Thursday
Feb112010
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 06:20PM 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:
Questions from the class:
Who wants to be a rice picker and who wants to be a Samari?
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?
Reader Comments (39)
The problem with this presentation is he degraded his employees - by calling the people that don't want to be an entrepreneur donkeys. It takes all kinds and he made it clear he does not respect anyone that is not an entrepreneur.
I am SO thankful that brilliant talented people that work for me have no desire to be an entrepreneur but instead decide to work for me. Come on! This video included good Entrepreneur advice execept he is a terrible roll model for a boss.
Entrepreneurship should not be all ego driven. He is not the only one that made his businesses successful. There is too much "I" and not enough "we". To be a successful entrepreneur you need to be a leader that builds a team. I see no evidence of this here.