Author: Laura Counts

When a group of undergraduate Haas students wanted more hands-on experience in the startup world, they did what any enterprising entrepreneur would do: created their own startup to provide consulting services to new and growth-phase companies.

Venture Strategy Solutions (VSS), as their consulting club is called, was founded last spring semester by Jamie Core, Francisco Grisolia, and Andrew Lim, all BS 12; and Paulina Ramos and Carolyn Kao, both BS 14. Other organizations such as The Berkeley Group and Net Impact offer students consulting opportunities with large companies and nonprofits, the VSS founders observed, but there was nothing similar for students seeking experience with startups.

"Many of our students are interested in not just consulting but also entrepreneurship," says Lim, the first VSS president. "They want to understand how successful startups are run, and—other than working at a startup—there's no better way to get that than to go inside as a consultant."

The club is working with four or five clients per semester, who students find through networking and cold emailing and calling. Sixty students applied this fall for 17 open slots; the club has a total of 27 student members.

One of the first VSS clients this spring was Zaarly, a local marketplace for services such as holiday decorating and cooking whose funders include Ashton Kutcher and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

Zaarly sought advice on gaining share in the college market. But after numerous focus groups and surveys, VSS students advised the San Francisco company that college students were not ideal customers because of their limited disposable income.

Indeed, Zaarly eventually exited the college market and now focuses on enabling consumers with disposable income but little time to hire others in their local community.

"The VSS students did a lot of user testing and provided some great insight into how students are feeling about the peer-to-peer marketplaces that seem to be popping up all over San Francisco," says Angela Meyer, who headed Zaarly's college program and now works on quality assurance and product. "It was an amazing experience. I love working with students, getting to hear their fresh ideas and voices."

Lim worked on the Zaarly project and served as the project manager for another team of students who advised another client, BrightRoll, the world's largest video advertising network. After graduating this month, he will build on his VSS experiences when he begins a new job in March as a business analyst at Accenture, where he hopes to work with Silicon Valley clients.

"VSS gave me a more realistic perspective of both consulting and startups," says Lim. "When people watch movies like The Social Network they have this glorified view of how things happen. But a lot of it is blood and sweat, and people are working very hard and there's a lot of ambiguity. Being comfortable working with the ambiguity is something I learned from VSS and something we expect a lot of our consultants to learn."

Visit the Venture Strategy Solutions website

Mechanical engineer Lindsay Miller, PhD 12, knew there was a market for her doctoral thesis project—a device the size of a stick of gum that harvests energy from machinery vibrations, generating enough electricity to run wireless sensors without ever having to change a battery.

The potential is huge, since large networks of wireless sensors are expected to gain widespread adoption for a range of uses, including measuring the temperature of equipment in data centers, where Miller’s devices can be attached directly to servers to harvest their vibrations into energy. Miller’s prototype featured several key innovations, but how long would it take for the market to develop? Who were the potential customers? What price points would she have to hit? Those were questions the busy post-doc had neither the time—nor the expertise—to answer.

Enter Cleantech to Market (C2M), which pairs UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists with full-time Berkeley MBA and other graduate students from across UC Berkeley who are passionate about clean energy. C2M began in 2008 with the efforts of leaders in the Berkeley Energy Resources Collaborative, an interdisciplinary student club, including co-chair Naveen Sikka, MBA 09, who teamed up with LBNL’s Technology Transfer Department to create the program. C2M, which was turned into a course to satisfy the full-time MBA experiential learning requirement, now attracts several dozen scientist applications for 8 to 12 slots. C2M also has built the Berkeley Energy Network, a curated and searchable database of 1,000 subject-matter experts who act as resources and mentors to the teams.

“The whole industry is pretty nascent. It’s only been five years that that we have seen investment in the billions, and we are growing along with it,” says C2M Co-director Beverly Alexander, a former PG&E executive. “For example, we have an increasing number of outstanding guest speakers address the class from industry, government, and academia. And we started a new case study series on clean energy, beginning with a case on Alphabet Energy, which was recently published in the California Management Review.”

Each scientist works with five graduate students—three MBA students and two from programs in engineering, science, law and policy—who take an intensive course and produce a detailed report on market potential based on 750 hours of research. This fall’s course culminated Friday, Nov. 30, when the teams presented their work at C2M’s annual public symposium, which attracted more than 200 registered attendees.

Although C2M focuses equally on licensing technologies and refining research objectives, companies also arise from the program. C2M’s first startup, Imprint Energy, which is pioneering printable and rechargeable zinc batteries, launched in 2010. Another startup, Xite Solar, won a Department of Energy competition last spring, and several other projects have received outside funding.

“Mother Nature is going to make it abundantly clear that we need these solutions and we need them yesterday,” says Brian Steel, who this year joined Beverly Alexander as C2M co-director after 30 years as an executive in the private sector, including CEO of Idealab Silicon Valley. “But one of the biggest challenges the sector has faced is from products being introduced that aren’t ready for market—or the market not being ready for the product.”

With Berkeley’s reputation at the leading edge of energy research, C2M also has become a magnet for ambitious business students interested in cleantech.

“C2M is the reason a lot of my energy peers are here. It’s the capstone class for us,” says Chris Tan, MBA 13, who led the team that worked with Miller on her energy harvester last fall. “Every scientist gets a reframing of how their technology fits in the big picture, and every student in the class is extremely passionate about this area. It’s been really rewarding.”

To support talented first-year full-time  MBA students pursuing careers in investment management, the Haas School this year launched an Investment Management Fellowship Program that includes a scholarship and mentoring.

Five students from the class of 2014 were selected as investment management fellows for exhibiting strong interest in the field and good citizenship as representatives of Haas: Felipe Gonzalez; Andrew Krowne; Nick Shea; Bryan Wong; and Eric Yanagi. The fellows receive a one-time $5,000 scholarship, preference in finance electives, and matching with a mentor in the field (typically a Haas alum).  The new investment management (IM) program is modeled on the school's successful Investment Banking Fellowship Program, now in its seventh year.

“We’ve seen over the past several years what a huge help these resources have been to our Investment Banking Fellows, and meanwhile we saw increasing interest in Investment Management among our students,” says Bill Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs for the Haas Finance Group. “This new Investment Management Fellowship was an obvious step to replicate success. With some very high-placed alumni in the field already engaged with Haas and interested in helping our students, the mentor component of the fellowship came together very nicely.”  

One fellow, Krowne, comes from investment banking and was interested in what he describes as a change from the advisory side of the business to the active management side. “At the end of the day the market confirms or rejects your every decision in investment management,” he adds. Krowne particularly looks forward to making decisions around distressed assets and higher-yield credit.

“In this field, you have to have year-over-year success to build a reputation,” says Krowne. “To be paired with a senior leader in the industry who has already established this kind of track record is the most valuable aspect of the program.”

Candidates for the fellowships applied in early October, submitting a resume and a cover letter to demonstrate relevant experience and knowledge of the field.  Select applicants were then interviewed by a second-year student with industry experience, and the final selections were made by a committee representing the Career Management Group, Full-time Berkeley MBA Admissions, the Full-time Berkeley MBA Program Office, and the Finance Group.

Students also were recently selected for the Investment Banking Fellows program. The new class of IB fellows consists of Mor Ben Efraim, Yusuf Kazi, Landon Mizuguchi, and Steve Willis, all MBA 14.

For the fifth time since 2005, a Berkeley MBA team has won the Elite Eight Brand Management Case Competition at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

The Berkeley-Haas team that brought home the gold at this year's competition Nov. 3 consisted of Alison Brock, Shana Horak Hawley, and Krishna Shah, all MBA 13; and Stephanie Curran and Ellen Vanderwilt, both MBA 14.

Berkeley-Haas bested Kellogg, Wharton, and Fuqua in a challenge to identify and rationalize the consumer target for Best Buy Mobile, smaller stand-alone storefronts that sell mobile devices and accessories and are typically located in high-traffic malls.

The Haas team built a story around a consumer target or “protagonist”: a woman in the “sandwich” generation considering smart-phone purchases both for her teenaged children and her older parents.

“Rather than forming hypotheses about Best Buy Mobile and then backing insights in to support those hypotheses, we used tools we learned in our PFPS (Problem Finding, Problem Solving) class to diverge for the first half of our allotted time,” says Horak Hawley, referring to an idea-generation practice called "diverging" in PFPS parlance. “Then, when we started to converge on Friday morning, our solution and recommendation couldn't have been more clear or unanimous.”

Shah adds that the team brought the story to life by describing its protagonist’s decision and purchase cycle and offering recommendations focused on the target consumer's specific needs.

Not having time to conduct a field visit, the team reached out on Facebook during their diverging period to gather insights. “We asked friends and family to describe how they purchase new cell phones,” says Shah. “We also conducted a considerable amount of research on how people within our target consumer market go about making new technology decisions.”

Not only did the team cram thorough research into the 24 hours they had to meet the challenge, they prepared before ever leaving Haas, working through a sample case before boarding the plane to Minneapolis later the same day.

The students credit their success to the team dynamic, “particularly the all-female nature of the group,” says Horak Hawley. The Haas curriculum also played a role in “coming together to give us a competitive advantage.”

"Tools from Problem Finding, Problem Solving allowed us to approach the question, reframe it, and think about it differently than other schools," Horak Hawley adds  "Of course, our team’s ability to question the status quo–and provide a recommendation that differed from Best Buy’s current strategy–helped us stand apart.”

The team also extends its thanks to faculty advisors Bill Pearce, a Haas lecturer and former chief marketing officer for Del Monte, and David Riemer, Haas executive-in-residence and former Yahoo marketing VP.

Elite Eight winners Krishna Shah, Alison Brock, Stephanie Curran, Ellen Vanderwilt, and Shana Horak Hawley.

Ten teams of Berkeley MBA students were challenged this month to play an advisory role in what could be the world’s most far-reaching corporate sustainability initiative: Wal-Mart’s efforts to green its massive supply chain.

The second annual Leading for Impact Challenge, held Nov. 9 at Haas, featured a case that centered on Wal-Mart’s well-publicized partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to implement a sustainability index for its suppliers, who account for 90 percent of its environmental impact and serve more than 10,000 stores in 27 different countries.

The competition was sponsored by the Haas chapter of Net Impact, an international nonprofit that focuses on leadership for environmental and social responsibility.  The goal of the competition this year was to tackle a real-world problem, says Will Hewes, MBA 13, who co-organized the event with Katie DeWitt, MBA 12.

“This is the first year that we held a ‘live action’ case competition where we’ll be actually delivering the results to Wal-Mart and EDF to inform their work,” says Hewes, who, through a Walmart Fellowship sponsored by the Center for Responsible Business, traveled to Bentonville, Ark., with DeWitt for a meeting with Wal-Mart buyers in preparation for the case and an ongoing project with the company. “I think these insights will be used, and at the very least start some conversations and send Wal-Mart and EDF down some new paths.”

The winning team included Laura Tilghman, Vietlong Le, Yonathan Shiran, and Eliza Rosenbaum, all MBA 14, who took home $500 for their day’s work. Students were asked to focus on the specific issues faced by Wal-Mart's dairy buyers—high-level managers who make multimillion-dollar decisions about the products that will end up in stores. The buyers are charged with rolling out the sustainability index in a complex industry that includes significant environmental challenges and layers of intermediary businesses.

Shiran said his team took a practical approach to the case, evaluating changes on an impact-versus-feasibility matrix. "The main thing we learned is that even problems that seem huge at first, such as ‘making Wal-Mart's supply chain greener,’ can be tackled efficiently if broken down to smaller, more digestible problems," Shiran says.

Judges included leaders from Wal-Mart and the Environmental Defense Fund;  Jo Mackness, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business; Nora Silver, director of the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership; and Tony Kingsbury, former director of the Haas Sustainable Products and Solutions Program and now a consultant focusing on sustainable chemistry.

For more information on Net Impact, visit haas.campusgroups.com/netimpact.

Students in this fall’s Managing the New Product Development Process course are proposing solutions to problems that consumers face from head to toe: from the serial shoe buying required of parents of growing children, to the angst that plagues those who spend their days typing and swiping on electronic devices.

The prototypes for their solutions will be on display at the course’s annual trade show, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, in the Bank of America Forum.

The course requires teams of engineering and business students to develop a new product or service from concept through prototype over the course of a semester. Coaches from major design firms provide each team with in-depth feedback along the way. Taught by Mark Martin, CEO of design consulting firm design4x, the course is offered jointly with the College of Engineering.

“Going through the product development process, we were forced to start with a focus on the problem instead of on a specific solution we thought might work,” says John Ready, a PhD student in nuclear engineering who worked on the children’s shoe product. “The course introduced us to the design-thinking process and provided us methods to draw a comprehensive picture of our problem.” 

Ready said his five group members, who have seven children between them, were frustrated by constantly replacing lightly worn shoes to accommodate growing feet. The group is now prototyping three products aimed at saving parents money and reducing the impact of repeat shoe buying.

Another group took on more abstract problem: the feelings of emptiness, anxiety, and restlessness brought on by heavy technology use. Yet during their initial ethnographic research, the students discovered that people did not want to give up any technology they relied on.

“They were stressed out about reducing their use, so we decided to focus on behavior change,” said Sanjay Sharma, MBA 13.

The students developed three prototypes, including a smartphone app that requires users to take deep breaths to unlock their phones and charts their progress, a tool for friends to record short motivational videos to help a user achieve a goal, and a wireless “social squeeze” stress ball, that would allow users to transmit their emotions to their social network and receive responses.

A handful of companies started by Haas alumni can trace their beginnings to products developed in the class in past years, including Revolution Foods (class of 2006) and PACT Apparel (class of 2008).  

Thanks in part to efforts by Haas staff and fellow classmates, the entire 2013 class of the Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program has been placed in internships around the world.

The winter internships, which run from mid-October to mid-January, are giving the school's 66  MFE students the opportunity to apply theory learned in the classroom to real-world situations and challenges within top financial firms.

MFE Executive Director Linda Kreitzman works virtually around the clock to ensure every student lands an internship. MFE students also help each other with advice on cover letters and interviewing.

Andrew Alden (pictured right), for instance, helped several classmates with interviewing techniques and cover letter writing.

"Despite our class being very competitive, when it comes to finding jobs and internships, I've been very pleasantly surprised that the atmosphere is very collaborative. Students really do support each other," says Alden. "I have helped a few people with the cover letters, especially students who are not from the U.S. I've also helped advise people on how to interview better."

Alden has a successful track record with both cover letters and interviews: Before coming to Berkeley to earn an MFE, he spent five years working in finance in the Bay Area and Chicago. Alden, who grew up in Canada, is currently working in Toronto as an intern with CPP Investment Board, which manages the $165.8 billion Canada Pension Plan.

Nearly half of the MFE class—31 students—landed internships in NY, the largest number in a single location. The companies hiring the most MFE students as interns this year were Blackrock (6 interns), Morgan Stanley (5), Standard & Poor's (5), Citi (4), Moody’s (4), and RBC (4). Other firms where students are gaining hands-on learning include BNP Paribas, Tudor Investments, CalPERS, and Goldman Sachs.

A few students are working in Asia, for Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

MFE interns are earning an average $7,500 per month.