfalea said, focuses on getting
business done without getting trapped in minute details.
“All I knew is what came out at the end, I could
sell,” he said. “They wanted to gigabyte me to death.
“¦ All I wanted was to plug the machine in ““ how does it
work?”
Orfalea said curiosity is the most valuable quality an
entrepreneur can have.
“That’s what entrepreneurship is ““ you walk
down the street with your eyes open,” Orfalea said.
Reflecting on his decision to sell his interest in
Kinko’s, Orfalea said he became tired of the business.
“I got sick of being Kinko’s … if it didn’t
make me happy, I didn’t want it anymore,” Orfalea
said.
The keynote speaker presentations were planned to show students
the business world from the perspective of people with first-hand
experience, Radia said.
Anderson MBA student Jason McDowall attended the conference
because he is an entrepreneur.
McDowall is starting a business that will sell games to cellular
phone companies, and found the conference, particularly a panel
about the wireless industry, to be “really relevant” to
what he is doing.