How an Evening and Weekend MBA Student Moved from Idea to Acquisition–in Eleven Short Months

Amit Paka is not a man who wastes time. Three semesters into the Evening & Weekend MBA Program, he realized he wanted to be an entrepreneur. And in 11 short months, he hatched an idea, relocated, launched a venture—and sold it to eBay.

When Paka, MBA 12, began his MBA studies, he was a senior program and product manager with Microsoft, working in online advertising with Bing. “I entered the Haas program to broaden my perspective and explore all opportunities that were out there,” he says of an open-minded approach. The Seattle-to-Berkeley commute for Saturday classes was challenging, he acknowledged, but worth it.

Courses and seminars taken during Fall semester of his second year, such as Entrepreneurship and Competitive Strategy, became the game changer for Paka, introducing him to new ideas, frameworks, and people. “Becoming part of an entrepreneurial universe leaves an impression on you,” he says.

Launching a Mobile Conversation Platform

The impression made on Paka led him to take even more entrepreneurship classes, network extensively, at least once a week whether in Seattle or San Francisco, and to come up with an idea and a game plan. By the end of his second year in the Berkeley MBA Program he left Microsoft and relocated to the Bay Area, ready to commit to Flockish, his idea for a mobile conversation platform. “Flockish combines the status feed concept of Facebook with the location awareness of Foursquare to create conversation among people gathered in the same locations, such as a concert or a sporting event,” says Paka.

“I felt this was the right space, a big enough market and that I had the expertise to execute on it,” says Paka. eBay apparently agreed: Their event ticket site, StubHub, purchased Flockish and snapped up Paka to head their mobile apps division. In his new role, Paka was able to scale StubHub’s mobile apps, releasing a new iPad app that Apple featured on the App store.

Paka says one of the most important things he learned at Haas is to Question the Status Quo and to ask questions of other people. “If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to go talk to customers, you have to go talk to your investors,” he says. “You can’t just have an idea and hope that it will somehow become a successful product.”

A Full Entrepreneurial Education

Just how you approach those investors and customers matters too. Paka took Confidence Without Attitude, another of the Haas School’s four Defining Principles, to heart in presenting himself and Flockish to the entrepreneurial community. “When VCs connect you to other VCs, they put their reputations on the line,” he says. “It’s a very close-knit group, so people will hear about it if you come across as anything other than genuine, clear about your goals, and free of arrogance.”

eBay’s purchase of Flockish meant that before he even graduated, Paka engaged in a full entrepreneurial education–from idea generation to launch and all the way through the due diligence required for an acquisition. “I learned a lot about IP and trademark infringement,” he says.

Paka says that since he’s launched Flockish and joined eBay, “Mind-blowing opportunities come up every day.” The most recent one took him from StubHub to a group product manager role with PayPal’s Digital Wallet product team, a group he believes is well positioned to develop and scale the smart-phone-as-wallet. The rapid pace of personal recognition and capture of opportunity mirrors what Paka sees around him. “In this valley you have to keep moving,” he says.

Evening & Weekend MBA Startup Makes SXSW Finals

A Berkeley MBA venture aimed at making travel decisions easier and even more appealing has just been named one of eight finalists in the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive tournament Student Startup Madness. Traverie, co-founded by Gaurav Agarwal, MBA 13, has also been selected as one of the top travel innovations of 2012 by PhoCus Wright, a travel market research company, and made strong showings in previous competition.

Described by Agarwal as “an interactive magazine that helps you explore travel through friends,” Traverie emerged from an original field of 64 startup teams competing for a finalist slot at SXSW.

Agarwal and co-founders Jimming Cheng, and Tiffany Yang will make their final pitch in Austin, TX on March 11, presenting before a judging panel of investors and entrepreneurs for top honors and technology tools provided by Google.

“SXSW has become a premier destination for digital media innovation and we thought it would be a great platform to represent Berkeley, compete with other top schools, and create awareness for Traverie,” says Agarwal. “We believe our team and focus on helping consumers discover relevant, trusted content amongst the plethora of data available on Facebook were what made us competitive in this nationwide tournament.”

Agarwal has said that classes such as Problem Finding Problem Solving and New Venture Finance, along with the Startup Board of Mentors Program at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and the UC Berkeley Startup Competition all greatly contributed to the team’s success. “At Haas I’ve learned how to create a business out of an idea and how to build a strong team, which is the most important asset in a knowledge company.”

Revealed: The Mysteries of Coding

Alumnus Joe Wadcan demystifies code

Don’t know your Ruby on Rails from your RAM? Joe Wadcan, MBA 12, plans to change that. Wadcan recently offered the first of what he hopes may become a series of classes on coding for MBA students.

A serial entrepreneur, Wadcan has learned that there are numerous advantages to being conversant—even self-reliant–when it comes to code. Wadcan, who launched the social media team for Citi as Senior VP of emerging communications, as well as a number of his own social media ventures, is currently coding for his latest venture, Calico, which is “reinventing the calendar built around social.”

He returned to Haas to share what he’s learned because he wished he’d had access to such a class when he was a student. “I could have saved time and avoided mistakes,” he says.

Some 30 students turned out for an initial session, offered by the Haas Entrepreneurs Association. They heard from Wadcan on the joys of never again having to beg for coding help, or at least being able to avoid sounding dumb to developers. One goal was to help students see a way forward in getting started with code. “It’s less complicated than people think,” says Wadcan. “GMAT math is sufficient for 99 percent of web apps and a CS degree is not required. Though logic and patience are.”

Gabe Cohen, MBA 13, says he’s exploring opportunities with mobile app startups that would involve collaboration with coders and wanted “to get an understanding of the language and structure.” He says he might ultimately want to write his own code. “This session helped demystify the subject to the point where I think, with hard work, I could familiarize myself with coding.”

Wadcan hopes to return to Haas to help with that increased familiarization and suggests that students reach out to @joewadcan to express their interest in keeping their CPU and their CSS straight.

A Weekend in the Life of a Part-time MBA Student: From Health Hackathon to Tough Mudder

…Sunday

This past Saturday and Sunday were a productive 48 hours for Erik Krogh-Jespersen, a student in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program. On Saturday, he was part of the team that won the UC Berkeley Digital Health Hackathon, with a way to track child immunizations in rural India. On Sunday, he was one of eight evening and weekend MBA students completing the Tough Mudder. Get the dirt on Tough Mudder in this Haas Achieves post and read on to learn about the winning Health Hackathon team.

Krogh-Jespersen teamed with Sanat Kamal Bahl and Anandamoy Sen, both MBA 14, and with software programmers Shinto Manuel and Jeremy Rahe, Public Health Adjunct Professor Julia Walsh, and mechanical engineering student Srihari Yamanoor to win the 24-hour competition, which challenged students to “build apps that change lives.” The event, held at Skydeck, is co-hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, the Haas Entrepreneurs Association, and UC Berkeley’s CITRIS.

…preceded by Saturday strategizing at the Hackathon–Krogh Jespersen with Julia Walsh

It began with a 60-second elevator pitch on Friday evening to attract teammates. In this case, Bahl, Krogh-Jespersen, and Sen made the pitch and Manuel, Rahe, Walsh, and Yamanoor signed on. The team then worked through most of Friday night and most of Saturday, coding, designing and building—to make a 6:00 p.m. Saturday pitch to judges.

Team Immutrac proposed a way to track child immunizations in rural India using only a feature phone (aka a “dumb” phone) on the side of the rural villagers and a smart phone on the side of the Healthcare providers.  A readable/writable device would allow a villager to keep electronic medical records for her child on her phone, to receive text message reminders about the upcoming need for a shot, and to have the record updated with each visit.

Anandamoy Sen makes the pitch

“We were targeting the over 160,000 child deaths that occur from vaccine preventable diseases in India with an extremely cheap solution that could function without power cords or internet connections,” says Krogh-Jespersen. He credits the diversity of the team for making the event “so amazing.” A chemistry team leader with Nanosyn, Krogh-Jespersen says, “You can imagine that  as an organic chemist, I have no clue what technology solutions are possible, but both Haas and this event bring these people together–and big things happen.”

The winning Haas Hackathon team, top row, l. to r.: Erik Krogh-Jespersen, MBA 14, Shinto Manuel, Julia Walsh, Jeremy Rahe; bottom row, l. to r.: Sanat Kamal Bahl, MBA 14, Srihari Yamanoor, Anandamoy Sen, MBA 14

On the Road with Problem Finding Problem Solving: New Skills Fuel Shuttle Startup

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It’s 10 p.m. on a Saturday night in June and Michael Vladimer and Tuyet Vu, both MBA 13, are at the corner of 19th and Valencia Streets in San Francisco’s Mission District, a thriving area for nightlife. However, Vladimer and Vu are not club-hopping, they’re…playing in traffic.

The two have spent the summer working on their early-stage startup, Yaygo, a shuttle service requested via smartphone that aims to be fast, fun, and affordable. As part of their launch process, they’ve used skills honed in the Berkeley MBA Program’s Berkeley Innovative Leader (BILD) curriculum, including the required Problem Finding, Problem Solving course (PFPS)–making firsthand observation one of their first priorities.

Hence, a Saturday night spent charting the frequency and direction of taxi traffic and interviewing club-goers on how transportation is enhancing their evenings (or not). Observed on this night were 30-minute waits for taxis, women in spiked heels darting into traffic to flag down cabs, and one would-be passenger calling out in frustration, “Hey, that’s our cab!” as it drove off with a more aggressive fare.

“This is not how transportation should work,” says Vladimer, shaking his head. “Not when we have smart phones as a way to share where we are and when and where we want to go.”

“I’ve had many bad experiences with transportation and many times secretly wish for a faster, safer and cheaper way to get around,” agrees Vu. “Designing Yaygo’s operation and actually implementing it has been a fascinating experience and it feels good to help make people’s transportation experience better.”

The team entered three competitions this past spring, making the finals in Big Ideas@Berkeley and the semi-finals in the UC Berkeley Startup Competition. From there, they launched into trial operations this summer, renting some plush wheels and giving free rides to continue the information-gathering process. The team began by targeting weekend club-goers, which let them operate and observe on Saturday nights and spend the week incorporating what they’d learned into the rapid prototyping processes learned in PFPS.

For instance, the ride theft observed on that Saturday night in the Mission arose because the cab driver had no way to validate that he was picking up the person who had actually called for the lift. This observation led to a Yaygo response that would reassure customers that the ride they’d called for couldn’t be pilfered—the introduction of “pirate” passwords to be given before boarding.

“I’ve found that it’s easy to fall into the trap of tacitly assuming that I understand the problem correctly and jumping into developing a solution,” says Vladimer.  “My studies at Haas, and in PFPS in particular, have taught me to step back and re-evaluate the problem itself.”

“Similarly, PFPS taught us how to create a playful, fun environment that produces meaningful real-world results — a culture that we’ve deliberately included in Yaygo,” Vladimer adds. “We’re tearing down the wall between work hard and play hard.”

Haas Achieves: A Video Year-in-Review

Congratulations to the full-time MBA classes of 2012 and 2013. In just one year you have accomplished an extraordinary amount, from organizing conferences and international treks to winning case competitions. We are so proud of all you achieve at Haas–and have captured what we could (i.e. some, certainly not all!) in this Haas Achieves video. We know you have many achievements yet to come and wish you the best.

Video produced by Tritone Media

Three Minutes to Launch: Berkeley MBAs Soar in Rocket Pitch

Melissa Millan shoots for the moon at Babson Rocket Pitch

Apparently, elevator pitches take too long: Two Berkeley MBA students had a mere three slides and three minutes to make their mark in Babson’s inaugural San Francisco Rocket Pitch competition on Oct. 1. Kevin Callaghan and Melissa Millan, both MBA 13, made good use of the (limited) time, shooting to first and second place, respectively, and besting 13 rivals from other Bay Area business schools.

Callaghan and his teammate, Inderpal Singh, won the top prize–$5,000 and the opportunity to meet with several venture capitalists–for their Coaster app, which allows users to buy drinks at a bar from their mobile device. No more pushing through crowds, waiting at the bar, or shouting your order to the bartender, notes Callaghan.

Millan took second place for Androgyny, a company that aims to offer premium button-down shirts for women who seek an androgynous look. “Queer women struggle to find clothing that both fits them properly and allows them to feel comfortable and confident,” Millan says. “I think the judges found it refreshing to hear a new idea, especially one outside of the technology sector.”  The $3,000 second prize will allow Millan to move forward with producing a sample run. “I was also able to connect with people in the venture and apparel communities that have the potential to be fantastic business partners.”

In your Corner: Advice for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship mentor and attorney Matt Kirmayer

First-year full-time MBA students Elsita Meyer-Brandt and Jens Uehlecke connected quickly in the opening weeks of school, brought together by German roots, media-related backgrounds, and a business idea. The idea began with Uehlecke, who sees a way to help publishers thrive in a world of diminishing print. He says Meyer-Brandt’s consulting experience in media and entertainment was the perfect complement to his journalism background.

The two are taking advantage of classroom learning and participation in the Digital Media and Entertainment Club and Haas Entrepreneur’s Association to plot their future careers and to explore their interest in entrepreneurship. For a kick-start on their business idea, they sought candid feedback from Matt Kirmayer, a member of the Tech Group at Lowenstein Sandler.

Kirmayer, who specializes in the representation of emerging growth companies, is one of 40-50 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and attorneys advising would-be entrepreneurs through Entrepreneurs Corner, a program offered for 15 years by the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In the Corner, experts such as Kirmayer give some 200 hours of advice across nearly 400 sessions per year. Many advisors are local, but sessions by phone and by Skype broaden the expert pool and offer more flexibility to students who may not be on campus when the entrepreneurs are.

Kirmayer’s interest in mentoring at Haas was sparked about six years ago when his firm sponsored the Berkeley Business Plan Competition. “I got an incredible kick out of working with these students–who don’t even realize how bright they are,” says Kirmayer. “They ask unbelievably intelligent questions and have insights and ideas one would expect of much more experienced entrepreneurs.”

Meyers-Brandt came to Haas to make a shift from consulting to industry or entrepreneurship. She says she and Uehlecke are still in the very early stages, “so we used our time with Matt to discuss our idea at a high level. He was very generous with his time and gave us a candid assessment of our idea and our team’s strengths, along with many important insights into how we take our idea from a project to a business plan.”

As for his motivation, Kirmayer says, “Think about what it means for the future to have people innovating at an early age. If we give them the tools they need now, they will find their passions and move forward with some truly amazing ideas in the future.”

MBA Internships: Facebook

Student: Hans Lintermans, MBA 12

Interning with: Facebook, Palo Alto, CA

Thrilled to be with Facebook because: “The energy is amazing. Every week new ideas are thrown around and received with great enthusiasm.”

Can’t believe he’s getting the chance to: Ask Mark Zuckerberg any question during weekly company-wide Q&As and launch an internal solution without much supervision.

Already he’s learned: That he works best in an environment that focuses only on value-added projects. “The company lives and breathes, ‘move fast and break things’ which means that I get the opportunity to work on projects that have real impact, even though they might not be perfect.”

Advancing career goals by: Gaining real insight into a successful startup. “During my MBA at Haas, I am focusing on entrepreneurship and marketing. Working on Facebook’s global marketing team gives me the ideal platform to put what I learn in action.”

Who makes you proud to be Berkeley-Haas? Tell us in the comments below or share your stories with vgilbert@haas.berkeley.edu.

Making Lunch, Making Time (Magazine)

MBA 06s Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Tobey, top education activists

Haas Alumnae Make Time’s List of 11 Education Activists for 2011

Kristin Groos Richmond and Kirsten Tobey, both MBA 06, co-founders of Revolution Foods, and 2007 winners of the Global Social Venture Competition, were recently named among 11 Education Activists for 2011 by Time magazine. As Time noted: “They’re not the first people to try to improve the quality of school lunches, but the Kristin/Kirsten duo is the first to successfully couple good intentions with a serious and sustainable business model… Even in this economy, a company that sits at the intersection of three hot issues—education reform, child nutrition and sustainable and local agriculture—is a good bet.”

Groos Richmond says the enterprise now serves 60,000 healthy, fresh meals per day in Northern and Southern California, Denver and Washington DC and has created over 450 jobs since inception. Of the duo’s time at Berkeley-Haas, she notes, “We often reflect on how grateful we are for the world class MBA education that Haas provided. Within this program, the Lester Center (for Entrepreneurship and Innovation) served as an incubator for our and other classmates’ ideas, cultivating an engaging, creative and innovation-rich environment.”

“Another sign of the company’s growing cachet?” notes Time: President Obama has appointed Richmond to his White House Council on Community Solutions, which is tasked with mobilizing local resources to solve social problems.

Who makes you proud to be Berkeley-Haas? Share your stories with vgilbert@haas.berkeley.edu.