IT Entrepreneurs

Increasingly, our society is inspiring entrepreneurs to start their own businesses rather than pursue careers in the Global 2000. Many business school students seem to think there is a formula for success, but many start-up companies fail, many successful companies got there by luck and serendipity, still others are founded by people who eventually get ousted from the companies they created.

Your group might start your presentation with the current research on the personality characteristics of entrepreneurs and attributes of successful start up businesses. There are hundreds of good academic studies on these two issues.

As this is an IS class, your group will then investigate three entrepreneurs who started their own IT-related businesses. Tell us their stories. Who are they? What were they like as children? What are their dominant personality traits? How did they first conceive of the idea for their business? How did they fund the start-up? How did they get customers? What were some challenges along the way?

You might pick one or two well-known entrepreneurs such as Andrew Mason of Groupon (great article in Aug 2011 issue of Vanity Fair), Jack Dorsey (St. Louis entrepreneur who invented Twitter—great article on hi in April 2011 Issue of Vanity Fair), Bill Gates of Microsoft, Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack, founders of Cisco, or Michael Dell, founder of Dell. For a now large successful company, you might have to rely on secondary resources. (I think Michael Dell is probably too busy to bother with us!) You could also show a little youtube video on them. (The class probably already knows all about Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook).

Your group should also do original interviews with some start-up companies. Interview the founder and get him or her to share their journey with you. International students are highly encouraged to interview entrepreneurs from non-US companies. Top find St. Louis based IT entrepreneurs, look at the Stlouis Business Journal, IT Coalition, Gateway to Innovation Conference.

Your group might conclude by comparing the personality characteristics of entrepreneurs and attributes of successful start-up businesses you found in the literature with the people you interviewed.

One great audience interaction game I highly recommend is “Guess the famous entrepreneur.” Disperse pictures of entrepreneurs throughout your presentation and give a little token for a student who correctly identifies the person (such as a cookie, or one group gave out copies of Entrepreneur magazines). Be sure the name of the entrepreneur is NOT printed on the class’s handouts.

I am sure that your group will have many creative ideas, so please feel free to discuss them with me.