What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
Here at HBX, we’ve spent the last several months working with Professor William Sahlman, a Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, to answer that question. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is that it takes more than having a great idea and a hooded sweatshirt.
We’re excited to launch Entrepreneurship Essentials, which delves more deeply into that question’s many answers. Throughout the course, we’ll discuss where to find entrepreneurial opportunities, and give you the tools to test if your idea has potential. We’ll then go into the mechanics of building a business from the ground up – including picking the right team, taking advantage of shifting context, and shaping favorable deals to reach your goals. Finally, we’ll talk about financing, and demystify who potential investors are and how you might work with them.
Master a proven framework for building and financing new ventures, make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality, and speak the language of the start-up world. Entrepreneurship Essentials introduces you to the entrepreneurial journey, from finding an idea, to gaining traction in the marketplace, to raising capital for your venture. You will learn an overarching framework—People, Opportunity, Context, Deal—to evaluate opportunities, manage start-ups, and finance ventures. Visit online.hbs.edu/courses/entrepreneurship-essentials to learn more.
We were fortunate to speak to many successful entrepreneurs and investors, whose experience offers a rich perspective into the challenges of entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. For now, we’ll focus on the three stories that anchor each of our three modules, respectively.
First, for Module 1, we travelled to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to speak with John Osher, a serial entrepreneur whose businesses range from establishing Harvard Square’s first secondhand clothing shop while still in college, developing energy efficient faucets during the 1970’s energy crisis, and bringing the first low-price mechanical toothbrush to the mass market. John is a master of recognizing opportunities and assembling lean teams to take advantage of them, and from him we truly came to believe one of our course motto’s – that opportunities are everywhere.
Meet John Osher, entrepreneur of multiple consumer products and a featured expert in Entrepreneurship Essentials. Osher describes the personality that an entrepreneur must have to achieve success. This includes a love for your venture but at the same time, a willingness to acknowledge when your idea is not going to be successful. To learn more about this course, visit: http://online.hbs.edu/courses/entrepreneurship-essentials/
Next, our team met with Jenn Hyman, the CEO and co-founder of Rent the Runway, in the company’s New York City headquarters. Jenn, an HBS graduate, discussed her path to entrepreneurship, sharing that she sees herself as a “sociologist of the world.” Through Jenn’s story, we unpack the details of founding and running a successful business.
Jenn Hyman, CEO of Rent the Runway, discusses the difficulty of entrepreneurship and the importance of having passion for your venture. Hyman is one of many protagonists featured in our #entrepreneurship course. Find out more about it here: http://online.hbs.edu/courses/entrepreneurship-essentials/
Later in the course, we went to Silicon Valley to speak with Scott Cook, the co-founder of Intuit. We sat with Scott in Intuit’s newest building – an expansive, light-filled building on their campus. During our interview, we spoke with Scott about the early days of Intuit, when the company was no more than an idea – to take the headache out of personal finance – headquartered out of his home garage. In its early days, Intuit struggled with keeping the lights on and paying its employees, and the company danced with bankruptcy for several years before finally achieving its big break.
Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, explains the best way to come up with an idea for your next venture. Instead of trying to predict the future, Cook suggests solving an existing problem in today’s society. Cook is one of many protagonists featured in our Entrepreneurship Essentials course. To learn more visit: http://online.hbs.edu/courses/entrepreneurship-essentials/
We were fascinated by these stories, and inspired by John, Jenn, and Scott’s perseverance and paths to success. We hope that by hearing these stories, you’ll see that entrepreneurship isn’t magic. It’s a difficult journey – one with many ups and downs and challenges – but one that’s attainable.
We hope that you’ll come along on this journey with us!