This Week in Startups #40 Bonus Interview with Penn State

Today Jason had the opportunity to speak to 55 seniors at Penn State who will all be working on the University’s “Idea Pitch” contest.  All the students are part of the Information Sciences and Technology school and will be pitching their ideas to the business school.

I really liked this interview it was not your normal TWiST episode.  While it had the same sense of humor and casual tone we get to hear Jason tell his story and how he learned and what motivated him.  You can even see the passion coming through at one point where I sensed emotional satisfaction in proving the naysayers wrong.

He starts off by asking how many people want to be an entrepreneurs and who wants to be a drone worker bee (about 6%).  Throughout the interview he motivates the class and opens many eyes about work life, later in the show he asks the same question to find a very different answer.

Entrepreneur core qualities:

• Entrepreneurial parents


• Recklessness gambling personalities


• Resiliency


• Focused


• Won’t take no for an answer


• You will disproportionately be rewarded if you succeed


• Work harder


• Must believe in yourself

Questions from the class:

• Do you stir the pot on purpose (Twitter)?


• What is your relationship with your employees?


• In the early stages do you worry about intellectual property?


• Can you be someone who is an entrepreneur within a company?

Who wants to be a rice picker and who wants to be a Samari?

Comments

[Elroy Zonneveld]

Greatest Motivational Speech Ever! Way better than any of the fight scenes
in Gladiator...Back to the entrepreneurial trenches!