Speaker Events At Merage

I wanted to take a moment to discuss and recognize the wealth of speaker events during an MBA program and specifically at Merage. As I mentioned before, extracurricular activities can stretch a student pretty thin, but they are only the beginning. During the school year companies want you to help them, students will plan outside social events, you will go to community networking events, and there will be numerous speakers speaking about numerous topics. I am a sucker for a good speaker, even if it isn't in my desired career direction, because I can usually learn at least one lesson that will benefit me in the future. I am going to highlight some memorable speaker events I have attended since I arrived.
The Boys at Wahoo's Fish Taco
Wahoo's is a chain of fish taco franchise in California and Nevada who are known for their underground marketing. Wahoo has always sponsored the extreme sports scene and punk rock shows as their main forms of marketing. This has helped them gain vast numbers of contacts in these related fields (music, movies, sports apparel manufacturers, etc.). This caused them to get loads of freebies which often just piled up in a warehouse. Enter Ed who is an amazing visual genius (see the logo) who got started in myspace very early on. One day Ed suggests that he give away some of their freebies on his myspace page. The response was overwhelming. He started contests of tell me or show me why you deserve X freebie and he would get responses from all over America. Wahoo uses this as a form of underground marketing. This alone is very cool, but it gets better. Because of the community Ed has built on his myspace page, other companies come to Wahoo to do joint give-aways! For example, new band +44 is releasing its new CD and the record company asked Wahoo to do a myspace giveaway. Or when the movie "She's the Man" was released they did a promotion giving away two passes to the L.A. premier of the movie. Wahoo's myspace marketing is not pervasive, it is always in the background. So kids New York want to go to Wahoo's Fish Taco despite never seeing a franchise because it is always tied to this cool stuff.
John Palmer, President of Southern California Region of Verizon Wireless
John Palmer presented in Merage's distinguished speaker series talking about strategic innovation. While his talk sort of outlined Verizon's history which most of us knew, he did give interesting details about the initial struggles of finding a common brand for a company that was comprised of a merger of a number of different companies. He also talked about how a Verizon needed to rely on a strong engineering team to decide strategic technological investments.
As a Merage Fellow, I get invited to a pre-reception party for select guests, sponsors and the speaker. It is a great networking opportunity and I was able to meet a number of interesting members of the Orange County community. I was very flattered to have our dean take me and another Merage Fellow to introduce us to John Palmer as "one of Merage's star pupils". One of those cool unadvertised perks of being a Merage Fellow.
Luis Villalobos, Founder of the Tech Coast Angels
Luis Villalobos is a great entrepreneur who helped build the largest angel investing group in the United States (and I guess the world). Angel investors are people who invest in very early stage companies typically before Venture Capital is interested. Where I was from, Southern Ontario, angels are not very common. Companies were often self-financed through growth and a company was lucky if they found one angel. That angel would be very careful about who he invested in because he would assume alot of risk.
Tech Coast Angels help share this risk by uniting all of the area's angel investors. The administrators of the Tech Coast Angels would vet any new business proposals and pick the best to present before its membership. During the presentation the members may grill the entrepreneurs. At the end of the presentation each member decides if he wants to invest in the company. An "investment" would be $25,000 with the goal of have a set number of investors wanting to do the investment that would hit the financing goal of the company.
Afterwards, in addition to the financing, the company would gain the contacts and expertise of its members. A win-win proposition for all involved that really helps launch a number of companies in the area. This would be an idea I would be interested in bringing back to Southern Ontario. Our angels are not united and I believe that is a key reason we do not see the same tech company activity as we see in California.
Luis, was incredibly interesting and I could listened to him for days. He discussed a number of case studies of his past experiences and common entrepreneur mistakes. Incredibly valuable talk, but much too brief.