{"id":36,"date":"2019-02-19T19:24:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T19:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/nazarianbus\/?p=36"},"modified":"2019-02-19T20:48:20","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T20:48:20","slug":"conquering-the-hard-as-csun-students-gear-up-for-bull-ring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/2019\/02\/19\/conquering-the-hard-as-csun-students-gear-up-for-bull-ring\/","title":{"rendered":"Conquering the \u2018Hard\u2019 As CSUN Students Gear Up for Bull Ring"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Shark<\/strong><\/em>By: Lewis Dvorkin, Entrepreneur in Residence<\/h6>\n

Marc:<\/strong> \u201cDo you know the best thing about startups?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Ben:<\/strong> \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Marc:<\/strong> \u201cYou only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Wow, so true, as I know from my own startup life. Last week, at the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics\u2019s kick-off session for the 4th Annual Bill Ring competition<\/a>, I saw both euphoria and terror in the faces of students aspiring to be entrepreneurs. Okay, maybe not terror, but certainly apprehension.
\n<\/p>\n

Marc in the dialogue above is Marc Andreessen, co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser, and co-founder of Netscape. Ben is Ben Horowitz, a technology entrepreneur and investor extraordinaire. Together,\u00a0they founded Andreessen, Horowitz, one of most powerful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n

Most important for CSUN students, the dialogue above comes from the pages of Horowitz\u2019s incredible book, \u201cThe Hard Thing About Hard Things. Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers.\u201d My advice to Bull Ring participants: get the book even if you need to sacrifice Starbucks coffee for a week.<\/p>\n

Bull Ring<\/a> is lot like one of the many Shark Tank clones, but right here on campus. It’s open to CSUN students of all majors. And there\u2019s prize money: $35,000 in all for the Top 3 winners and additional $30,000 in what\u2019s known as in-kind prizes.<\/p>\n

The kick-off session, run by by Ryan Holbrook, director of the Nazarian College\u2019s Entrepreneurship program, was intended to introduce students to the competition and the resources available to them. I was there as a mentor in my role as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Nazarian College. Also there were Professor Lois Shelton, who has put together a Nazarian College minor in entrepreneurship, and Tim Tiemann, Managing Director of CSUN\u2019s Innovation Incubator. The larger message: CSUN students can tap academic and marketplace knowledge as they advance their startup ideas.<\/p>\n

Okay, back to the Hard Thing About Hard Things. At the kickoff, Ryan invited the hopeful entrepreneurs to stand up in front of their fellow students to talk a bit about their idea. Trust me, that\u2019s hard. A colleague once told me it would take\u00a0me years of thinking and talking before\u00a0I found the exact\u00a0words\u00a0to\u00a0express\u00a0my\u00a0idea\u00a0and vision.\u00a0And she was right. Years after launching my startup, I was still perfecting the language. So, I knew what Ryan was asking students to do was no easy task.<\/p>\n

One student\u00a0did quickly spring to the front of the room. After that, well, it got hard. Ryan asked again. No takers. He asked again. With reluctance another student volunteered. Then, the\u00a0parade began.\u00a0Students lost their squeamishness and walked\u00a0one\u00a0after\u00a0the\u00a0other to the front of the room to briefly introduce their entrepreneurial ideas.<\/p>\n

I was impressed, and I could see Ryan was, too. Each of these students did a hard thing,\u00a0the first of many hard things to come as Bull Ring<\/a> moves to its different stages.<\/p>\n

Before students even got to make their early pitches, I had a few minutes to talk about the help I could offer. I said\u00a0all entrepreneurs\u00a0must learn to communicate — to express their dreams and passions. That could be in PowerPoint, an email, a video, through audio,\u00a0whatever the\u00a0right medium was to do the job. Communication — it\u2019s one of the hardest things\u00a0to\u00a0do and in my\u00a0mind the most critical if you want to get your idea rolling.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m learning that\u00a0myself all over again. A month or so ago a joined a London-based technology startup in the media space as its CEO. I\u2019m facing all the hard things I did for my first startup ten years ago,\u00a0long before Ben Horowitz published his book. So, guess what I\u2019m doing? Right! I\u2019m\u00a0reading The Hard Things About Hard Things again — from front to back. As an entrepreneur\u00a0seeking more euphoria and less fear, I can\u2019t read it too many times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Lewis Dvorkin, Entrepreneur in Residence Marc: \u201cDo you know the best thing about startups?\u201d Ben: \u201cWhat?\u201d Marc: \u201cYou only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.\u201d Wow, so true, as I know from my own startup life. Last week, at the David Nazarian College […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,9,17,18,16,13],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","tag-bull-ring","tag-csun","tag-new-venture","tag-pitch-competition","tag-shark-tank","tag-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.csun.edu\/startupzone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}