UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Top 10 Ways a UCLA Anderson MBA Helps You at an Early-Stage Tech Startup

Textpert founder Neama Dadkhahnikoo (far left) and his team at work

By Neama Dadkhahnikoo (’14)

As the chief operating officer of Textpert (www.textpertapp.co), a smartphone app that provides quick, crowd-sourced advice for how to respond to texts that have you stumped, I wear many hats every day. Whether it’s fundraising, product development, growth marketing or startup strategy, I have to be ready for any new challenges the startup world throws in our direction. Thankfully, my MBA from UCLA Anderson has proven itself handy time and again. Here are the top 10 aspects of an MBA from UCLA Anderson that have helped me, and Textpert, get to where we are today:

1. Learning how to build a 17-tab financial model with dynamic growth assumptions to impress number-crunching investors.
2. Entrepreneurial classes that taught me how to evaluate an opportunity, size a market and write a bullet-proof pitch deck.
3. Dozens of chances to practice and perfect my pitching and public speaking skills — so that I can shine whether speaking to a crowd or to an individual angel investor
4. Having world-class VCs, industry leaders and startup veterans who were my professors and fellow alumni just a phone call away
5. A student ID with no expiration date that allows me to return to campus to speak with college students every week, providing invaluable first-hand feedback from our target audience (don’t leak this to the dean)
6. Technology classes that help me understand rapid iteration, product-market fit, and the fact that analytics and customer insights are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup
7. An active and robust alumni network through both UCLA and UCLA Anderson, giving me access to amazing connections with a wide array of experience and expertise
8. Soft skill classes that taught me how to build and manage a team, persuade VCs to invest and influence customer behavior
9. Using the many collaborative spaces at Anderson as my own rent-free incubator after graduation (seriously, don’t tell the dean)
10. Lifelong friendships with brilliant classmates who open doors, make introductions and invest in my startup

As we say in the startup world, UCLA Anderson helped me pivot my life from ordinary to extraordinary.

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Neama Dadkhahnikoo is chief operating officer at Textpert. Download his app at www.textpertapp.co and give him some customer feedback at [email protected].

UCLA Launches Anderson Venture Accelerator: The Next Big Idea in Big Ideas

Enjoy photos of the Anderson Venture Accelerator launch

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By Andy Tillman

Imagine crossing the bridge of time and bringing together Henry Ford’s efficiency, Thomas Edison’s brilliance, Benjamin Franklin’s practicality and Steve Jobs’ imagination into one room, putting all of the necessary accoutrements within arm’s reach … Oh, what might have been.

The launch of UCLA’s Anderson Venture Accelerator doesn’t get us any closer to time travel — yet — but it does, most profoundly, make it a place where future Franklins, Jobses, Fords and Edisons can think and talk and grow ideas that just might change the world.

The Anderson Venture Accelerator is a 10,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility designed in association with the UCLA Library, for collaboration among aspiring Anderson entrepreneurs, students in the undergraduate minor in entrepreneurship and campus researchers, with mentoring from alumni, entrepreneurs and the business community. Part living room, part laboratory, part conference center, the accelerator is a center where the various disciplines that make up the UCLA community can come together to bring new ideas and opportunities to life.

The accelerator’s launch was celebrated on UCLA Anderson’s Alumni Plaza, where an impressive roster of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, faculty, students and alumni gathered for an official opening. Dean Judy Olian led the inauguration, referring to the accelerator as a “living lab offering students and researchers an environment that triggers innovation and breakthrough ventures. It brings together students and faculty from across UCLA, including health and computer sciences, engineering and humanities, to develop new ventures, share success, think fearlessly and drive change.”

UCLA Anderson Launches Campuswide Venture Accelerator, Cadillac Rewards UCLA Entrepreneurs

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Today UCLA Anderson is launching the new Anderson Venture Accelerator, a state-of-the-art facility that encourages students, faculty and alumni to develop new business concepts together. Anderson, in association with the UCLA Library, designed the accelerator for multidisciplinary collaboration among aspiring Anderson entrepreneurs, students in the undergraduate minor in entrepreneurship and campus researchers, with mentoring from alumni, entrepreneurs and the business community.

“UCLA Anderson is delighted to see the realization of this exciting living lab to further enhance the UCLA entrepreneurial ecosystem,” says UCLA Anderson Dean Judy Olian. “The UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator offers students and researchers an environment that triggers innovation and breakthrough ventures. It brings together students and faculty from across UCLA, including the health and computer sciences, engineering and the humanities to develop new ventures.”

UCLA Anderson Venture Accelerator Is the Product of a Rich History of Entrepreneurialism

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By Bryce Edmonds

Entrepreneurship is an essential part of the UCLA Anderson DNA. Consider:

It’s a school named for a successful entrepreneur, John E. Anderson; with a building called Entrepreneurs Hall; which houses the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation; with the oldest business plan competition in the nation, the Knapp Venture Competition; a school that, now, in its world-class Rosenfeld Library, houses the state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot Anderson Venture Accelerator — it’s gotta be in the UCLA Anderson water.

The Anderson Venture Accelerator, launching January 25, will be an integral part of UCLA’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, creating a communal space for the university’s numerous schools — professional and undergraduate — to come together and develop world-changing ideas. “It’s not common for universities in the United States to have their different schools all physically located so close together and to have such easy access for faculty, researchers and students across them all to interact,” says Elaine Hagan (’91), executive director of the Price Center. “It allows for interesting collaborations across departments to occur. And solutions to the world’s problems are often at the intersection of departments.”

With co-working space for 45 people, a presentation area with the latest audio/video capability, and access to Anderson’s research librarians as well as guest speakers, topical seminars and “demo days” for resident companies, Anderson students will have the opportunity to seek out new ideas across campus, create and grow their own opportunities and develop the skills necessary to create and expand their businesses.

“We want to be a service to the whole campus, and we’re starting right here in our own backyard,” says Al Osborne, Jr., senior associate dean and professor of global economics, management and entrepreneurship. “At UCLA, there’s over $1 billion spent on research every year, and a lot of that research increasingly involves intellectual capital that can be exploited for those inventors. The accelerator represents an opportunity to pull those silos together here at the Anderson School.”

The ideal collaboration, Hagan and Osborne agree, would involve established researchers from the sciences, or creative undergraduates teaming with business students and professionals to commercialize the kinds of technologies that save lives or advance access to crucial information.

The Basics of Venture Capitalism

By Nathan Moorman

UCLA Anderson’s Entrepreneur Association kicked off their Venture Capital Speaker Series with a talk by UCLA Anderson Lecturer Jon Funk, founder of Ocean Road.

Funk, a professional venture capitalist who’s worked in Southern California since the 1980s, has invested in dozens of companies and openly admits to being a “paid member of the Dark Side,” as he puts it.

While students snacked on pizza, Funk dove into the origins of venture capital and its growth on the back of innovation in electronics, along with a broad overview of what venture capital is. He went into the effects of the dot-com boom and its huge, negative effect on venture capitalism — from which it’s only just now recovering.