Midterm Report

It's Spring break time at MIT. We're half way through the semester and it's time to pause and take stock. Amynescu asked me what I thought about it so far. My short answer: I'm a happy sponge. I don't have much to complain about and I'm learning a ton of things.

I've decided to treat myself with a short vacation to NY. I've only been to NY once, but didn't spend much time there. Fresh off the boat from Romania, I got a glimpse of NY as I was being carted away to my new home in Ohio. Everything was amazing! I remember the lights, the impossibly tall sky-scrapers, the stores full of electronics, people walking around everywhere. Now, 19 years later, I'll be able to look at NY with a whole different set of eyes: a tourist in my own country.

Perfunctorily!?

What the heck does "perfunctorily" mean? I knew the East Cost was different, but I didn't realize that moving here required learning a new dialect. Should I walk around with a Webster's in my pocket? Of coahse, they'll say, this is Boston! What are you thinking? Man, this place is wicked wee-id! That's it, I'm going out for some chowda'...

Suspense Is Over

Ok, so we didn't make it into the semi-finals of the $50K. Bummer! We thought we had a pretty good plan, but the judges didn't think so. The sad thing is, the whole team (all 6 of us) went to Tuesday's award presentation and sat through the entire 2-hour presentation only to find out that we didn't make the cut. We were quite dejected afterwards. Of the 160 submissions, 15 of them were selected out of the Entrepreneurship for Devleopment track. The other 26 that were selected were from the classic business venture track. Lessons learned? Plenty. Our financial viability wasn't rated very high by the judges. Should we have competed as a non-profit? Perhaps. It would've made it easier to justify a profit in Year 3 and 4 of operations. After all, we're doing this to save the world, people! Not to make a load of money.

Epilogue is.... There's none! We're moving foward with the business plan and hoping to get it in front of some of the VCs around here. Who knows? Someone may find our plan viable. Supposedly the first lesson you learn in entreprenership is to never give up even when others tell you you're out of your mind. I couldn't agree more...

Getting Nervous

Life without a little suspense would be really boring! Suspense gets our adrenaline going, gives us a reason to hope. Of course, there's the flip side: despair and dissapointment. I always try to balance the two. Whenever faced with an uncertain outcome I mentally prepare myself for either outcome: positive or negative. I always keep my emotional rollercoaster from going into extreme highs and lows.

Tomorrow we'll find out if we made it into the semi-finals for the $50K competition. This year they received 160 entries for both tracks (traditional business venture and entrepreneurship for development). I'm not sure how many will make it to the second round, but I'll estimate about a quarter of them (the judges probably don't want to be overburdened with too many business plans). If we get in, great! If not, we've got the other competitions to worry about (by the way, we made it into the semi-finals of the Ignite competition).

This week I'll also find out how I did on the ERBA quiz, the first quiz of my newly revived student career. Ahhhh, this is what it means to be a student! Nervously anticipating the results of an exam. I think I got most of the answers right, but I've been known to make stupid mistakes in the past (without even realizing it). So I'm caustiously optimistic... What's my contingency plan? There's always next year :))

City Bike

My bike has never been a city bike. It was raised in Marin county, the birthplace of mountain biking, and still bears the signs of a rough life in the great outdoors (dents and scratches, a few missing spokes), consequences of many un-intentional cartwheeling manouvers performed in tandem with its owner. But those scratches and wounds are nothing compared with what could happen here in the city. City life is much tougher for a bike and owner who are not used to riding in the city (see next posting). But we're all adapting these days, so with the spring weather just around the corner I decided it was time to take the bike out for a spin. First I had to buy a lock to make sure nobody is tempted to ride it in the sunset without my consent. Then, I had to take a picture of it, so if it ever gets stolen I will remember what it looked like; it still looks weird sitting on the sidewalk, chained to a signpost :(
Then I rode it carefully to school, stopping at every stop light, watching for every car passing by, carefully studying the parked cars in case someone decides to open a door just as I pass by. Frightening experience! I timed to see how long it takes me to get to school. Official time: 6 minutes. Wow!! It takes me about 30 minutes to walk to school and just about as long to take the T. This is an 80% improvement! Talking about system optimization. With that statistic, the bike has become my preferred means of transportation to school. Next step, check my renters insurance, just in case... Final analysis:

renters insurance: $180
bike lock: $40
chance to sleep a few extra minutes in the moring: priceless

Ode to the Fallen Bikes

City life can be very precarious, especially if you were a bike. Not a day goes by without noticing a dismembered, rusted out bike on the sidewalk. And I always wonder what happened to those fallen bikes? How did they become such a casualty? Did they get vandalized, forgotten by their owners, devoured by weather and time? At one point they were the dream of a child, the pride and joy of a new owner... And look at them now!










I wonder if my bike will survive life in this urban battleground. How long before someone decides to walk away with a few "souvenirs" from my bike: the seat, the bike computer, a wheel, who knows? But one thing is for sure, my bike will never end up on a sidewalk because of my own neglect. If I ever get tired of it or replace it, I will donate it to someone who will appreciate it at least half as much as I do.

Darwin's - The Evolution of Coffee Shops

I have the fortune to live right around the corner from a great coffee shop. Darwin's Ltd is a wonderful coffee shop famous around here for its sandwiches and laid-back atmosphere. I love it because of the free wireless access, the strong espresso and the excellent music they pipe through the speakers.

So while most people are still asleep on Sunday morning, I'm out blogging at the coffee shop. It's 7:00 am. What the hell am I thinking? There's nobody around. Shouldn't I be sleeping in and relaxing like every normal human being? Nah! This is my most productive time! I'm still a morning person despite the fact that I'm in school and getting used to pulling late-nighters.
I'm all alone with my thoughts here at the coffee shop. But not for too long. A few people with small children just strolled in. I feel sorry for the parents. Unlike me, they didn't have much choice but to wake up and take the kids for a stroll. But look at it on the bright side! We get to see what may possibly be the last snowflakes of the season. Yup, it started snowing with big, fluffy snowflakes. They're gone in an instance though. It seems the sunny spring weather is not ready to give in to a full snowstorm.

Music and Homework

I'm listening to KCRW while cramming for the ERBA quiz. I discovered KCRW while living in LA and, thanks to its Internet broadcast, I've been listening to it everywhere I go. It's an eclectic mix of progressive pop, international jazz, classical music, you name it. They podcast one of their more popular programs (Morning Becomes Eclectic). Another reason I should get an iPod (I've been resisting all these years). Hmmm.... Let's see... www.apple.com

Designing and Leading the Entrepreneurial Organization

This tongue-twister of a title is the official name of one of my Sloan classes this semester (I'll call it the "entrepreneurship class" from now on). This class is based on case studies of various entrepreneurial organizations. As such, it relies heavily on class participation to analyze the different situations.

When the semester first began, the classroom was bursting with first-year MBA students many of which had signed up because of professor Diane Burton's awesome reputation (she's returning to lecturing after a one-year hiatus, I believe). Diane Burton's reputation is well deserved. She conducts the class well, but the class participation is pretty weak: half-baked opinions, confusing thoughts, long-winded answers, etc. (not to say that my own participation has been any better; there have been no pearls of wisdom coming out of my mouth). Despite Diane's best efforts to extract the essence of these case studies from us, we rarely express the main points clearly and objectively. So in the end, it's up to her to unveil the curtain and show us what went right or wrong with that particular case. Despite all this, I'm learning something from every single case we study: powerful lessons and reminders reinforced by my own work experience in an entrepreneurial organization.

Here's one...

Organizational models are defined by the founders of the organization. Some observers may think that all start-ups are the same, but that's not true. Different founders come up with different organizational models based on their personal beliefs and values. Furthermore, founders have a long-term effect on the structure and culture of an organization. Changes in these models are difficult to undertake and can be catastrophic in some cases. Stanford did a study on this and came up with 5 basic organizational models as defined by three different measures: employee attachment, selection of employees and the type of control/coordination enforced upon employees.

Ok, enough of this... If you're really interested, read about these models at: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2001/summer/1a/

Entrepreneurs of the World, Unite!

I've been approached by Romania's honorary consulate in Boston to help with an entrepreneurship competition in Romania. (I met the consul by chance in Romania last fall and I got in touch with him recently. He lives in Boston, but travels frequently between US and Romania).

The competition will be modeled after MIT's $50K competition (I guess since I'm in the MIT competition, that makes me a bit of an "expert" on it). Despite my dubious qualifications, I offered to help the student teams in Romania with questions about business planning (with my access to MIT resources I should be able to contribute somehow). The competition will be judged by a panel of Romanian and US judges and the winners will be flown to US to present their business plans to interested VCs.

My, how times are changing! Just 16 years ago Romania was firmly planted in the lofty ideals of communism. And look at it now: a fertile ground for entrepreneurs and VCs, the essence of capitalism.

Running For the Law

... a mile by mile account of my first official running race.

Boston's second annual "A Run to Remember" race in honor of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty took place today. A few of us in the SDM '06 class decided this would be a good team-building activity and registered to run the race. Team-building or charitable goals aside, I've never run more than 3 miles in my life, so my main motivation was to score a personal best in distance AND time. You see, official race results (collected with a super-high-tech timing chip) will be stored in perpetuity somewhere on the Internet and they'll haunt me forever. Next time someone will Google me, those results will be the first to show up and it wouldn't look good if it took me 2 hours to run a 5 mile course, would it? The stakes were high!

So, there I was on a crisp, beatiful March morning, sitting at the starting line with the timing chip planted on my foot, bar code pasted on my leg, high on sugar and caffeine, feeling like a super-human android; ready to run my first official race.
Mile 0.0 - just as the race was about to start, I had to take a leak so I split from the group and made my way to the port-o-pottys. Shoot! I was already starting late! But that was ok, my super-high-tech timing chip was going to record the net running time, not the gun time.
Mile 0.1 - I'm running, it feels good. I'm passing people. Yeah, this is great!
Mile 0.5 - the first hill. I hear groans behind me. I have no problems. I'm just gaining strength. Wait, what is that? A jdate.com ad? I'm wondering if they let non-jewish people join.
Mile 1 - entering downtown Boston. This is really my second time in downtown Boston (during the daytime, at least) and what am I doing? I'm running. How can I enjoy the beautiful historic sights? Mental note: I must come back when I'm not in such a rush.
Mile 1.5 - the first water station. Nahhh! Don't need it yet! I must not break my pace. The street is littered with trash now. Someone needs to invent a better hydration system that produces less waste. If I fail PDD class and have to take it again, this will be my next idea.
Mile 1.9 - spit on the road. What?! Women are spitting? I can't believe what I'm seeing! That's not very nice. I keep my mucuous substances in check.
Mile 2.5 - the first race fans show up on the sidewalk. I'm looking for signs that say "Go, Sorin, GO!". No luck. What happened? Where's the cheering gallery?
Mile 3.0 - Beginning un-explored territory of my physical strength. Will my legs last for another 2 miles? No problems so far. I'm still running strong.
Mile 3.2 - Yes, first chance to take a short-cut and reduce my time. Nahhhh, let's not cheat!
Mile 4 - I'm feeling great! I'm passing people! I have a chance to win this race. I know it! All these people ahead of me are running the half-marathon race that started earlier.
Mile 4.5 - I hear the music at the finish line. My moment of glory is getting closer. I'm picking up the pace.
Mile 4.7 - I turn the corner and see the finish line. If I could only pass these two runners in front of me, I'll be the winner. I'm running as fast as I could. I don't feel my legs anymore. I imagine myself being crowned the winner; wreath on my head, gold medal around my neck, waiving at the adoring crowd below me. The greatest 5-mile racer ever.
Mile 4.999 - What? Someone's trying to steal the victory from me. That can't be! I lunge forward. I make it! I win!
What does the race time say? It took me 45 minutes to run? Ah, that's great. But wait... There are the official race results. I can't believe my eyes! There were some 700 people ahead of me!? I must've entered a time-warp because I surely felt I was the winner.

All in all, it was a great time. I really enjoyed the race and the company (thanks to Serge for his smooth organizing). After the race I split from the group and walked back home taking a circuitous route through historic downtown Boston. I treated myself with a big pasta lunch and 2-hour powernap afterwards and when I woke up I realized I'm just an average human being: official race results - 44:18.

Business Plans

I just spent the last 4 hours re-writing the business plan for our $50K entrepreneurship competition. After meeting with the advisors last week we realized that our plan was too idealistic and needed to be grounded in some good ole' fashioned business concepts (just because this is a business venture for the developing world it doesn't mean that the investors don't want their money back). They're investing in a business not donating money to charity! I spent part of the weeekend raking my brains trying to figure out how to show that this could be a sustainable venture. I think targeting India as the initial market may be the answer.
By the way, here's a picture of what the prototype system in Lesotho looks like:
Executive summaries are due on Wednesday. We'll find out if we made it to the semi-finals on March 22.

Intellectual Property

Of all classes this semester, Innovation in the Marketplace stands out as the most philosophical one. Eric von Hippel is either a great professor or a great magician! He takes takes a topic, turns it upside down and makes it stand on its head. Sometimes my brain is trying to resist his logic (that can't be right, professor!), but in the end his logic really make sense. Take for example, the "lead-user innovation" concept. In some industries, the lead-users, not the manufacturers are the ones who innovate most. For example, when it comes to scientific instruments, 77% of the innovations were concieved by the advanced users of those instruments. Manufacturers tend to develop dimension-of-merit innovations while users are the ones who tend to develop the novel functional capabilities. His logic made me think about my own experiences as an innovating lead user. Ha! That's exactly what I did when I made that little ProgramIC board. I was a lead-user myself and didn't even know it! But wait! The story goes on. My idea didn't go unnoticed. It wasn't long before the big manufacturer took notice and developed one of its own. Just like von Hippel would predict...

But the most controversial topic is the intellectual property topic. Von Hippel assertion is that intellectual property protection is no longer serving the purpose for which it was originally designed: to stiumlate innovation by protecting the innovator's idea from being copied. As it turns out, IP protection has the opposite effect in industries like biotech and software. The chance to discover new drugs, for example, are reduced when a firm has to license tens of patents before it can proceed. IP in this case will stifle innovation!

This had many of us scratching our heads. You mean, the society is better off without IP protection? That's exactly what von Hippel is trying to assert...

Anatomy of a Brainstorm Session

We've been slacking off on our Product Design and Development assignments. It was time for a a team meeting to decide on a concept (as a reminder, we're doing a produce plastic bag dispenser). We picked an empty classroom in building 1 (inadvertently kicking out a class that was to start an hour later in that same room) and held an intense brainstorm. Rules of the game: 1) anything goes, and 2) don't judge the ideas (we'll do that later). We started with the "classic" ideas we had in our minds all along. Ziv presented his printer roller idea to an approving look from Regan:
Then it was Shelley's turn to present her ideas (drawing a skeptical look from Ziv):
As we went on, something interesting happened. We started to think "outside the box". What if we don't even need a bag? What if we can just drop the item in a black box that wraps it up nicely, labels it and prints the price? Hmmm... The brainstorm was starting to kick-in some good ideas. Every piece of blackboard in that room was covered. We began to shout out crazy thoughts. Tempers flared! It became so intense that Ziv almost strangled Regan! In turn, I almost choked Ziv with the object of our attention: the puny plastic bag.
Of course, we were just having fun. The brainstorm session was a great succcess. We have some "safe" concepts, but we also have some far-out ones that need to be explored further.

Tell Me It's Spring Time

It's March already and I can just begin, just begin to hope that winter will be over soon. It seems my hopes are not unfounded.

I love spring. It's probably my favorite season. Having lived in California for the last 9 years, I haven't experienced a real spring in a long time. I can't wait!

Hook, Line and Sinker

I bit into this MIT $50K competition so hard and now I'm hooked beyond escape. The team I joined (Synergetic Power Systems) has an idea for a renewable energy source. We're entering not only the $50K competition (pshaw..., that's pocket change!), but we're also entering four (count them, 4) more competitions: Ignite Clean Energy, EPA P3, MIT IdeaStream and a WorldBank competition to top it off.

That means very little sleep especially when all executive summaries are due about the same time. But it's fun! I'm already learning so much (even though I'm not getting any credit for it). I'm finding out that the extracurricular activities here at MIT are sometimes worth more than the classes I'm taking.

For the $50K competition we'll be entering the Entrepreneurship for Devleopment Track which is new this year. This competition is focused on business plans targeting low-income communities in developed and developing countries. Ok, so here's our pitch...
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Over 2 billion people in emerging market economies are without access to electricity, heating, cooling and hot water. The United Nations Environment Programme predicts that global energy demand will double in the next 25 years, largely due to increased energy use in developing nations. In United States the usage of renewable energy is predicted to grow at a healthy rate of 11.3%.
Synergetic Power Systems aims to develop a modular, distributed, renewable energy system using a novel combination of solar thermal, biogas and micro-scaled thermodynamic technologies that can be can be configured to supply heat, electricity and cooling capabilities in varying proportions according to the needs of people in diverse places such as Africa, Asia and the United States. Using low-cost, widely available materials that can be locally manufactured or sourced, the system is designed to be easily constructed and maintained by distributors in both developed and developing world.
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Are you hooked?