Tour encourages student entrepreneurship
By Jake Chapnick Contributing Writer
The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour finished at City College on Nov. 18 after visiting 18 different community colleges in California.
The event took place during International Entrepreneurship Week, which organizers said was one of nearly 25,000 events held worldwide to promote entrepreneurship. Speakers at the events advised students on practical measures for starting a business.
The tour was brought to City College by the San Francisco Small Business Development Center, a company that helps individuals start, manage and grow their businesses. The SFSBDC also offers free classes and consultation to anybody under 27 trying to start a business.
“College should be training people not just to be employees, but also employers,” Albert Dixon, director of the SFSBDC said.
All of the speakers said the most important thing when starting a business is to be innovative.
“People who are willing to go out of their comfort zone are the ones who will try what has not yet been done,” said Arel Moody, the tour’s master of ceremonies. Max Ventilla, who co-founded Aardvark, a search engine that uses social networking sites to find people, instead of Web pages, to get information, said his company was an example to the importance of trial and error.
“If you can get the main idea across without spending a lot of money then you are better off,” Ventilla said. “Don’t be discouraged if your first idea does not work. The point is that what you come up with next will definitely be better than everything else you tried because you will have learned from each trial.”
Moody used Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” to debunk the myth that people can become successful overnight. As an example, he cited The Beatles, who languished in Germany for a number of years before they became famous.
Gladwell wrote one needs to spend approximately 10,000 hours intentionally practicing in order to get really good at something.
Ventilla said he has been working nonstop for almost three years and hopes to make a profit by his tenth year of being in business.
Alex Kramer, youth entrepreneurship coordinator for the SFSBDC, said more people should take advantage of the courses the organization offers by filling out an application online. He said there is no fee for people under 27, no competition for space and a student can take up to five classes a week.
“A person can take just one course in a series or all of them depending on their needs or interests,” Kramer said.
Entrepreneur Alex Andon was invited to show his unique idea, a company called Jellyfish Art. His business was used in the movie “Seven Pounds” with Will Smith.
“Jellyfish is a market that has not been explored yet,” Andon said.
Sheena Lindahl, who co-founded the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, hopes people will stay connected after they pledged to start a business by signing up for the online incubator on the Extreme Tour’s Web site, www.extremetour.org.
