One Semester Done Already!

I can’t believe how quickly this semester has flown by! As of last Monday I was on holiday, and have actually spent the last week up at Lake Tahoe with about 30 Haasies. We had a huge house just a few minutes from both Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows, the 2 resorts where our season passes worked. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of snow yet, but we had a great time. We generally spent the morning on the slopes, before relaxing at our house around the bonfire or in one of our 2 hot tubs! It was an excellent way to kick start the holidays.

Now everyone is heading off on treks all around the world (South East Asia, Brazil, Columbia … the list goes on), and I’m off to explore California – Christmas in LA with family, followed by surfing in San Diego, and snowboarding at Mammoth for New Year’s. What an amazing place!

Prior to the holidays beginning, it was a busy few weeks for all of us. On top of working hard in our classes and studying for exams, other aspects of campus life did not slow down. Our ‘Golden Egg’ cohort competition came to an end, with my cohort (Go Gold!!) winning the competiti0n thanks to an extremely strong win in No-Shave November and the total number of service hours, and second place in the Walkoff – the final event that involved putting together skits in the theme of Haasily Ever After. Company and club events also continued – in just the final week of class I attended the GigaOm Net:Work Conference in the city as a volunteer (and got to meet all of the speakers from Bay Area tech companies such as Google and Box.net), and went to visit Facebook HQ in Palo Alto.

Semester then wrapped up with a masquerade ball in the city where everyone had an amazing night. It has been a wonderful first semester – I’ve learnt a lot, had heaps of fun and made lots of great friends. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again in January.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Ben

Are You Ready To >play?

Last Saturday was the 7th annual >play Digital Media Conference, a student run conference hosted at Haas that brings together over 500 business professionals, industry leaders and graduate students to discuss the most important trends in digital media and cast predictions for the future.

Let me step back to last Thursday, when >play actually kicked off with an amazing event at the headquarters of Couchsurfing in San Francisco – a great space with couches (obviously), but also swings, and cool murals on the wall. It was a great night with about 150 attendees – a mix of student volunteers, >play vips and friends of Couchsurfing – who all enjoyed the sushi, sake, tea, beer and wine.

Back to the conference on Saturday. I was blown away by how professionally run the conference was. There was definitely no indication that this was a purely student run event. My day began with a breakfast hosted by Groupon which was really informative and interesting given their upcoming IPO. After breakfast it was time for opening remarks from the Dean, Richard Lyons, followed by the morning keynote – Jeff Jordan who is a partner at Andreesen Horowitz, and a real Bay Area identity, sitting on a huge array of Boards, as well as being Chairman of the Board for Open Table.

The keynote took the form of an interview from Kara Swisher, and they both played off each other for a really enjoyable hour, in which they discussed topics from Steve Jobs (Jordan said: “He made science fiction a reality”), to how VCs make investment decisions (Swisher joked:”to me it’s like a bunch of teenage girls chasing Justin Bieber”).

After the keynote there were rocket-pitches from the companies showcasing their products in the expo including Kno, Yelp, Yahoo!, TubeMogul, Rakoko, Pulse, Bre.ad, Sifteo, Wallit, Snapette, OnLive and more. Other companies at >play were Sony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft, Rexly, localmind and many more. Between the rocket pitches and exploring the expo during the day I was fascinated with all of the exciting products and trends … although one of the more fun was playing with the XBox and the Kinect that Microsoft had set up.

Other highlights of the day included talks from Sony Computer Entertainment, and Kno, who are fundamentally shifting the textbook market, to a panel on Search vs. Discovery in which we heard about the need to balance tailored results with the problems of overpersonalization.

The day closed with a final keynote from Geoffrey Moore, a best selling author and chairman emeritus at TCG Advisors, who spoke about Crossing the Chasm vs Spinning Up The Web – the different strategies needed for B2B and B2C success in digital media, which was fascinating to hear.

All in all, it was an excellent day – I had a great time, and also learned a huge amount!

Water Entrepreneurs Workshop Impressions

My classmate and friend, Andrew Collier, recently put together an awesome event on entrepreneurship and sustainability issues in the water sector. He kindly agreed to write a few words as a guest blogger:

On Wednesday, September 21st, roughly 60 students gathered together for a Water Entrepreneurs Workshop to explore and discuss business challenges and opportunities in the wastewater sector.  The event was co-hosted by the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) and Imagine H2O, and drew on the insights of six terrific panelists including Shilen Patel (Veolia, North America), Chris Morrison (Nalco), Bradley Mart (Fogbusters), Rachel Saperstein (Hydrovolts), Paul Straub (Claremont Creek Ventures), and Rachel Sheinbein (CMEA Capital).

As a first-year Haas student, I was excited to help plan this workshop.  I have an academic background in earth and atmospheric sciences and have been working in sustainability consulting for the past 3.5 years.  I was drawn to Haas because of its strong focus on social and environmental impact (BERC, Net Impact, Center for Responsible Business, Global Social Venture Competition, etc.).

One goal that I have for my time at Haas is to emphasize the importance of water issues within the BERC community by building bridges to outside organizations like Imagine H2O.  Since BERC has a far-reaching network that includes students, alumni, faculty, and industry professionals, it provides a terrific platform to enable this sort of cross-collaboration.  The workshop served as one tool to facilitate knowledge sharing and problem solving amongst students, corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors.

Andrew, this was a great workshop and I learned a lot. Thank you!

2 Weeks Of Classes

Fall A classes finally started last week. The actual classroom experience doesn’t take up too much time in the MBA life, but there’s a lot of preparation involved; readings, cases…A very pleasant surprise came in the form of a subject called “Leadership Communication” in which we will be training our soft skills in general, and communication skills in particular, through speeches and improvisation exercises. The first class was a blast.

Club fair was also held this week, over the course of 2 lunchtimes.  It was an opportunity to talk to representatives from all the clubs present at Haas, and to better decide which ones to sign up for. Which, in my case, turned out to be a lot…

The one area I’m mostly focused on is Cleantech, and the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC, http://berc.berkeley.edu/) is a very active club and spans across many other schools and institutions in campus. They held their Annual Lecture this week, which gave us the opportunity to listen to Samir Kaul (Founding General Partner at Khosla Ventures) and Chris Somerville (UC Berkeley – EBI Director) in conversation about the current clean energy and technology landscape. According to them, Cleantech is one of the best fields in which to invest given its potential, its market size and demand and and the rising issue of energy dependability. Small companies, like the ones Khosla Ventures and many other firms manage and invest on, can also easily have more than one successful technology or idea within a brief period of time, unlike other sectors like Healthcare or IT. Even though infrastructure (scale) and consumer behaviour remain the main hurdles in Cleantech, and will continue to be so for years to come, small companies can innovate, and are innovating , at a very fast pace and will be able to provide the technology to bigger companies which have already got the scale, supply chain…in place. Or as I like to summarize it: Cleantech – it’s bound to happen.

Another culinary note to end this post: some of my recent out-of-class activities have included another great San Francisco’s Mission taco and pub crawl, brunch excursion to Sausalito, soaking in the sun at Russian River and hiking at Briones Reservoir. After the hike, we grabbed a fried chicken sandwich from famous Oakland spot Bakesale Betty’s- delicious!

Haasies Head to Ross for the Net Impact 2010 Conference

The following post is authored by Patrick Schneider (FTMBA 2012), the incoming co-president of Net Impact.

Last weekend was a great one for the Haas Net Impact Chapter, as we all bundled up for the annual Net Impact Conference at the Ross School of Business in Michigan (it’s colder there!) We had a contingent of about 25 students, which I was really impressed with, considering the distance that we had to travel and our small class size of 240 per class! Everyone flew out at different times, and I think my group had one of the toughest itineraries. Our flight left at 5:30 . . . . am! Which meant that we woke up (if we went to sleep at all!) around 2:30am in order to make it to the airport on time. Of course, the flight went quickly because we were all asleep. This got us into Ann Arbor in time for the kick-off, which was great, and then we spent a relaxing evening hanging out with each other, meeting some alums who had come to the conference as members of professional chapters, and then getting some rest for the days ahead!

The next couple of days were a blur of enlightening sessions, networking with students from other schools and professionals, and some social time with all of these people who had come from around the world to celebrate the fact that never before has the gap between doing good and doing well been so small (thank you for that gem, Dean Lyons!) Several sessions really had an impact, but my favorite was a panel with the Executive Directors of First Book and KaBOOM! on how to scale nonprofits to maximize social good. Really had some insightful things to say, and got me interested in their organizations!

We had drinks Friday evening with the Net Impact chapter from MIT, and it was great to get to know these individuals from across the country! Obviously the social impact sector (in light of the larger business world) is a bit smaller, so I think it’s really important for everyone in this field to pull together, share ideas, and work with each other to maximize the impact we’re having in the world. I’m excited about continuing these connections beyond the conference! Also at this event, Patrick Schneider (that’s me!) and Dana Ledyard were announced as the Net Impact Co-Presidents for next year, and we’re so excited about continuing the great work that’s been done with Net Impact at Haas.

Unfortunately, it was time to return on Sunday, and we were all sad to leave, partly because of the great connections we’d made, but also because of the piles of Finance and Accounting homework waiting for us at home (and on the plane!) But it was a great experience, and we can’t wait to renew those ties at the 2011 Net Impact conference in Portland, OR!

—Eve A.

SF Music Tech: The Bits in the Beats

The San Francisco Bay Area is fast becoming the hot-bed of music and technology. Both Pandora and Mog are in Berkeley’s backyard (Oakland and Berkeley, respectively).  The MBA experience at Haas is more than just the curriculum and the community in Haas, but being an MBA provides tons of opportunities to network and make new connections. Brian Zisk, who was a former panelist for the >play conference, organizes a semi-annual conference.

Having attended the SF Music Tech Summit in December, I was thoroughly surprised that a mere six months later, 700+ people would be filling the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown for another pow-wow.

The underlying theme was to recognize the power of proper data analytics and management to empower the music ecosystem.

As the music industry adapts to the digital age, the attendees were stress that there will always be music.  As the industry seeks new business models, it was made clear that many of the companies aren’t re-inventing the way people interact with content and music, but looking towards data analytics as a guiding light to new monetization models.

From Cisco’s Eos’ technology enabling both front-end and more importantly, back-end management Saas solution for enterprises to Pandora conscientiously tracking its users to pair growth with capital investments the tone to both artists and businesses was that in order to succeed, one needs to see the numbers in music.

Know who your audience is and where there are
There is no silver bullet. Gone are the days where listeners flock to the artist. Gone are the days of mono-channel distribution.  While artists and their promoters are in search for a general recommendation, figure out where your listeners are and go to them.

Case in Point: Susan Boyle’s CD Sales

Case in Point: Susan Boyle
Simon Cowell saw $$ when she got up on that stage and cleared her windpipes.  The label was clearly shocked when her CD went on sale—91% of recorded sales were from physical DVDs.  Thinking that digital sales were not being accounted for, the label soon learned that Boyle’s audience watched on YouTube, but still purchased plastic CDs.

There were also some great quotes:

• Monetization through Hypersyndication: Get your data out there, actively send out your info. It’s about distribution, give them the data so that it’s clean, so it doesn’t rely on user submissions. Hypersyndication will enable artists to find new ways to get paid.” Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind
• Understanding Your Point on a Growth Curve: ”We’ve always been vigorous with our analytics. However, it can be surprising. For the first couple of years, our growth over time was surprisingly linear. When you’re in the early part of the exponential growth curve, it looks very linear.” Tom Conrad, Pandora
• Comparing Android v. iPhone OS: ”You can push faster and iterate to learn with Android. Android is good for acquisition.  For the iPhone, its the opposite. We’ve received pushback from user registration, often a week to two weeks.  But with the iPhone, we get more paid conversions.” Warren Wan, Dada Entertainment
• On Multitasking Functionality for the Phone: ” When you can run things in the background, companies will be able to use background information to trigger events or discovery.” Reno Marioni, Nokia

It was great to dive into the conference. The greatest value from attending the conference isn’t just the download from the panels, but from the conversations in between the panel.  I was able to meet some amazing minds! From learning about JamLegends, meeting A&R managers, and networking with entrepreneurs to exploring a partnership with the SF Chapter of the Grammy’s I was grateful that the conference was in Japantown—I walked down the block to carbo load at my favorite ramen shop.

Pictures from Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?group_id=&user_id=&set_id=&tags=sfmusictech

A variation of the post was taken from the DMEC blog.

—Vince