Photo: Conversation on leadership with CommonBond founder David Klein and Taza Chocolate founder Alex Whitmore at General Assembly, Boston When I graduated from HBS in 2010, I started down the common path of becoming a management consultant, but I knew I wanted to become an entrepreneur down the road. I believed that experiences in one setting…
What my MBA at Harvard did NOT teach me
The only way to make an impact is to go to Wall Street. As you can see below, more HBS graduates are heading out to the West Coast to make a difference, taking positions in product management, marketing, sales, and general management. In a dramatic shift versus a decade ago, technology jobs are more sought…
Mentors4u and the true Great Beauty
This March the Italian film, “Great Beauty” won the Academy award for best international movie. The film, skilfully directed by Paolo Sorrentino, depicts the decadence of a part of the Italian society immersed in lavish and extravagant parties and living only by memories of past, often presumed, greatness, in the exquisite setting of a timeless and breathtaking Rome….
Teman & Teran Evans, HGSD Superstar Entrepreneurs
Last Fall, the Harbus got an opportunity to meet and talk with Teman & Teran Evans after hearing them speak at an event at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. They are both HGSD graduates and founders of the DIOSCURI brand. They have worked for star architect, Rem Koolhaas and have been featured in Time…
InsideIL: Connecting MBAs to the Start-Up Nation
This week, HBS MBAs Sara Greenberg and Della Heiman are launching InsideIL – an online platform designed to connect MBA students with leading Israeli companies, and to facilitate summer internships. The program represents an exciting opportunity for students to immerse themselves in dynamic companies, to experience a new culture, and to forge global relationships with leading entrepreneurs…
Taking money from VC’s means you will lose a lot of control.
The COO of RueLaLa, founders of Caudalie, the Head of Retail & commerce at Facebook, keynote speakers William McComb the CEO of Fifth & Pacific, Julie Bornstein the CMO & CDO of Sephora and Donna Karan together in one building at the 10th annual Retail & Luxury Goods Conference put on by the Retail &…
Heard at today’s WSA conference
Today’s Dynamic Women in Business conference, hosted by the Women Student Association at HBS, continues to be an impressive success. Golden nuggets of advice, quick-witted tips and life-long proverbs speckled thoughtful debate throughout the day. Over 1,000 young and seasoned well-heeled business women power-networked to discuss healthcare, income-equality, marketing, finance, entertainment and media. Here are some…
FIELD of Dreams
So, another generation of HBS students has made it through FIELD 2. And after soaking up the sun in a variety of Southern Hemisphere hotspots, they’re no doubt relieved to be back here in the icy embrace of Boston’s post-apocalyptic winter wasteland. In January, HBS dispatched RCs to the ends of the earth. Destinations included repeat…
HBS Alum Series: Q&A With Ms. Angela Chao, Class of 2001, Section E
Angela Chao is Deputy Chairman of Foremost Group, an international shipping company in New York. Prior to joining Foremost Group, Angela Chao worked in the Mergers & Acquisitions Department of Smith Barney, now a part of Citigroup. Angela received her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree from Harvard College where she graduated…
HBS Alum Series: Q&A With The Honorable Elaine L. Chao, Class of 1979 Section C
The Honorable Elaine L. Chao, the 24th U. S. Secretary of Labor who served from 2001-2009, is the first Asian Pacific American woman to be appointed to a President’s Cabinet in American history. An immigrant who arrived in America at the age of eight speaking no English, Secretary Chao subsequently achieved a distinguished career…
HBS Alum Series: Christopher Michel
Christopher Michel is an American investor, he is an entrepreneur, a Navy man, a photojournalist, an author and HBS alumni. He is the founder of Affinity Labs and Military.com and currently runs Nautilus Ventures, a seed venture fund. In 1999, after a brief stint at Mercer Consulting he decided to build his own company, Military.com….
Boston’s new StartUp- Achvr
Last month, the Harbus had the privilege of sitting down with Ryan Traeger (CEO) and Drew Watson (CMO) to find out more about their new start-up, Achvr – a social platform that’s all about helping people live happier, more-fulfilled lives. Available online and through an iPhone app, Achvr works by applying familiar game mechanics to…
HBS Alum Series: Q&A with Dr. Mark Albion HBS/GSAS Class of 1981
Dr. Mark Albion was the first of our HBS Alum interview series and if every interview went as smoothly as his did then we’d be lucky writers. His love of life and helping people determine their unique contribution is inspiring and would no doubt make you question how you navigate career choices and hopefully you…
Lets do well at SXSW this SXSW.
Goal: I want this article to be your ROI for tuition. For both years. In the next 700 words and 4 hashtags, readers of this Harbus post will get their $$ back. Execution: As HBS first years, we will not fall into the bad habits networking-like-a-second-year-section-leader that ‘some’ second years have fallen into, fell into…
Trendly: From Private Equity to Reselling Dresses
For more about Trendly’s upcoming event, head to www.trendly.us/event. Less than two years ago, I was working as an associate in a large cap Private Equity fund. Fast forward and I am now an EC at HBS founding a startup to collect women’s fashionable clothes and resell them online. Here is the story of how I…
3 Hacks to get into hottest Silicon valley startups
Harbus blog posts: 3 Hacks to get into hottest Silicon valley startups Disclaimer: This post represents my personal views informed by my own search and these worked for me. I’m happy to discuss what worked for some other people and welcome comments on my thoughts. a. Start working for them before you get the…
Facebook moves back to Cambridge.
Finally, Facebook comes home. Nine years after the social networking site launched in Cambridge, MA, it announced plans to install a new engineering center in Kendall Square, just two T stops off the red line from Harvard Square. According to a story posted on the Crimson, Ryan Mack, an infrastructure engineer who contributed to the development…
Upstart
This past July, HBS ‘11 graduate Rachel Kim exchanged a fraction of her future income to a group of investors for $100,000 today. The money paid off Rachel’s student debt and helped fund her startup, Nailed Kit, while earning her a group of mentors committed to helping her navigate the next 10 years of her…
Game of Stones
During the first day of The Entrepreneurial Manager (TEM) last year we learned about Bob Reiss, an HBS graduate who made a small fortune on a board game he published in the early 1980’s. I vividly remember getting Cold Called in this class and being asked “Is it good or bad to be in the…
Read With Me
This summer Ryan Eskridge and I decided to ditch sleep so that we could learn about the news business and how to write code. Lot’s of code. By the end of the summer Read With Me (www.getreadwithme.com) was born. Read With Me is a platform that enables you to personalize any news article by enabling you take any…
Personal Doorman
Our summer job was to pick up dry cleaning and groceries for other people. Your next question might be: “You went to HBS for that?”. But that’s what it took to launch ‘Personal Doorman’, our business, which brings hotel service to your home. Ending the summer more excited than we began – our ride from…
HourlyNerd – From FIELD 3 to First-Round Financing
HourlyNerd – From FIELD 3 to First-Round Financing HourlyNerd began as a Field 3 project in Section F. Like many of our peers from traditional backgrounds, we found the assignment daunting. We didn’t have experience creating companies from scratch — we didn’t even have an idea! The subsequent chain of events has surprised us,…
Be Mixed
Be Mixed The Cola Wars case taught us that the beverage industry is both unattractive and difficult. Either we are terrible listeners, took RC year to be one big Opposite Day, or, simply took TEM’s “fail early and fail often” motto literally, because we spent our summer launching a new drink. Before we give you…
New Beginnings — Do Not Miss the Chance
A relatively newly minted public company CEO stopped by for some discussion about his and the company’s priorities and goals for the upcoming year the other day; and his visit brought to mind my own ruminations on the subject now that I am part of the HBS family. How does a CEO think about the…
One Western Ave 451 [Or: How I Met Your Biological Father / The Big Buyout Theory]
One Western Ave 451 [Or: How I Met Your Biological Father / The Big Buyout Theory] This column will follow the weekly triumphs and tribulations of Spencer, Andrew and Felicity, three housemates in One Western 451, as they navigate the coming academic year at Harvard Business School. Andrew, an EC, worked for Deloitte in Phoenix,…
Making Travel a Peek Experience
Meet Peek.com – A one-stop shop for travelers looking to discover and book amazing experiences. As classes come to a close and we start dreaming about summer adventures, don’t let the time consuming process of looking for and booking activities in your travel destinations become a reason to procrastinate. There are better things to push…
Spider Stories Raises $30,000 to Fund African-Inspired Cartoon Pilot
In 2009, John Agbaje (NA) and his brother Charles founded Central City Tower, an entertainment company devoted to creating original animated adventure stories. Avid artists and storytellers from a young age, the brothers had spent years dreaming up endless characters and worlds and wanted to formalize the intellectual property they had created. After getting their…
Seeking a Job in Start-Up Land
My first time jumping into the start-up world was as a freshly minted Harvard MBA in 1995. As my classmates were rushing off to high-paying, high-powered jobs on Wall Street, I joined a Series A start-up with 30 employees as a product manager, making $65,000 per year – lower than my pre-MBA salary at management…
CommonBond: The Warby Parker of Student Loans
In the summer of 2011, David Klein had a problem, a problem shared by many MBAs at HBS: high-cost student loans. At the time, he was entering Wharton’s full-time MBA program, poised to start a company before graduating. He unwittingly happened upon the pain point, and ultimate idea, that would just nine months later cause him…
What We Learned from 100 Small Businesses
A few months ago, we had the idea to connect small and medium sized businesses with students from the top MBA programs in the world and launched HourlyNerd. The basic premise was simple: MBAs need money, have significant business acumen from previous jobs and school, want real-world experience, and have plenty of spare time. Meanwhile,…