Hear Me Unplugged

Philly Startup Leaders has invited me to be the lead off speaker for their new “Entrepreneur Unplugged” speaker series. I’ll share my experiences and lessons learned along the way in building my startup. Here are the full details:

PSL’s newest event series Entrepreneur Unplugged will extend the spirit of Founder Factory by bringing successful Entrepreneurs “on stage” to share their personal stories of risk taking and decision making.  The format will be a 30 minute presentation followed by question and answer.  The series will be streamed live, recorded and distributed online.

We’re proud to have Boris Silver open the series and share his experiences with his startup, Sport Interactiva, which provided fantasy sports games to over 1 million users on social networks.  Boris took a leave of absence from the University of Pennsylvania to grow the business full-time and navigated a successful exit just 9 months later.

Thanks to our friends at the University of Arts for providing an absolutely amazing venue to showcase the series.  The series continues on 6/17 and 8/19 at the same time and place.

When: April 22, 7pm

Where: University of the Arts, Hamilton Hall (map)

Location: 320 South Broad St, Philadelphia, PA

 

Look forward to seeing you there.

The Experience of Dubai: Part One

I spent my spring break trip as part of a group of Wharton students sent to Dubai from March 6 – 15 to meet with the key companies in the United Arab Emirates, to attend the Wharton Global Alumni Forum, and to experience the culture of the UAE. The United Arab Emirates consists of seven independent city-states: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Umm al-Qaiwain, Fujairah, Ajman and Ra’s al-Khaimah.

So I definitely want to start out by thanking Wharton, the companies I met with, the government of the UAE, the Wharton Alumni, and the trip organizers for hosting me and providing such incredible experiences.

I kept a journal for the length of the trip to keep track of my thoughts, experiences, and questions along the way.

I wasn’t really sure how to write a single post re-capping the entire trip and there are so many things I want to talk about.

Wharton arranged some phenomenal meetings with the CEOs and management of 3 large companies in the UAE. This post will highlight the three companies that we had official visits with. I’ll outline some insights/thoughts I had on the country/region/people in a later post.

Quote of the Day: Dubai Edition

I’m going to post a longer Dubai entry soon and figure out a way to easily share all the photos from the trip, but I wanted to post a quote that really stuck with me. I was having a long chat with a CEO at the Wharton Global Alumni Forum about his work in the Middle East and discussing various topics with him on life, business, etc. For some quick background, he is an Arabic born entrepreneur who founded and now runs a multi-billion dollar company in the gulf coast and he’s well in his fifties. We touched on the subject of globalization and language learning:

When I was young like you, in my 20s, I learned English from scratch because my masters in the West spoke it. But, you see, I have new masters in the East and they speak Mandarin. So I will learn Mandarin everyday.

I think this quote really touched me for three reasons. Most obviously because I like language learning. Secondly because it just reinforces the shift in power from the West to the East. But most importantly this quote really struck me as beautiful because of who was saying it and the way in which he said it. It was absolutely humbling to hear such a man use the word “master” (not once, but twice) and equally humbling to know that even at his age and level of wealth he is working so hard to constantly improve.

Off to Dubai

I’m leaving today for Dubai, so if you’re around and want to connect drop me a line. I’ll be at the Wharton Global Alumni Forum on March 11-12. The theme of the Forum is “At the Crossroads for Global Economic Change.” I’ll post more about the trip later, but I’m particularly interested to see the economic difficulties first hand. The Economist had some news about the trouble that Dubai is facing financially. I’m thinking this will finally be my excuse to sign up for Flickr and take lots of photos. Be back soon.

Leverage Does Not Discriminate

Hearing Professor Linneman (considered one of the top experts in the world on Real Estate) give a guest lecture for my Real Estate Finance class was an amazing experience. Professor Linneman derided the massive use of leverage among many real estate developers and pointed out, “ask any Wharton kid how to increase returns and they’ll all tell you the same thing — increase leverage and borrow more!” [loosely quoted]. Beyond being incredibly entertaining and very blunt, Professor Linneman really drove home the problems that you may face when you expose yourself through even conventionally “reasonable” lerverage when facing awful credit conditions.