The Other Side of the Table

From the moment I stepped into the real world, I began to develop a profound interest in making, marketing, and selling products. And as I try to decipher a career path in the bombarding cloud of finance, consulting, marketing and general management opportunities presented to MBAs, I realize more and more that products--real, discrete, tangible, usable, products--are what matter most to me.

Yesterday, two of my peers and I headed to the lab of a local start-up to evaluate the company for Big Red Ventures, the Johnson School's student-run venture fund. Meeting with the entrepreneurs and seeing the technology first hand went a long way in demonstrating what the company is all about--something that words and numbers on paper really can't do. One of the most interesting aspects of the experience for me was seeing what it's like to sit on the other side of the table. For once, I was the one evaluating the company from the outside, looking in. The product was not mine to market or to sell, but only to touch and feel (and consider for funding).

I can see why so many people want to be venture capitalists--ostensibly it's a pretty sexy job and there's a great deal of power in it. The venture capitalist is the gatekeeper of new technologies, particularly the capital intensive ones. As a country, we hope our VCs are on the ball, lest another country fund better projects and steal our innovative edge right out from under us.

I think that on the whole people believe that the great products and inventions will somehow find a way to the market, in spite of the system, but that is far too optimistic. Great technologies are born and die all the time because they can't reach their markets--either because the capital isn't in place to get them there, or because the people that created them simply don't have the wherewithal to market them adequately.

In part, I guess that's my entrepreneurial aspiration--to make sure that the products I believe in get a fair shot at the market that would want them and need them, if only it knew of their existence, had easy access to them, and trusted in their longevity.