Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs at UCSB

I wanted to share with all of you what a wonderful experience I had guest lecturing at the University of California, Santa Barbara last week. (It wasn’t a very tough sell to make the trek up to the stunning city!)

My friend John Greathouse is an Adjunct Professor in the University’s Engineering Department. He also teaches ENGR122, a class on Entrepreneurship which is only open to UCSB seniors.

When I walked into a room of more than eighty students, about half of which were young women, I felt really inspired and excited to share my own entrepreneurial journey with them.

We covered a lot of ground, but one area we touched upon which is so important, is the fragility of the idea stage of a business.

When I founded OptionEase, I had served as a CFO for public and private companies alike. I knew from personal experience that there needed to be a better, smarter, and more accurate software program with which to report equity compensation, outside of those clunky spreadsheets all of us had been using.

What I tried to get across to the class is the “Aha!” moment, the one when you identify a great idea, concept, solution or product, is the precise time to take action. Don’t wait too long to flesh it out further, make prototypes, incorporate, carve out a business plan for investors, and more.

After the speech, many of the students wanted to get in touch, and John, their professor, encouraged it, but intentionally did not pass along my email. He felt they could use their entrepreneurial know-how to find me! Hopefully, I’ll hear from some of these bright young entrepreneurs soon.