What are the behaviors that set winning entrepreneurs apart? What are the skills behind those behaviors, and how can they be learned and honed? Join Jerry McLaughlin (Penn ’85) for an engaging presentation on the five fundamental practices of successful entrepreneurs—based on his more than 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship. Jerry is co-founder and CEO of Branders.com, the largest interactive and lowest-priced promotional products source in the world, headquartered in California with operations in The Philippines, China, and Mexico. He and his family recently returned from four years in Manila and Beijing. Previously, Jerry worked at Altos Ventures, a prestigious venture capital firm; served as CEO of Enwisen, the first Internet-based clearinghouse of employee benefit information between insurers and large employers; and practiced law in the heart of Silicon Valley, representing high-flying tech companies at the height of the dot.com boom.
When: Tuesday, November 15th, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Where: JMHH 345
Monday, Oct. 17 at 12 pm in JMHH 365.
Come meet with Austin Ligon, the founder of CarMax, and listen to his story about starting and growing a successful company. Austin is currently an angel investor and will share his advice with students on entrepreneurship.
Bio:
Austin Ligon, along with then CEO of Circuit City Rick Sharp, founded CarMax in 1993. He is currently enjoying his retirement and encouraging new entrepreneurs as an angel investor. Ligon led the company from its inception within Circuit City through 2006.
The primary focus of Ligon’s community involvement is education. He is a member of the governing boards of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company (UVIMCO), and St. John’s College (Annapolis and Santa Fe). He is advisory board chairman of the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins University, and an advisory board member of the Yale School of Management. He serves on the board of several venture start-up companies.
CarMax:
CarMax, Inc. is the U.S.’s largest retailer of used cars. The company operates 103 used car superstores in 49 markets throughout the country. CarMax will sell nearly 600,000 retail and wholesale cars, and record total revenues of nearly $9 billion in the current fiscal year. At over $85 million in sales per store, CarMax used car superstores are among the highest volume retail stores in the U.S. CarMax, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (KMX) and was named one of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” for the sixth consecutive year in 2010.
For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Ligon
Roger Dickey (Angel Investor and former GM of Zygna), Taso Du Val (CEO of TopTal) and Andrew Masanto and Gael Breton (Directors at Higher Click SEO Company) and will be coming to Wharton on the 11th October 2011 to share their knowledge on “Skills For Growing An Online Business - SEO, Social Media and Hiring Good Tech Talent”.
If you have ever had an aspiration to start or lead a web based business, or if you simply want a better understanding of how to enhance the internet or web presence for a bricks and mortar business, this is a talk not to miss.
Details of the talk topics and the individual speakers are below.
Roger Dickey
Roger Dickey is a serial entrepreneur & angel investor. Roger’s first company was an Airbnb for tutoring, started in Austin in 2006. His foray into the game industry began in 2007, when he started a facebook app company and worked quickly, building 19 apps with the largest game driving over 10M daily pageviews. Within 8 months, this startup was bought by Zynga, and Roger went on to found Mafia Wars which reached 45.5M users by 2010. He also founded FishVille and 5 other titles in his 3 years at Zynga. Lastly, Roger served as an international product team advisor for Zynga, helping the company grow their games in India, Japan and China. Since leaving Zynga he has started a new company in San Francisco.
Alongside his work at Zynga, Roger began angel investing and advising startups in June 2010. His investments include Facebook, Addepar, DotCloud, E La Carte, Internmatch, HiGear, Ecomom, Speakertext, Wanderfly and more.
Roger will be speaking on the topic of “How to de-risk your startup”.
Taso Du Val
As an early and lead engineer at Fotolog (Acquired by Hi-Media for $100m), Slide (Acquired by Google for $228m), and his own companies, Taso has had a wealth of experience in hiring top tech, management and engineering talent. His most recent business - TopTal brings this ability to hire to the forefront of innovative businesses all over the world. While running a small engineering consulting firm, Taso recognized that while many of his co-workers overseas were just as good as his friends and colleagues at Google, Facebook, and other companies with notable top engineering talent, it was simply impossible to find more of them. TopTal was thus created as a solution to the sky-rocketing demand for top engineers in Silicon Valley, US, and Europe despite the shrinking local graduation rates of such engineers.
Taso will be discussing the ins and outs of hiring tech talent for your business - be that start up or international conglomerate. He’ll also touch upon the different types of entrepreneurial routes one can take and what sort of lifestyles they lead to.
Andrew Masanto and Gael Breton
Andrew Masanto and Gael Breton are co-founders of Higher Click. Andrew and Gael successfully founded and ran several online companies, including Height Increasing Altitude Shoes, the UK’s largest online retailer of mens Elevator Shoes. The success of their businesses came from SEO and PPC work, which led to their current SEO Company - Higher Click. Many of their companies and clients (which include the likes of Atari.com, Flippa.com and others) now rank at the top of Google for competitive keywords.
Andrew and Gael will be talking about Search Engine Optimisation and getting the most out of your website.
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