Enterprise Tuesday 2 (Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker)

The talk about "Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker founder and CEO of Viagogo and StarHub was an inspiring one. It was a frank talk about Entrepreneurial aspirations, markets and global business.

The key factors for a successful entrepreneur according to Eric were
1) Independent Thinker
2) Deal well with uncertainty and risk
3) Willing to take responsibility
4) Tenacious and persistent
5) Passionate - enjoying the journey
6) Ability to communicate and lead

Above all "You cannot succeed if you do not try".

I was really moved by his passion and ability to communicate so well.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

Enterprise Tuesday 1 (Motivation - Why we do it? )

Cambridge offers great opportunities for people aspiring to be entrepreneurs. Judge Business Schools Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning orchestrates the entrepreneurial interest through various programmes. One of the key programme is the "Enterprise Tuesday", where in entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and angles take about enterpreneur-ship.

This Tuesday (23rd Oct), we had a talk by Alex van Somersen and Dr. Nicko van Somersen about their motivation to be entrepreneurs. They are founders of nCipher (http://www.ncipher.com/) and ANT (http://www.antlimited.com/), which are listed on the London Stock Exchange. They spoke about their passion and the motivating factors that led to establishing their companies.

The key mantras to take away from their talk were
1) Idea
2) Team
3) Investors - They got their investor by accident at a Hotel lobby in the US
4) Market
5) Customers
6) Advisors
7) Luck

It was a real cool session and I enjoyed it as well. Looking forward to next session by Eric Baker (who sold his company to eBay for US$307m) about "Lifestyle or Global Business" on the 30th of Oct.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

The first month

A few pictures to highlight the fun and excitement of the MBA.

Wow !!! We just completed one month of our MBA programme. It's been a real quick month. We have our first exam in a couple of weeks. The MBA is an intense program and teaches the importance of prioritization.

Its been a good week for me. I started attending some of the career events. I attended presentations by Delloite, Morgan Stanley, BCG and Diamond Consultants. Next week I plan to attend a session by the Barclay's Retail arm.

I started playing baseketball again. It's been a while since I entered the court. Enjoyed playing with some of the good players from my college (Darwin). I plan to play at least once a week.

Term-1 : Week-3 (Quick Turns)

Living in Cambridge has great advantages (don't worry too much about the weather:) ). We get a chance to meet a lot of people (academicians/entrepreneurs) who are experts in their fields. The college season has just started and the town is bustling with student activities.

Oh !! Yes !! I have started to do things I have never done before. My friends and I went to the Wolfson college for our first Salsa session, and it was real cool. I enjoyed it so much that I plan to take Salsa lessons whilst in Cambridge.

We now have a our first MBA project called the Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) and it is the first real project we do as part of the MBA. There are two more big ones coming down the lane. We are a team of 5 people working on the CVP and being in a great amount of varied experience to the project. Our team comprises of

Dr. Abel (Spaniard/French who has been working in UK as a Genome research expert at EBML-EBI)
Jaison (Brit who has been working in the mining industry in Argentina and owns a company as well)
Marisa (Malaysian who has been working in the UK for Texas Instruments)
Tao (Chinese guy who has been working in China for a Telecommunications firm)
and finally your truly :)

We have started lesson on Accounting, Corporate Finance, Management Science and Management Practice. Some of these sessions have been real eye-openers and inspiring as well.

We have tons of pre-reading, assignments, career (ad)ventures and events to attend. MBA is slowly teaching me to prioritize things. Its a great adrenaline rush with so many things happening all around me.

The most important thing is that I'm enjoying every moment of my MBA; with so many new friends and new things I'm learning each day.