UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Lending a Hand to Teenage Entrepreneurs

Left to right: Aadhar Jain (’19), Founders Bootcamp founder Richard Dahan, Emily Kosko (FEMBA ’19,) Connor Doyle (’19), Andrew Grone (’18)

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By Elise Anderson

Ever meet teenage disruptors? They are aspiring entrepreneurs under the age of 19 with plans to change the world.

Twenty of these budding business leaders came to UCLA Anderson School of Management this summer to participate in Founders Bootcamp, a partnership with the business school that offers the world’s first startup accelerator and venture capital funds for teenage entrepreneurs. The program was started in 2017.

Of 1,100 applicants representing 26 countries, five teams were selected to take part in the 12-week intensive summer program, which provides teens with access to starting budgets, essential resources and experienced Anderson student mentors who work to empower teams to bring their ideas to fruition. Already, one team, the Trill Project, has received a substantial investment commitment for its anti-bullying idea and has been showcased on TechCrunch. Two other teams are being considered for inclusion on ABC’s Shark Tank reality series.

Among other ideas from this 2018’s bootcamp participants: ending thirst worldwide with a machine that creates potable water from humid air; using smart, stylish jewelry to help deter assault and make safety fashionable; and reforming corrupt agricultural trade systems with an accessible, online marketplace called Agronet.

The Entrepreneur’s Origin Story – Fritz Demopoulos (’97)

 

China is where Fritz Demopoulos (’97) decided to launch his career and make his life after b-school. Turning down a lucrative ― and stable ― offer in Europe, Demopoulos trusted his instinct for opportunity and headed for Asia.

The decision paid off.

Fritz Demopoulos and UCLA Anderson Interim Dean Al Osborne

Demopoulos founded Qunar, China’s biggest online travel company, and Shawei, its largest web-based sports portal. He’s held senior positions at Net Ease and The News Corporation and worked as an executive in the Chinese media, internet and wireless industries. An entrepreneur and investor, he is a founding partner of venture capital firm Queen’s Road Capital, which focuses on entrepreneurial investments across Asia.

Demopoulos launched his first business as a youngster — partnering with a cousin to pass out advertisments for a nickel per flier — and the feeling of freedom and independence still thrills him, he says. Before earning his MBA, he worked in aerospace but didn’t take to the institutional vibe. “At Anderson, it was the first time I was genuinely exhilarated,” Demopoulos says, crediting the school with helping him make a profound decision: “To take control of what I’m doing in life.”

That process was energizing. Anderson’s location proved crucial as well. “You need to be in a major economic center to get an amazing education,” he says. “If you’re in Manhattan, L.A. or the Bay Area you’re just in the middle of all sorts of cool stuff.”

Then there are the connections he formed. Demopoulos says he built “amazing relationships” while in business school, including the lifelong friendships he forged with Professors Bill Cockrum and Al Osborne (now Anderson’s interim dean). Demopoulos found Osborne especially inspiring, often asking himself “What would Al be doing?”

Entrepreneurship Lives at UCLA Anderson as U-Defi Wins Top Knapp Venture Competition Prize

U-Defi, the 2018 Knapp Venture Competition first place winners and recipients of a Pritzker Group Fellows Program investment, left to right: Aditya Marathe, Van Nguyen, Thanh Thuy Dan Pham, Cynthia McKee

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

It was an evening of surprises as the 2018 Knapp Venture Competition distributed more than $100,000 in prize money, the most at any single competition in its 36-year history.

Not surprising at all was the high caliber of new business ideas. From a field of more than 40 submissions, five teams advanced to the final round of the competition to present the extensive primary research, financial projections and growth models behind their ventures.

Claiming first place was U-Defi, a scientifically formulated skin care product tailor-made for an individual’s skin “biomarker.” Anderson students Aditya Marathe (’18) and Van Nguyen (FEMBA ’19), along with Cynthia McKee (Ph.D. ’20) of UCLA College of Life Sciences and Thanh Thuy Dan Pham (Ph.D. ’20) of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, were relieved and gratified to know their sleepless nights had paid off to the tune of $15,000.

The Purpose Economy

UCLA Anderson students and staff collaborated to produce Impact Week. Back row, left to right: [email protected] program manager Kelly Chung, Karthik Patange (’18), Qingqing Wu (’18), Katie Donovan (’18), Im[email protected] director Bhavna Sivanand (’14); front row, left to right: Janna Stucky (’19), Elizabeth Heredia (’19), Jessica Lin (’18), Molly Tarrant (’19)

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

[email protected] and the award-winning UCLA Anderson Net Impact chapter presented Anderson’s 2018 Impact Week in April. Under the theme Purpose + Profit, invited thought leaders and company founders shared stories about mission-driven careers, businesses and projects that fulfill unmet needs in sectors from entertainment to real estate.

Impact Week attracted members of the greater UCLA and Los Angeles communities to engage with Anderson students, alumni, faculty and staff in interactive panels and workshops tackling topics that included impact investing, affordable housing, blockchain technology and finding purpose in traditional workplaces.

The week kicked off with a keynote address by Cara Chacon, VP of social and environmental responsibility at outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia. The privately held company is on its way to a 100 percent climate-neutral goal by nurturing a squeaky-clean supply chain that accounts for everything from healthy soil for regenerative organic agriculture to fair wages for a healthy community (and therapeutic surfing breaks for Ventura-based staff). “A responsible business model works,” said Chacon. The proof? Patagonia recently reached $1 billion in revenue.

From Custom to Customizable: When Family Businesses Evolve with L&L's Elisia Flores

Eddie and daughter Elisia Flores at the first L&L Hawaiian Barbecue.

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By Paul Feinberg

Like the sun and the beaches, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue (aka L&L Drive Inn in Hawaii) was part of Elisia Flores’ (’14) Hawaiian upbringing. Her father, Eddie, and a partner bought the business and began selling franchises before she was born, and Flores did not grow up dreaming of going into the family business. She left the islands to earn a finance degree at USC, then worked a series of finance positions with GE. Ready for a change, Flores applied to UCLA Anderson’s full-time MBA program. When GE asked her to stay on, Flores enrolled in Anderson’s EMBA program, graduating with honors.

She is now vice president and CFO of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, which features hundreds of franchises (plus two corporate-owned Hawaiian locations) around the world. Their menu features Hawaii’s comfort food greatest hits: barbecue chicken, loco moco, fried Spam, rice and mac salad. Elisia and her father recently visited her alma mater for a Price Center-sponsored entrepreneur’s “fireside chat” held in the Anderson Venture Accelerator.

They make an entertaining pair, with Eddie focused on a concept that grows the business by adding franchises while Elisia ― equally intent on building the business ― takes a more circumspect, data-driven approach. “The move to an entrepreneurial company blew my mind,” she said. “We don’t have budgets?” Countered her father, “Why do we need budgets if we are making money?”

After the event, Elisia, whose mother and sister also work for L&L, sat down with a representative of the UCLA Anderson blog for a quick chat. (This interview has been shortened and modified for clarity.)

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Q: What are your main responsibilities with L&L?

My title is CFO, so all the finance aspect is under me, but beyond that I am also spending a lot of my time helping our marketing team as well as (implementing) strategy. So, the two topics that really sparked my interest at Anderson, I get to work on and lead.

Q: It was interesting to hear that the company allows franchisees a lot of latitude to customize their business as they see fit — in contrast to chains that focus on conformity. How does that work?

We provide national, regional and local marketing. The [franchise owners] can do things within in their store and within their budget. But we pool our money at a corporate level and can do radio and TV. We are not like a typical franchise company, we are not doing as much marketing as McDonalds or Burger King is; but instead we are focused on building community, on how we can get the community to come into the store and the marketing efforts that help that.

UCLA Awards Dr. Martine Rothblatt Its Highest Honor: The UCLA Medal

By Paul Feinberg and Carolyn Gray Anderson

In a popular series of television advertisements, a narrator describes the accomplishments of a charismatic swashbuckler, ultimately concluding that the fictional figure is, in fact, “the most interesting man in the world.”

Allow UCLA Anderson’s Dean Judy Olian to set the record straight: “Martine Rothblatt is the most interesting person you will ever meet,” the dean said in welcoming Rothblatt back to Anderson this week.

Rothblatt (B.A. ’77, MBA/J.D. ’81), whose company United Therapeutics is based in Silver Spring, Maryland, returned to UCLA to be honored with the UCLA Medal in a ceremony at the home of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Before the medal ceremony, Rothblatt participated in a lively question and answer chat with Olian as part of UCLA Anderson’s Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series.

In the conversation, Rothblatt credited the interdisciplinary education UCLA afforded her as an undergraduate and graduate student for much of her remarkable success. Named by Forbes as one of the World’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds, Rothblatt leads a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company that has brought life-saving treatments to market. Proudly transgendered, a medical ethicist, recognized as a technology and artificial intelligence pioneer, and now advancing the science of organ and consciousness transplantation, Rothblatt told the UCLA audience — which included UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin and Department of Communications Chair Kerri Johnson — “This is what it looks like to ‘program’ someone with a UCLA curriculum.”

Exclusive: Under Armour Founder/CEO Kevin Plank Talks Leadership

Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour, recently traveled to Los Angeles and the UCLA campus where UCLA Anderson presented him with the 2017 John Wooden Global Leadership Award. After the event, held in Pauley Pavilion, Plank sat down with the UCLA Anderson Blog team to talk about leadership, Under Armour, and his role models. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

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Q: In terms of your leadership style, what was the transition like, in going from entrepreneur and head of a small start-up to manager of a global company?

Number one, I feel like Under Armor is entering Chapter Three of our business. Chapter One was grandma’s basement — just fighting to survive — and Chapter Two was (when) we moved the company to Baltimore, (where) we tried to build a global company, and really worked on being a global brand. Chapter Three moves us to where we are a corporation and you lose the agility that you have as a small company, particularly a small company led by an entrepreneur.

As a small company, I’d see, or we’d smell, problems and I’d be able to have myself or my executive team jump on something and spend time on it. We could work 23 hours in a day, get it fixed and move on. Now the company is just bigger. It doesn’t mean you lose a sense of urgency, but you lose the ability to make as quick of an impact as you’d like. It just takes time, because the only way to get anything done, is by leaning on what I brag so often about, our team, and it has to be that way. I like to say that good leaders have good ideas, great leaders have great ideas and make others think of their own.

How do we position people with the right ideas, but also empower them to actually be able to make a change and create difference? We are a corporation with an entrepreneurial basis, foundation and culture. Hopefully, we can be the best of those two things, because I think every big company is trying to get small, and every small company is trying to get big. I just want to be a great company. 

Q: How would you describe your leadership style but also, if we were to ask your employees, how would they describe your leadership style? 

You’ve got to be careful, because sometimes your whisper can be a roar in an organization. But asked how they would define me, hopefully they’d say I was empowering. I’m not just saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll sit here and figure it out together.’ What you’re truly saying is that I’m just going to define for you what I think success is. And then — if that means meeting in Los Angeles on a Wednesday — I’m not going to tell you how to get there. Whether it’s a train, a plane an automobile or whatever you choose to do, you just have to be there at this time. And that’s the difference between running a larger organization verses a smaller organization.

Microsoft Chairman John W. Thompson Talks Tech Trends, Business Strategy, More

“I don’t think anybody knows what the industry will look like in five years because every eight or ten years there’s an inflection point,” John W. Thompson, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, said when asked how the company’s business will evolve in the next few years. “There’s a pattern of change and it’s difficult to predict.”

Thompson, a Silicon Valley icon who succeeded Bill Gates as chairman of Microsoft in 2014, joined UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian in a wide-ranging conversation Monday before a capacity crowd in Anderson’s Korn Convocation Hall. The event was part of the school’s Robertson Lecture Series on Global Business Leadership, which provides students, staff, faculty and others the opportunity to hear top business leaders discuss issues that affect global business and the political economy. The lecture series is made possible by Chip Robertson (FEMBA ’06) and his family in conjunction with UCLA Anderson's Center for Global Management.

With Olian guiding the hour-long conversation, Thompson touched on a variety of topics. While declining to predict what Microsoft will be like in five years, he did say the company would be guided by three core principles. First, he said, the company would focus on personal computing with a goal of making it easier for people to interact with technology. Second, Microsoft will look to help users become more productive through business enterprise software such as Office and Word. It’s in this realm that Thompson believes many users will feel the effects of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“The third one is obviously the cloud,” Thompson said, noting that in 2014 Microsoft pivoted from protecting its Windows operating system and began shifting emphasis towards the cloud.

Pete Marino Brought His Entrepreneurial Muscle Memory to MillerCoors

By Margaret Bliss

How does one remain entrepreneurial while working in a large company? For UCLA Anderson alumnus Pete Marino (’02), CCO of MillerCoors and president of Tenth and Blake, MillerCoors’ craft and import division, the transition wasn’t all that difficult.

In a discussion with Senior Associate Dean Al Osborne at an event hosted by the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Marino admitted he has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. After a two-year stint with a consulting firm where he honed his business skills, Marino started his own communication firm, Dig Communications. It was his first client, MillerCoors, that helped his company grow to 60 people. Six years later, he sold Dig to Olson PR and stayed on as president before joining MillerCoors as vice president of communications.

The Iceman Comments

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National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15. UCLA Anderson, in conjunction with the Anderson Latino Management Association and the UCLA campus, recognizes the significant contributions to society among our Latino and Hispanic students, alumni, staff and faculty. Visit [email protected] to enjoy their stories.

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By Paul Feinberg

Roberto Sequeira (’07) is pretty used to it by now. While so many of his classmates spend their days dealing with the intricacies of high finance or consulting, he’s selling ice. Assured by a reporter that a forthcoming interview wouldn’t go into anything too deep, he just laughed: “Right,” Sequeira said. “It’s not too complicated.”

Did we say “ice”? Yes, we did.

Sequeira is founder and chief executive officer of Gläce Luxury Ice. The company bills itself as the world’s leading premium-drink ice brand; the product features a zero-taste ice cube that allows consumers to “maximize the beverage experience.” You probably didn’t know that traditional machine ice, typically made with local tap water, may contain impurities and carcinogens that result in lousy tasting ice. Gläce Ice, by contrast, is cleaner and better tasting. Still not sure? Let Sequeira explain:

Q: If I were to ask you for the elevator pitch for your business, what would you say?

Basically, we’re carving out the niche, the top spot in a $4 billion commoditized industry, and the value proposition is simple: While consumers have developed a sense of brand loyalty in just about every other consumer packaged good, ice remained, up until our arrival, an overlooked opportunity. People have preferences in bottled water, vodkas and scotches, but “on the rocks” remained a generic proposition until we came along.