Jad Esber (MBA 2020) and Bryce DeFigueiredo (MBA 2021) talk to Jason Calacanis. Jason is an entrepreneur and legendary angel investor. In the dot-com era, he started a company called Weblogs, Inc., which he sold to AOL. Later, he got into angel investing and invested at the earliest stages in companies such as Uber, Thumbtack, and Calm.

Topics on this episode include:

- How Jason learned where power resides and how wealth is created

- His philosophy on capitalism and building companies

- His advice to MBA founders

- Why we all need to learn to take more risks

Jad Esber (MBA 2020) speaks with Eric Paley (MBA 2003) about his career as a startup founder and venture capitalist. Eric is a managing partner at Founder Collective, an early stage venture fund in Boston. In this episode, Eric tells stories from his days as a founder and gives advice on working with co-founders and VCs.

Today's guest is Karen Mills, a professor at the TEM (The Entrepreneurial Manager) unit at Harvard Business School. Karen was the administrator of the US Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013, serving as a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. She is also a venture capitalist and private equity partner, and the author of Fintech, Small Business, & The American Dream. 

Topics:

Quotes:

"A meeting is not an outcome. Once you say okay, this is an outcome we want to get to, then we can say: how do we reverse-engineer success?"

"Small businesses play a critical role in the economy and in the social fabric of our lives."

"When your friend gets a great job, I say to everyone, think: good for them, irrelevant to me."

In today’s episode, we speak with Joel Peterson, current chairman of JetBlue and Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Joel’s career got a big boost from being the CEO and CFO of the world’s largest real estate development company, after which he left to start a private equity firm.

Tune in to hear us discuss Joel’s experiences working as the chairman of JetBlue and how his career path has been quite serendipitous.

Topics: 

Quotes:

“Early on in my career... I learned that you can’t talk your way out of problems you behaved your way into.”

“This was a $750 Million decision for a little start-up airline, so we knew we had to get this terminal right.”

“It would be hard to run a business without people trusting you.” 

Resources:

JetBlue