The Ross School of Business may not hold many classes on Fridays, but about 350 students still showed up bright and early on Friday to attend Entrepalooza, the school’s annual entrepreneurial symposium.
Entrepalooza 2012: “Innovation in Many Forms” featured speeches by successful University alumni, panel discussions and networking opportunities for the young aspiring businesswomen and men.
Anil Arora — a Business alum and president and CEO of Yodlee, a personal financial management solutions company geared toward large fiscal institutions — received the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year Award and delivered the keynote address. During his speech, he said the most important key to success is confidence in one’s abilities.
In an interview after the event, Arora said entrepreneurs at the University play a crucial role in shaping American society because they are redefining innovative ventures that will occur for the next 50 years.
“They’re the engine for growth,” Arora said. “If you look at where the value is created in the economy, it’s primarily coming from entrepreneurs.”
Business graduate student Karthik Raman said Arora’s speech was a refreshing change of pace from most of the speeches he hears from corporate professionals, which are primarily focused on business tactics.
“It’s good every once in a while to get that motivational speech of ‘believe in yourself to do something big,’” Raman said.
After the keynote address, students broke into four panel discussions, including one titled “Launching While at School,” where attendees discussed the challenges and benefits of creating a start-up while still attending college.
Tyler Paxton, a Business alum and founder and CEO of Are You a Human? — a technology company that replaces CAPTCHAs, the human verifications that websites use to prohibit computer responses, with more entertaining games — said he agreed to be a panelist for the event because the University has been a great resource for him over the years.
“We’re Michiganders at heart and we love to give back,” Paxton said. “It’s good to see students engaged and really excited about entrepreneurship.”
Other panelists and University alumni included Eric Ersher, the co-founder and CEO of the popular chain restaurant Zoup!, Tony Grover, the co-founder and managing director of RPM Ventures, an early stage venture firm that invests primarily in Information Technologies, and Jeff Weedman, vice president of global business development at the Proctor & Gamble company.
Business graduate student Thomas Polzin said he attended the seminar to try to take advantage of the University’s resources in his quest to start his own company.
“It’s always good to hear from the horse’s mouth,” Polzin said. “I definitely learn by doing and by action, and these guys have been there so I learned from them.”
Genevieve Sparby, a part-time MBA student, said she has attended the event for four years and thinks it provides a great opportunity to network and share ideas.
“Some of the students I’ve seen before in previous years,” Sparby said. “It’s neat to see how they’ve progressed in forming the venture and where they are now.”
MBA student Amaryllia Liu said she was interested to see if it would be feasible to switch careers from law to a start-up in the food industry, and was inspired by one of the panelists who faced a similar situation in the past.
“It’s promising to see that there are people who have been successful who are also U of M grads,” Liu said.