Entrepreneurship Club!

The enthusiasm of our class is unmatched! Just within the first term, we have already established: eclub (entrepreneurship club), finclub (finance club), En-a-CT (Energy and CleanTech club), real estate club, golf club, expert club... . Classmates joked that we need a "recap" club to summarize all the great activities organized by these clubs.

As an organizer of the eclub, I am going to write about eclub (of course!) But first of all, let me mention several differences between our clubs and the full time MBA clubs. First of all, our clubs are not across classes since class 35 and class 36 have different schedules: we show up in San Francisco during alternate weekends. Nevertheless, we are trying to find opportunities to learn from and collaborate with the class 35 eclub. The advantage is: we have a chance to define our club mission and strategy and deliver it for our class! Second, since we are not on campus 24x7, we need to be very selective in what we organize. There is very limited free time during class weekends and all the clubs want to schedule some activities. We learn to collaborate and deliver high quality activities (value, value, value!). Third, since we are all working in different companies/industries, we can tap into our existing networks very easily. Within a short time, we already have a pipeline of speakers filled up!

So far, eclub has organized two activities: a) club member meeting to establish club mission; b) entrepreneur panel with our classmates. Over half of our class is interested in setting up their own companies - the unique value Wharton EMBA West advertises to applicants is true! We focused our club mission to enable our classmates to run their startups. The first panel with entreprenuers was very successful: entreprenuers from our class discussed challenges they faced openly with us and answered all sorts of questions from us. One classmate commented "I started to know what I do not know."

Our upcoming events include: Panel with VCs (from our class and outside of our class), Busienss Plan Competition Prep, and Treks... I really feel that I am on track to accomplish the entreprenuership mission I wrote in my application essay!