Today Joel Patterson, the father of a classmate came to school and I heard him talk twice. Once to advise our team on a class project related to entrepreneurship, and once when he addressed an audience of over 100 students. Joel Patterson, as a quick background, is the Chairman of JetBlue, on the board of Bonobos and several other companies, is a Stanford GSB professor in entrepreneurship, founded a growth equity firm, and has 7 kids to boot. Yeah, he's kicking ass
Takeaway from the morning's meeting: we presented to him several business ideas that we're considering for our class, and aside from quickly and kindly showing us all the gaping holes in our ideas, he helped us see a few main messages: 1) we're not focused enough in our target market, 2) we should focus more on strengths we have given our backgrounds, and 3) we need to be more realistic about our time and resource ($$) constraints. While our class gives us a very small budget, and we're forced to be on teams of 6-7 with people from all different business backgrounds (probably one of the worst possible setups, as demonstrated by our noodle-marshmallow towers), these can probably be applied for any startup. The first one I just mentioned in my prev. post
The afternoon's talk was much more high level, more career and life advice than anything else. Key takeaways:
- Need balance in life. This is something I struggle with sometimes, but I think is important. Coming from someone with 7 kids and having the kind of business success that he has, I believe he is able to achieve it
- He said his son wanted to be a CEO so he wouldn't have to report to anybody. He responded that CEOs have to respond to EVERYbody. Employees, customers, vendors, shareholders, etc
Best line of the day: part of his response to a question about the role of board members on a company:
"I made a rule of thumb for myself that I'll only be a director on 6 boards at the same time". SIX boards!
it's all about keep balance :) work, study, relationship, family, friend...
ReplyDeleteI have been watching jeremy lin's games, interesting fact I found out was- there were soooo many times i thought he was about to fall, but he can always find his way to keep the balance of his body, rapidly/magically react - seems like he employ a systems-body balance model, processing all those undominant moments, and never wastes any of his time. he has found the balance :) u will too!