BrownHEN / BrownHEN.org

Interview with Chad Billmyer, Director, Nelnet, Inc.

BrownHEN interviewed Chad Billmyer, Brown '01, Director of Peterson’s High School Solutions, Nelnet, Inc., Lincoln, NE

1. Chad, your startup Foresite Solutions has merged with a much larger organization, Nelnet. Do you feel you can still be entrepreneurial in the context of a larger organization, and if so, how?

Absolutely. Part of the attraction to Nelnet—the company that acquired our startup—was their entrepreneurial culture. In fact, we were merged into a division that has a charge to develop new products and businesses. Not all companies embrace entrepreneurial spirit or have the risk tolerance to innovate from within as Nelnet does. For every business opportunity, we analyze whether to build, buy, or align. I have had ample opportunities to pitch new business from within the walls of our new parent company.

2. What advice would you like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?

You will need partners to support you. Daily obligations and needs grow quickly. A good set of partners can balance the enviable tensions that exist in every decision that the start-up will need to make. For some decisions, emotional influences may lead to a non-optimal decision. A good partner can offer objective decision-making when one partner gets too emotionally invested in a particular decision.

You should also sign a founders’ agreement early. From the first date of inception, each day that passes the company will inevitably get more and more successful and more dollars will be involved. With each day that passes, it will become harder and harder to agree to and sign a founders’ agreement. A simple founders’ agreement can cover basics such as whether inventions belong to the company and when and how a founder may exit the company. The agreement can always be amended, but far too often, the absence of an agreement does more harm than good.

3. When you were at Brown you were a leader in campus activities. How did that experience relate to your entrepreneurial success? Do you recommend people wishing to be entrepreneurs be active on campus?

I highly recommend active campus activity involvement for prospective entrepreneurs. I would argue that there isn’t a class at Brown that can teach you how to get the people around you to perform at their highest potential. In many ways, this is what leadership is about: setting up your peers for success. Leadership skills grow from experience, and a campus activity—the Brown Daily Herald in my case—is a great laboratory to develop leadership skills that will be critical for the business to succeed.

4. What areas of software look promising for entrepreneurial ventures now?

I like to read the blog techcrunch.com on a daily basis to track some of the newest and most innovative Web-based software ventures. I am often inspired by start-ups I read about and try to find ways to apply bits and pieces of their business models to a business issue I might be working on. I also get a daily Venturewire.com e-mail each morning to track what is getting funded.

5. What are the top five qualities you would ascribe to an entrepreneur?

I can’t help but reference a few of the qualities found in a great document on this topic authored by Fred Beste at Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds. The document is titled, “The Twelve (Almost) Sure-Fire Secrets to Entrepreneurial Success.” Fred includes qualities like: “they have a sound knowledge of their marketplace, they’ve got fire in their bellies, they hire smart, and they have a sound knowledge of the financial dynamic of their companies.” I’ll add one of my own: they know when not to reinvent the wheel. 

6. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

In general I see fear as more of a hindrance than a motivator with one exception. I sometimes find that I am motivated by the fear of failure. I am not coming up with an example of how fear has played a factor in my path. I presume that means that fear doesn’t play a major motivating or hindering role for me.

7. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN?

A recent boss would often say, “I see it as my role to set you up for success.” To date I have led a few teams of a decent size. I find this motto to be a wonderfully concise way to describe how to make choices as a people leader. 

8. What are the biggest differences between life on the East Coast and the West coast?

I grew up and obviously went to Brown on the east coast. I moved to the west coast three years ago. In a business sense, it feels like the west coast business day is shifted forward. It starts later and ends later. This doesn’t apply to me since I work with many people on the east coast and often join calls at 6 or 7 AM. Life runs a few beats more slowly on the west coast than the east coast. People walk a few beats more slowly and have a slightly less urgent sense about life.    

9. Do you still drive a Hybrid?  Is it the same one?

Yes, I still drive a hybrid car. Back in 2001, I was the first person I knew with a hybrid. It was a two-seater Honda Insight. I now drive a Honda Civic Hybrid. I found I needed a back seat on occasion. I bought the hybrid more for the engineering than for the environment, not that there’s anything wrong with lower CO2 emissions.

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© BrownHEN.org – 2007

Interview with Danny Warshay, Managing Director at Dew Ventures, LLC

BrownHEN interviewed Danny Warshay, Brown '87, Managing Director at Dew Ventures, LLC, Providence, RI.

1. Danny, when you were an undergraduate, you co-founded a software company that became part of Apple. Looking back on that experience, what do you believe undergraduate entrepreneurs need to know most?

I’m often asked about that experience and about whether it makes sense to start something as an undergrad or soon after or get some “experience” first. My answer is that it depends mostly on whether you have an idea that is a legitimate opportunity. If you do or think you do, in many ways, there’s no better time to pursue it than when you are young–free from other responsibilities like a family, a mortgage or something else that make you much more conservative later in life.

When we started Clearview, I had nothing to lose, and could afford to live on no salary and eat a lot of macaroni and cheese. My wife and kids these days would get sick of macaroni real fast. The other benefit to pursuing something early is that in some ways, knowing too much can be a hindrance.

When I was graduating from Harvard Business School, I began to realize that I had learned a ton of ways to find fault with businesses and ideas, and had been trained over those prior two years to be critical of the thousands of cases we had studied. One of the voices that I paid the most attention to at that time was that of my entrepreneurship professor, Jeff Timmons, who reminded us to ask, “What can go right.”

When we were starting Clearview, I had virtually no business experience and could barely turn on a Macintosh. A couple years later, I think partly because of our naiveté, we had developed a successful Macintosh applications business whose acquisition by Apple I was helping to negotiate. I hesitate to say this too strongly, especially because I am teaching entrepreneurship at Brown these days, but I sometimes do wonder whether knowing or at least thinking too much can cloud your judgment.

The bottom line about whether to start something when you’re young, though, is that the decision is not like a typical career decision and question, "Should I take a job at McKinsey or start a software company?" The alternatives, a normal job or doing a startup, are much different. If you have a passion for creating a business and a compelling idea for a product, go for it. If you don’t have both the passion and the idea, then the decision is made for you until you do.

2. Please tell us more about your website RoundOne.com and what it intends to accomplish. Will it meet some of the needs you described in Question 1?

RoundOne is a platform that empowers aspiring entrepreneurs to take a few key first steps. Its content (now well over 3000 blog articles by entrepreneurial experts and supportive RoundOne community members) covers a wide range of critical topics, in easy-to-read, practical bite-sized pieces. To avoid the information overload and analysis paralysis I referred to in the previous question, the pieces are not a dissertation on the subtle distinctions between an LLC and an S-Corp, but the practical “dummies” version.

The networking platform enables you to meet fellow aspiring entrepreneurs from all over the world. We have members from dozens of countries–even places I had never heard of—and I cannot imagine how they would have connected with each other without an online platform like this. Finally, we have a suite of collaborative project management tools that enable a newly formed team to take a few substantive steps together (e.g., develop a business plan, upload and store documents, schedule team meetings and even conduct them online). We conceived all of this functionality with a focus on aspiring entrepreneurs, people who for the first time are looking to start a business but have never done so before. According to Capital One and Consumer Action, over 54% of Americans are interested in starting their own business but “don't know where to begin.” Our mission is to help them do so.

3. Most of your professional life you have been associated, successfully, with startups. However, you did spend a few years at Procter and Gamble. Were they valuable years for your present career? Do you recommend aspiring entrepreneurs work at a large company for a time?

I learned a lot in a short time at P&G. As my wife, Deb, smartly reminds me from time to time, the most important thing I learned was that a place like P&G is not for me. And that is a valuable life lesson—to figure out what is for you by experiencing what is not. Even beyond that, I learned a lot about how to build and run consumer businesses on very large scales, and about how to sweat the details. In subtle ways, I find those lessons expressing themselves in my entrepreneurial work more often than I might have expected. So for me, P&G was valuable, and while I would not want to prescribe any one type of experience for everyone, I do think that in general, especially if you go into the experience being clear about what you want out of it, that employment at a big company can teach you a lot.

4. You were a leader in creating the magnificent new Hillel Center at Brown. What are your aspirations for that building?

That it inspires the next generations of Jewish community leaders.

5. You have taught entrepreneurship in Israel. How did the students there differ from Brown students?

In ways that surprised me. Since they were Executive MBA students, I expected them to catch on to the HBS case method quickly, and to my surprise that approach threw many of them at first. I am still not exactly sure why, but I think one reason is cultural. At the risk of generalizing too much, my Israeli students tended to be very professionally focused and tended to think black and white. Many of them initially wanted to dispense with the ambiguous process of a case discussion and cut to the chase. “Just tell us the answers” was literally what many of them said to me in the first couple of classes. I resisted and by the end of even the condensed course, most had caught on and appreciated the “no right answer” approach.

That experience made me even prouder of my Brown students who tend generally to catch on to the case approach quite well. I think one significant reason is that Brown students are used to dealing with ambiguity in a liberal arts environment. I also saw some of what I discussed in question one above (thinking about what could go wrong) although in some ways the Israelis were able to apply their years of professional experience to the cases. For many, that experience inhibited their creativity, while the inexperience of my Brown students sometimes enables them to think more freely.

6. You are well known for the effort you put into teaching at Brown. What makes teaching rewarding for you?

First of all, I owe all of this experience to Barrett who knew me better than I knew myself, and detected a latent passion for teaching. Simply put, I love everything about it. I love motivating and inspiring my students to work their tails off and grapple with challenging problems. I love using the Socratic method, which feels a little like tight rope walking without a net. Although I have a general sense for the issues I want to cover, I never know exactly how the discussion is going to flow, what issues students are going to find worthy of interest.

In their course evaluations, some of my students have referred to me more as a coach than a professor and I can see that. I work hard on their behalf to make sure their experience in the classroom is worthy of Brown, and I advocate for them far beyond the classroom (e.g., finding them internships while they are still students, finding them jobs when they graduate, helping them with startup ideas, writing them recommendations). My core, advanced COE course, “The Entrepreneurial Process: Innovation in Practice,” is demanding, rigorous, and challenging. And those students see how much effort I put into it on their behalf and they respond accordingly. By the end of the semester, we have been through a lot together, and we all feel a sense of accomplishment. Finally, I am sure I learn from the students as much as they learn from me. It’s an honor to be able to teach them.

7. What are the top five qualities you would ascribe to an entrepreneur?

Mostly I think of qualities relating to execution more than breakthrough thinking:
• Ability to prioritize
• Ability to get things done
• Persistence: not accepting setbacks or failures, and
• The classic quality from Howard Stevenson who is an entrepreneurship guru at Harvard Business School: ability to pursue an opportunity without regard to the resources one currently controls.

8. As you know, the entrepreneur’s path is filled with trials and errors, and also failures. What’s a valuable insight for entrepreneurs to keep in mind when they’re experiencing setbacks?

I guess I’ve adopted more of a Zen-like approach to success and failure, as I have gotten older. Sometimes, what at the time I thought was a supreme success later paled compared to other more important things and even seemed like a detriment. And in contrast, what at one time seemed like a horrible failure later seemed like nothing or even a valuable experience. Perhaps it’s all the yoga I’ve been doing, but I try to have a more balanced opinion of what may seem like success or failure.

9. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN? If not, do you have a motto that you would like to share with BrownHEN?

I think we can all learn a lot from Curly, Jack Palance’s character in City Slickers. He says that the most important thing in life is for each of us to find our "one thing"—our passion. For some that’s their family, for some that’s intellectual achievement, and for some that’s about inventing new things. I guess like Curly, what I’ve found over the course of my career is that everything else falls much more easily into place once I have figured it out and can focus on that “one thing.”

10. How did the name "Danny" come to be?

Short for Daniel.  I’m definitely not a Daniel or a Dan – just Danny.

Note: Danny is currently in Cairo, teaching a condensed version of his Brown entrepreneurship course to a group of Egyptian executives, heads of NGOs and entrepreneurs.

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© BrownHEN.org – 2008

 

Interview with Katherine Cohen, CEO & Founder of IvyWise and ApplyWise

BrownHen interviewed Katherine Cohen, ‘Brown ‘89 – CEO & Founder of IvyWise and ApplyWise, New York, NY.

1. Katherine, how did you get into writing books? Was that part of your plan from the beginning?

No, it was not. I entered the profession of college admissions and I wanted to organize my thoughts for myself and high school students. So I created a manual, which ended up as my first book, The Truth About Getting In.

2. Did you have to raise funds to start IvyWise? If so, please describe your strategy?

No, I started out in my apartment, with $5K saved. My business had the barebone basics. I am still the sole owner of IvyWise. In late 2007, Liz Hamburg (Brown ’86) and I launched a sister company, ApplyWise.com, an online college counseling and management tool, which is affordable and accessible to more families globally. We did bring outside investors into ApplyWise

3. What percentage of your time can you now spend advising individual high school students?  Would you like to spend more?

In the last year and a half, due to family priorities, I have only spent half of my time on advising individuals. I have hired other counselors to work with the growing market of students coming to IvyWise and have been spending more of my time with the launch of ApplyWise.

4. Please compare working with high school juniors and seniors to working with college sophomores.  How do you adjust your advising strategies?

When I was working with college sophomores at Yale, I was counseling students on course selection, personal and academic problems, and wrote recommendations for students seeking summer employment or social service experiences. 

IvyWise now works with students of all ages and stages.  However our core business is counseling high school students and students as young as eighth graders for the college admissions process. We help them make an impact in their classrooms, campus and community.  We help them focus on the soft factors: we help them develop mature responses to setbacks, work better with their teachers, and find joy in what they are learning in school.  If students are making the most of their high school experience, this makes them become better college applicants. We help them tap into their potential and empower them with skills to contribute to their school / community.

5. You have contributed strongly to the Entrepreneurship Program at Brown. What do you think can be done further to support Brown undergraduate entrepreneurs?

Brown EP is doing a great job; it is nice to see its growth. The Board members are exploring more ways to get involved and to get more mentorship.

6. What is your vision of the future of IvyWise? How can it be structured to reflect your ideals as it grows?

Our mission focuses on empowering students to achieve their academic and personal goals; we are adhering to this everyday.

We envision growing it slowly and steadily to maintain quality control. We do not want to dilute our services. I have hired and trained only a handful of new counselors, all who have great experience in admissions. Our approach reflects my vision, which is that while each student works one on one with an individual counselor (and each counselor is limited to 20 students); behind the scenes IvyWise counselors work together collaboratively as a team.  This way, each student gets the entire team’s expertise and feedback and several sets of eyes on each essay and application. We interact like a real admissions committee, which sets us apart from most independent counseling services.  I am very excited about the growth opportunities for ApplyWise, which can reach a broader group of families around the world.

7. What are the top qualities you would ascribe to an entrepreneur?

• Know what you know and what you don’t know.
• Do not do it all; delegate.
• Be a great leader.
• Be a great listener.
• Recognize that you are not always right; listen to clients/customers and colleagues.
• Be flexible; business changes and grows according to customer needs.
• Be a multi-tasker who can wear different hats.

8. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

Fear is a underlining motivator: not being successful, not making enough money, not leaving a legacy behind. Fear may play a part in many of the things that I do, but it is certainly not the driving factor.

I also don’t think fear is necessarily all bad, but I try not to let fear overcome me. If there is one bad article written about my company, if I lost a big sale, it’s time for me to step back and look at the big picture, regroup, and find the best path forward.

10. What is the latest insight / book(s) (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN?

I believe you need to have passion for what you are doing; you must absolutely LOVE what you do everyday. I am lucky because I love my work.  I had a baby about a year ago and it has been a challenge finding the balance between work and family.  It is easy for entrepreneurs to be workaholics. Work should not be about money because in one hundred years, no one is going to know about your business or care how much you had made; this gives me perspective. I have been practicing yoga since high school; it is a constant in my life and it teaches me to focus on the present. I make time for myself, and time for reflection (in fact, that is where my greatest business ideas come from!), which is crucial to my wellbeing and growth.

11. Who are the top three individuals / sources that have influenced your development?

One is my uncle, a corporate lawyer and my life mentor. He helped me set up my business, go through work-related trials and tribulations, taught me the art of negotiation and has helped me see many business situations from different perspectives. 

Second is my husband, who is my best friend and perfect mate. He is very grounded; he is a calming force who thinks before he acts. He helps me in my relationship with work, reminds me what is important in life, and brings me a lot of joy.

Third is my daughter, who teaches me that I can’t control things all the time.  She showed me the infinite capacity for love.  Now a new motivation for my work is to provide her with a good life.

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© BrownHEN.org – 2008

 

Interview with Craig Kallman, Chairman & CEO of Atlantic Records

 

BrownHEN interviewed Craig Kallman, Brown '87, Chairman & CEO, Atlantic Records, New York, NY.

1. Craig, how does the CEO of Atlantic Records spend his working hours? What do you see as your major professional priority?

I wake up at 6:00 AM and start with international calls to my affiliates and general music industry, primarily in the UK. Then I spend my day in the office listening to music of my artists or for my artists, and submissions from my staff and managers, producers, songwriters etc. I am in meetings though out the week on operational issues for Atlantic. Every night I attend  a music dinner of some kind; then I am off to the studio and to live shows. I am generally home by midnight. 

2. You were at WBRU, then at the independent Big Beat, and now managing the top-selling record label in the US. During which part of your career did you have the most fun? Are you still having a lot of fun?

I feel like the luckiest person alive. I had a blast in high school deejaying all the big clubs in NYC while at Trinity. At Brown, I opened nightclubs, ran Funk Night, worked for CBS Records, programmed shows for WBRU, threw big campus parties, and made mini movies to promote them. In addition, I went to class and managed to do all my homework. I was having the time of my life on College Hill. I spent the next four years starting up and running my own independent label and got a crash course on learning the record business. Since then, I have had the time of my life working my way up the ladder at Atlantic Records, my favorite label since childhood. I have been there 18 years. It has all been a blast.



3. A question many have asked for a long time: how, when you were a student, did you get James Brown to come to Brown?

I networked for all of the celebrities I had booked for the Mike’s Party videos. I used every connection I had, and often just cold called and begged. Begging works sometimes.



4. A more important question: how do you gain and retain the trust of artists?

Honesty, consistency, transparency, and vulnerability.



5. A question that must get asked many times: how do you see the future of the music business in terms of how people will get their music—CDs, iTunes, mobile phones, and so forth? Do you see entrepreneurial opportunities?

I think there is always going to be a mixed menu as different people have different habits. Digital files, all access models, CDs, and vinyl. There are always entrepreneurial opportunities as technology continues to evolve.



6. Many Brown people have played important roles in the music industry, for example, Manny Gerard—one of the founders of Warner Communication; the late Steve Massarsky—represented Cyndi Lauber, The Allman Brothers, and others; and Amie Street—a new model for supporting artists. What aspect of the Brown experience do you suggest a person aspiring to be in the industry embrace? Why so many Brown people?

Brown always has attracted a creative body of students. The WBRU radio station, the Brown Daily Herald, and the concert agency are great places to start. Plus, add any local experience you can obtain in Providence.



7. You are famous for your collection of almost 300,00 LPs. Do you have time to listen to them?

It is definitely hard since I have so much music of my Atlantic Roster to get through and then the entire outside world of recommended submissions of new acts so it is always a tough decision on the weekends. I so like discovering new talent and there is always so much amazing embryonic new talent out there that needs to be heard; I always am a sucker for the newest exciting artist. But I do love to fit in some personal listening whenever I can. There is just too much great music to always get through.



8. What did you study at Brown and how has your Brown experience served you since?

English and economics. I wanted to communicate well and also to acquire some basic knowledge of business. I felt that with this background and a little worldly knowledge, I could sit with anyone and have an interesting conversation. Most important, the key factor that enabled me to get the most out of my Brown education was the ability and opportunity to fit the entrepreneurial component into my four years on College Hill.

9. Would you speak about fear as a motivation or hindrance toward accomplishment? How has that played a factor in your path, if any?

Never have known fear interestingly enough. I think blind ambition for something I knew and loved from the earliest age gave me the confidence to always keep charging ahead. I knew I had found my calling in music so nothing was going to stand in the way.



10. Do you have a mentor who has helped you in your career path/personal development?

Lyor Cohen, Ahmet Ertegun, Julie Greenwald, and Doug Morris, all have played a significant role in helping shape me along the way.



11. Who are some individuals who have influenced you?

The list above and Irving Azoff, Chris Blackwell, Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Clive Davis.



12. What is the latest insight (about life, work, play) that you picked up and would like to share with BrownHEN?

Find what you most love to do and pursue that with all you got. You will never feel like you have worked a day in your life.


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BrownHEN postscript - If you would like to read more about Craig, we've come across a two-part interview by Michael Laskow of bmusic.com.au. Enjoy!

http://www.bmusic.com.au/links/industry/archives/ararchiv/kallman_partone.htm

http://www.bmusic.com.au/links/industry/archives/ararchiv/kallman_parttwo.htm

 


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© BrownHEN.org – 2009