Time, Talent & Treasure
I am a former Trustee, alumna, parent, donor and longtime community member of a non-profit organization that’s mission is “changing lives for good” through the the community’s gifts of time, talent and treasure. As a hundred-plus year old organization with a diverse group of alumni, staff and trustees, we strive for our community to give beyond dollars (treasure) and to pay it forward with their time and talents. This mission is something I deeply believe in beyond this particular non-profit and extends into my personal and professional life; and it’s something I value and look for in the people I work with.
If you follow me on Twitter, you know we just wrapped up an eight day Startup Bootcamp at Harvard Business School (HBS). This program was brought to life four years ago by my mentor and friend, Professor Tom Eisenmann who recognized a growing need for our first year MBA students to explore their startup ideas and understand the world of entrepreneurship through experiential learning. First year HBS students enroll in a prescribed curriculum known as their Required Course year, and these students are referred to as “RCs”. RCs wanting to start companies, learn about joining startups and/or venture capital have limited time outside of classes and other school-related activities to pursue these interests in their first year. The advent of Startup Bootcamp created that time and programming to explore before their second (“Elective Course”) year. Approximately 200 students take time out of their January break to return to Boston to immerse themselves in startup land. Startup Bootcamp is free to enrolled students and is seen as a Pass/Fail course on their transcripts.
Those who know HBS, know our primary teaching approach is via the case method. This is an excellent way to help our students understand the complexities and challenges of business through the lens of a diverse set of protagonists and companies around the world. Many of our course sessions for each of the hundreds of cases our students read invite the protagonists into the classroom to discuss their perspective and “what happened after the case” with our students. This time with these leaders is invaluable to students and often the leaders get as much out of the experience as they impart their wisdom and share lessons learned.
In the past few decades we have introduced more field courses to complement the case method with a learn-by-doing approach. Like our live case discussion with protagonists, the HBS field courses tap into some of the top entrepreneurs and industry experts in the world. Startup Bootcamp is no exception! In order to pull off an intense eight days of programming, we drew in over 70 guests throughout the week. These guests did everything from keynote talks and serving on panels to offering hours of coaching time and workshops. Each guest donated their valuable time, treasure (many paying their own way to travel from all over the US) and immeasurable talent to be part of this program. Our students were blown away with the level of high quality content each guest provided and all were so grateful for every ounce of insight they received on their ideas, their teams and their future as entrepreneurs, joiners of startups and members of the venture capital community.
Tagging over seventy people is well above the maximum limit for most social media platforms, so herewith, a hearty THANK YOU to all of the guests who joined us last week. We absolutely could not have done it without you!
Finally, it takes a village to pull off such an intense program that took months and many hours of planning and an average of twelve hours a day over eight straight days to orchestrate. Hats off to my co-instructors, Allison Mnookin and Martin Sinozich for being great collaborators, to Jacey Taft and Sneha Pham for their tireless support throughout many twists and turns and to our outstanding Teaching Assistants — now second year MBA students and Bootcamp alumni — Gaby Goldstein, Jad Esber & Ollie Osunkunle. Best team ever!
Interested in learning more? Listen to what our students and faculty have said about the program in this video and check out our Instagram page!
