15.390b New Enterprises

I've always wondered what it takes to start a company and this class covers exactly that. It is taught by Dr. Noubar Afeyan, a serial entrepreneur turned venture capitalist. The main project for the term is, unsurprisingly, to create a business plan for a new company. This will be great practice.

During the first class, Dr. Afeyan discussed what it is like to be a entrepreneur and the big challenges surrounding the creation of a new company and making it successful. He likened the odds of creating a successful startup to winning the lottery. He also said there is no formula for creating successful companies--every situation is different.

He then went on to describe the first five or so companies he started (which were all very successful). He was even involved in Celera Genomics, which was part of the big race to map the human genome back in the late 1990s/early 2000s (I traded the stock back in the boom). Being the analytical person I am, I had to raise the point that I never heard of any one person winning the lottery 5 times in a row; and therefore I questioned the lack of a formula (or guidelines) for creating successful startups. He didn't really have an answer, but this guy has done it over and over again, so I figure I'd rather learn from him than a professor that has been in academia for 20 years.

This course epitomizes my graduate classes compared to my undergraduate classes. During my undergrad days, very few classes were practical or had direct benefit to my career. Yes they set a foundation, but it was extremely rare for them to be applicable to what I was going to do for a living. This class is exactly the opposite.