Where Entrepreneurship Comes to Die

Any guesses? That's right, my favorite place in the world: Wharton.

Why the ire? I just got out of Marketing 281, a class entitled Entrepreneurial Marketing, where a couple groups presented their business plans. Let me share their gems with you...

(Side note to the groups that presented: You didn't make us sign NDAs, but I will still respect your wishes if you'd like me to remove presentation material from my blog. Email me or leave a comment. I'm only writing about your ventures to make a point, and I'd like to think that, despite having screen shots in your presentations and names for your companies, you aren't actually planning on executing your brilliant ideas.)

The first company, called Finedorms.com (they haven't launched yet, apparently), focused on providing tenants with a space to post residential openings for subletters. Ok. They dismiss craigslist as "not targeting the college market." Their presentation goes on. "Tenants looking for someone to sublet will pay a fee to post on the site." Really? And the kicker? Their financial statement. The team of 4 confidently believes that the rolling out of their site across campuses around the nation will allow them to make, by the 5th year, a whopping $70 grand. Investors, line up.

So these guys honestly believe that an increasingly tech savvy college population will shun the immensely popular craigslist and pay money (despite being cheap college kids) to the site to get their sublet ad looked at? And all this to accumulate an annual revenue that doesn't reach $70k till 5 years from now?

But the second presentation made the first look legit. Entitled eDough.com (the URL is taken, but they may be launching under a different name...), it featured an "off campus meal plan." In reality, their idea was a bank account that could be used only for food. Seriously. Their only selling point was that "parents can deposit money."

Are you kidding me? First off, after claiming that a significant portion of Penn's students orders food online, they failed to mention those same students order from Campusfood or EatNow. Not only is their entire functionality already covered by someone who has his parent's credit card linked to his EatNow or Campusfood account, but they're also completely vulnerable to the two companies implementing their product. While eDough is out doing the time-consuming stuff (negotiating deals with individual restaurants, setting up the website, etc.), all either of the two competitors has to do is implement a "bank account" function on their site to render eDough useless. And why again do college students want a way to limit what they can spend their money on...?

And Penn wonders why their precious school doesn't churn out high profile start ups. So where's the problem? In this case, part of it is apparent: the class itself is atrocious. For half a semester, I've listened to our Professor use the same Marketing 101 buzzwords in an attempt to describe what is different about getting the word out for start ups. And, for that half a semester, he's really said nothing.

For starters, our class has a textbook. A textbook on how start ups should market. Isn't the point of the class that start ups have to think outside the box? Symbolically, a start up is like antsy chameleon, jumping around, not knowing what it is or what it's really doing, always changing and evolving. No textbook can begin to cover the tenants of how the lizard should get its name out to the world, and (even if a textbook could,) especially not this one.

The problem starts pretty high up. Culturally, Wharton is a finance-hub, priding itself on producing finance drones who will go on to work 100+ hour weeks and make $100 grand+ a year. Going against the grain, following your dreams, and being different are highly discouraged (unless, of course, you're a management-drone who will do the above with 30 hours and $30k subtracted from the respective totals above).

And Wharton's culture pretty much fits in with the (l)east coast. But I aim to be constructive, and not just a whinny SOB. So what can be done?

First off, the classes need to be revamped. Don't call something Entrepreneurial Marketing if it's not. And the faculty could do with an upgrade - hiring people with credentials in entrepreneurship could go a long ways in giving class a degree of legitimacy. I mean, wouldn't you sit up and take notice if it were Josh Kopelman teaching a class about Entrepreneurial Marketing? Maybe that's a little unreasonable, but a Professor who references their own experiences in a class, especially about this subject, is far more influential than one who is constantly referencing some text. And as a whole, the classes need to focus on actual issues that face start ups, and they need to be taught by people who know what they're talking about and understand what we want from the class (that is, an oasis from Wharton's "fall into our cookie-cutter" mentality). Out with the textbooks and trite buzzwords and in with real discussion and real lessons.

Of course, this will all probably never happen. So how to solve the problem? Looks like we may have to take things into our own hands...

(Oh, and as a side note to the "drones" I referenced: Please don't take me seriously. I love you guys. And I believe you; you do love I-banking and consulting, and it's definitely been your dream since you were a kid. And you're definitely not a douche bag. Hugs and kisses.;)