TEACHING
Feature: Between the Idea and Reality

OUTREACH
Feature: Seeking Greatness

Fourteen Students, Dozens of Questions, One Entrepreneur

Ask the Wharton Experts

Faces of Wharton Entrepreneurship

RESEARCH
Learning from China's Emerging Growth Companies by Teaching Them

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Keynote Speaker to Venture Fair Audience: $20.00 and "Guts" Can Lead to Thriving Business

Phil Friedman arrived in New York from the Soviet Union in 1976 with $500 in his pocket and no English. He needed $240 for his first month’s rent and $240 for a security deposit. He took a crash course in computer programming at NYU and in 1984 founded Computer Generated Solutions, which now has 1,600 employees in 17 countries.

"The truth of the matter is you have to have guts," said Friedman, the keynote speaker at the Wharton Business Plan Competition Venture Fair. "You have to have something inside you that you probably can’t learn in business school. It is being not afraid of failure. It is the fact that you like what you do. You also need to have knowledge. You have to be able to read a balance sheet, understand basic law, market conditions and how sales are done. You have to be able to lead and motivate. Some things you can learn in school but certain things you have to have within you."

After his remarks, a student asked whether the current economic environment is a good one in which to launch a new business. "The right time is the time you decide," Friedman said. "When you feel the fire in your belly, it is the right time for you. Funding is available but you have to work harder for it today. I would do it when I feel it is the right time for me to do it and when I feel I have a good idea."

  


Entrepreneur in Residence Program
Fourteen Students, Dozens of Questions, One Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur in Residence, Farid Naib, demystifies entrepreneurship for campus entrepreneurs.

When Farid Naib looked across the conference room table at the University of Pennsylvania students who met with him as part of the Wharton Entrepreneur in Residence program, he might have been looking into his own eyes 18 years earlier.

In 1984, Naib had just earned his MBA from Wharton. He spent eleven months in consulting before he came to the realization that he wanted to start a business. That notion evolved into software company, FX Systems, which provides pricing systems to options traders.

Today, Naib is Chairman and CEO of his second business, FNX Limited, which he founded in 1992 to provide trading and risk management software to the world’s largest financial institutions. He has been recognized as Delaware Valley Entrepreneur of the Year with FNX ranked among the Inc. 500 and named Growth Company of the Year in the 1998 Enterprise Awards program sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP and the Eastern Technology Council.

But on April 9, Naib visited his alma mater as a Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs Entrepreneur in Residence and stepped back in time as he held one-on-one meetings with fourteen students. Receiving a Special Appointment letter from the dean of the Wharton School was an added bonus for Naib.

What He Wished He Had Been Told

"It was interesting to see myself back in that time where you are just starting out and there are no obstacles to anything you want to do," said Naib, after participating in the program. The Entrepreneur in Residence program brings experienced business founders such as Naib to campus to meet with entrepreneurial minded Wharton and other Penn students who apply on a first come-first serve basis. The program has been so successful that, with the fall, 2002 semester, it will grow from twice monthly to weekly visits by entrepreneurs. "Almost everyone reminded me of myself. It was fun to be there, and fun to tell them things I wish I had been told." he added.

What did he wish he had been told? In addition to concrete questions about financing and business plans, the students were interested in more personal challenges of the entrepreneurial lifestyle. "When you are first starting a company, even though everything is happening quickly, you are not advancing as quickly as your classmates," Naib said. "Some guy is posted to London and staying in five-star hotels and you are sleeping in youth hostels and taking the cheapest flights."

It was in the aisles of Kmart that Naib realized an entrepreneur’s life is often far from glamorous. "When we started the company, one of the things I did in the first 48 hours was to go to Kmart and buy trash cans for each of our employees," he said. "No one stops to think about these things when they are starting up a business."

A Defining Moment

Kelvin Zhang — a Chinese native who started a business in Shanghai before coming to the Wharton MBA program last year and is now working on plans for a new venture — discussed specific issues with Naib such as working with a board of directors and developing his new business plan. "In our business, we learned our lesson the tough way because we didn’t know how to talk to the board. I wish I had talked with Farid earlier," Zhang said.

But for Zhang, the most valuable part of the discussions with Naib and an earlier session with Entrepreneur in Residence Ed Moldt, was in meeting people who had been through the trials and failures on the road to success. "It helps overcome the psychological barriers of starting a company," Zhang said. "It was a defining moment for me. It was one of the most valuable moments of my experience at Wharton."

Jason Breeman and Raj Venkataraman, both second-year Wharton MBA students, met with Naib for specific feedback on the XPO project, a business they are helping to build around a patented time-stripped option. "The Entrepreneur in Residence Program is truly a phenomenal program," Breeman said. "It allows students to interact with high-level executives who might otherwise be difficult to reach. It's a low pressure environment, and the encouragement that comes from these meetings is a great boost in getting a business effort up and off the ground."

The brief meetings with students were only the beginning. Since his visit, Naib stayed in communication by e-mail with some of the young entrepreneurs he met, including Zhang and Breeman. In fact, some have even traveled to his offices outside of Philadelphia to observe their mentor in action.

"It is a great program to demystify the whole thing," Naib said. "When you are starting out, it seems like a stretch to go from starting out to being successful. It really isn’t all that much of a stretch. Of course, that’s easy to say after 20 years."

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