The MBA Student Voice

Spring Forward

As I write this, I’m sitting on a beach drinking a Mai Tai. Actually, that’s a lie. I’m sitting in my apartment watching SportsCenter. But it is spring break and that’s cause for a celebration worthy of some sort of umbrella-garnished beverage. Winter quarter is now over, which is a relief. For most of us, the past quarter was characterized by a mad dash for internships. As I previously posted, I spent much of it recruiting for an entertainment/sports internship. I’m happy to report that I’ll be working at Nike this summer. So I now have two things in common with LeBron James. We both can dunk, and we’ll both be getting paid by Nike this summer. Ok, maybe it’s just one thing in common. Still, I’m pretty fired up for my adventure in Oregon.

I’m also excited for what’s to come in the following weeks. From what second year students tell me, spring quarter is second to none. For one, we can expect beach weather every day (yes Randy Newman, I love L.A.). Also, there are several amazing Anderson events on tap this spring. Next week we have the PULSE Conference. The Entertainment Management Association, Sports Business Association and UCLA Anderson Center for Managing Enterprises in Media, Entertainment and Sports are hosting a day-long conference to address some of the biggest issues facing the entertainment and sports industries. A number of prominent industry professionals will speak, including Ron Meyer, the President and COO of Universal Studios. If you’re in SoCal on April 6th, you should come check it out.

This photo has nothing to do with this post. But I was told that the readers of this blog like pictures, so I didn't want to disappoint. Also, if you come to UCLA, you can look at views like this all of the time. Trust me, it never gets old.

The following week, more than a hundred Anderson students will head up north to Stanford for the annual Challenge 4 Charity Weekend. This weekend is a culmination of a year’s worth of fundraising and volunteering. Nine west coast business schools will compete in a variety of athletic events, including basketball, dodgeball, ping pong and dancing. I’ll be playing golf and flag football. The top-performing school brings home the coveted Golden Briefcase. There will also be a heavy amount of “socializing” going on. So it’ll provide a good opportunity to hang out with other MBA students.

Another irrelevant picture. I went to my first Lakers game this past quarter. Sat eight rows up. To quote Larry David, it was "pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good."

In addition this spring, we have the annual UCLA Anderson Fashion Show, as well as Ander-Prom. There’s nothing like reliving your high school glory days for a night. Plus we have A-Days, where we’ll wine and dine new admits. Add all of that to a full load of classes and it should be a busy quarter. But that’s the thing about business school: you’re never not busy. And as exhausting as it can sometimes get, I don’t think any of us would want it any other way.

--Willem

Follow me on Twitter: @willsouthwood

 

 

The Sky is the Limit at UCLA Anderson!

Wow, so much going on at Anderson as always! This month is especially exciting for me, not because it is my birthday (which it is, but at my age you try to ignore them not acknowledge them), but because it is my WEDDING! That's right, while many of my classmates including Rikin Mantri and Rob Michlovich are headed off on the awesome-sounding Japan trip sponsored by the Japanese American Business Association (JABA), or to Hawaii, a mere 5-hour flight away, like my friend Sarah Fixler, Stanton and I are headed back east to my hometown of Atlanta for the Society Event of the Year. Just kidding, but it is going to be wonderful and I can't wait! (Less wonderful will be getting married Saturday night EST and being in class on Monday PST, but what are honeymoons if not opportunities for learning and stress?)

Stanton and I actually met because we discovered we both enjoy long walks on the beach.

For those of who you who totally freak out reading about something like a wedding, fear not, most of my fellow students are single and living the swingin' LA life. There are about 1,000 fun options to choose from any night you can possibly go out,and the always-amazing In-N-Out burger stays open late for your post-party hunger cravings.

There are many other activities besides nightlife- just this weekend was a fun visit to a winery up in Malibu that members of the Anderson Wine Club took advantage of a beautiful Saturday to enjoy. Check out that attire, yes it was 78 degrees!

Alan Druckman (far left) apparently mistook the theme of "wine party" for "pool party" but other than that it's a pretty solid group! (Thanks to James Vogl for photo.)

In other news, I know I mentioned in my last blog post that I was still conducting interviews with various companies to lock down my internship for this summer. I am pleased to say that I have now accepted an offer and will be headed to Seattle, WA to be a Product Manager at Amazon!

I couldn't be more thrilled, as I have been incredibly impressed by the company, its people, and a philosophy that really clicks for me. Plus they are doing some amazing things in the tech space and it seems like they are only getting started! I'm pretty psyched about spending a summer in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where we get to live in downtown Seattle in South Lake Union near the brand new Amazon HQs and take the light rail to work!

It's pretty cool of Amazon to put its interns up in the Space Needle for our summer housing!

 

TED's Takeover of Our Campus

Today marks the final day of TED's four-day Takeover of UCLA Anderson.  This partnership was TED's first with an institution of higher education.  The "takeover" was designed to immerse the UCLA Anderson community in the TED experience, and I must say this event has to be one of the most memorable on-campus events of the quarter.  I'm sad to see the splashes of TED's signature velvet red go, but it's been quite a run.  Bold ideas, lively discussions, insightful panelists, challenging calls to action -- we students were treated to a highly concentrated dose all of these things as we wandered into the brightly decorated student lounge in between classes to see live recordings of various TED speakers from the 2012 conference in Long Beach.

One of the featured speakers was Jim Stengel, former Global Marketing Officer at Procter & Gamble and current adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson.  He made the case that we are entering an era where the narrative of business must change.  Companies must be driven by higher-order brand ideals in order to achieve truly sustainable growth.  These companies will attract the best talent and innovate in ways that make life better for the people they serve.  Without an ideal to guide an organization, people lose their passion to create and do meaningful work.  And without passion, your organization may be relegated to a future of mediocrity and underachievement.

The capstone event for the TED Takeover was an afternoon "campfire" with TED-inspired talks with some of our fellows classmates and professors.  Prof. Rakesh Sarin proposed his equation for the science of happiness, Prof. Bhagwan Chowdhry discussed his Financial Access @ Birth campaign, and fellow classmate Stephen Lehtonen challenged us to join the fight to design education around children's passions rather than standardized testing.  Class of 2013 students Stuti Goswami and Guy Holzman delivered inspired talks about the Dream Act and the need for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.  Prof. Benartzi proposed a strategy for saving in the future by keeping a lid on your lifestyle while increasing earning potential.  The energy in the crowd was electric.  Standing ovations and loud cheering rumbled through the alumni plaza.  Great food and drinks + being surrounded by good company + bold innovative ideas = a night to remember.

Wish you all could have seen it for yourselves.

-- Jesse Ferlianto '12
Twitter: @jferlianto

 

 Stephen Lehtonen - my friend, classamate, and founder of Breakaway, giving his talk about education reform that had the entire room engrossed from beginning to end.  No joke.  That's tough to do these days, and this just gives you a sense of how gifted this guy truly is.

EA Developer's Contest - Launching Ideas

On February 24^th, 10 Anderson students and 15 software developers came together for one purpose; launch an idea or solve a business problem over the period of a weekend.  This year, the Entrepreneur Association at UCLA Anderson hosted its first Developer’s Contest.  While many Anderson students have innovate ideas, they may lack the resources or technical skills in order to execute their business ideas.  The purpose of the EA Developer’s Contest is to connect business-minded entrepreneurs with tech savvy software developers and to launch a business idea over a weekend.  The event was sponsored by Yahoo!, Start Engine, and VMWare, and with their support we were able to attract talented software developers with $1500 in cash prizes. 

While there are other events with a similar purpose such as 3 Day Startup and Startup Weekend, the EA Developer’s Contest takes a different approach.  The EA Developer’s Contest borrows from concepts learned in our MBA program and combines both brainstorming and execution in a novel approach.  One business idea or problem is selected by group of software developers and software developers compete for cash prizes by working to execute the best prototype.

First, UCLA Anderson students submit business ideas or problems that they are trying to solve with a software-based solution to a panel of peers.  The Top 10 ideas were chosen from the list of ideas and the students that submitted them were selected to give a 1-minute pitch of their business idea or problem to a group of software developers and engineers.  The business ideas that Anderson students submitted were amazing, and ranged from a social networking platform for varsity athletes to a platform that allows you to find used items within a certain geographical location, and  a platform for sharing and collaborating on business models.

Sachin Doshi('12) pitches his business idea for a platform to diagnose car problems

On Friday, February 24^th, the 10 selected Anderson Students gave the 1-minute pitch of their ideas to teams of  professional and student software developers.  The developers were an extremely diverse group in terms of programming experience, preferred programming languages, and industry experience.  After the 15 developers heard all 10 pitches, they voted on the idea or problem that they had the most interest in solving over the weekend.  

While the voting was close, Andy Yin’s (‘13) idea for an equitable bill splitting application was selected to be developed over the weekend.  Andy envisioned a bill splitter that would be seamless, easy to use for both consumers and merchants, and reduce the complexity of splitting bills at restaurants.  Developer teams then asked Andy questions about the problems and pain points with current bill splitting applications and insights into ways of solving this problem before preparing for a weekend of coding.  Before breaking for the weekend, George Abe, a Professor at UCLA Anderson and former VC Partner at Palomar Ventures gave a short presentation and espoused the importance of focusing on delivering a MVP, or Minimum Viable Product. 

Judges Ilya Pozin and John Shiple

The developer teams spent the weekend working hard on their ideas and met on Sunday evening to demo their Bill Splitter Applications.  We were fortunate to have John Shiple(www.freelanceCTO.com) and Ilya Pozin(www.ciplex.com) as our judges.  Both are successful entrepreneurs that brought their knowledge and experience starting companies to evaluate the developers’ prototypes.

"Team Noname"

Team "The Wieners"

Three teams followed through with the execution of their ideas and we wowed with multiple interpretations of a Bill Splitter application.  Team Toduro, came up with an innovative way for a group of people at dinner to separately indicate their meal items that are synchronized in a central database, while Team Noname executed a iPhone app that could scan both receipts and qr codes to record and split up bills, and The Wieners developed an Android app that allows users to scan receipts and split up items than can then be tracked back to individual users via a centralized database and reviewed via a web based application at a later date.

"Team Toduro"

The judging was extremely difficult, but in the end it was decided that Mikhail Yurasov, the sole member of Team Noname, had solved the challenges with equitably splitting bills and successfully executed an easy to use Bill Splitter.  Andy and Mikhail now have to opportunity to take what just started as an idea for a bill splitter and execute on bringing it to market.  We’d like to congratulate both Andy Lin and Mikhail Yurasov on their successes and would like to thank all the Anderson students, developers, and judges, and sponsors that made this event a success.  

We've received a lot of support both from the Anderson community and local entrepreneurs, and plan on institutionalizing this event to make it a recurring event here at Anderson and find ways help more students launch ideas.

John Diep of Start Engine, Ilya Pozin, Andy Yin ('13), Mikhail Yurasov, and John Shiple