TEACHING & LEARNING
Custom Builder Has
Designs on Future
Powers of Concentration: Wharton's Undergraduate Entrepreneurs
OUTREACH
Between
a Rocket and a Hard Place
Faces of Wharton Entrepreneurship
RESEARCH
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Teaching
Powers of Concentration: Wharton's Undergraduate
Entrepreneurs
Some Wharton undergraduates taking a second concentration in Entrepreneurship seem to have entrepreneurship as part of their genetic code. In fact, a surprising number are applying their new knowledge to enterprises they have already launched.
Wharton junior Ari Meisel has been concentrating in entrepreneurship since he started his first company at the age of 14, a web design firm, Liontex. While ordering take-out food one night, he came up with the idea for Menus-To-Go (www.dialfood.com), an online directory of take-out and fast-food menus, which he launched with two friends. Finally, he created TEK, a technology consulting group that helps install high-tech computing and multimedia systems in homes, cars and boats. Last year, Junior Achievement named him one of the top eight young entrepreneurs in the country.
With this kind of experience in the school of hard knocks, what is he doing studying entrepreneurship at Wharton? "I almost didn't come to college," he admitted. "But I love this school. I gain a lot of value in being around like minded people."
This is why Meisel, who serves as co-chair of the Wharton Dean's Undergraduate Advisory Board, was a driving force behind the creation of a new undergraduate second concentration in entrepreneurship at Wharton last year. The concentration in entrepreneurship is a second concentration, so students combine it with a primary concentration in a specific business discipline such as finance or marketing. In Meisel's case, his first concentration is real estate, which could help him pursue one of his yet-unfulfilled dreams. "I want to be a developer and build big buildings," he said.
The secondary concentration in entrepreneurship not only helps him to obtain a seat in entrepreneurial courses but also identifies him as a part of a community of students with a similar passion. "I love being around the people here and hearing their ideas and hearing what is wrong with my ideas," he said. "Externally, it might seem that entrepreneurs are independent and private people, but entrepreneurs are a community."
Feedback from classmates and faculty is particularly important for someone who gets "20-30 ideas a day" and is already working on a couple of new ventures. While he may spend a little less time on classwork ("I'm not going to apply to Goldman Sachs," he says pragmatically), Meisel is Co-chair of the undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, works on projects with three professors, and serves as a consultant to small businesses for Wharton's Small Business Development Center. He only sleeps about five hours a night, which is an improvement from the three hours he got in high school. "It was harder to run three businesses in high school than it is in college," he said.
Financial
Entrepreneurship
The new second concentration in entrepreneurship also has allowed Wharton junior Mike Stahl to combine his two passions: finance and entrepreneurship. Stahl, who began investing in the stock market in fourth grade, wrote a book on finance for teenagers that was published during his freshman year at Wharton. The book, Early To Rise: A Young Adult's Guide to Investing... and Financial Decisions That Can Shape Your Life, led to coverage by National Public Radio, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and a speaking tour of middle schools, high schools and universities across the United States.
"For me, doing finance and entrepreneurship at Wharton is a perfect fit," he said. "It was exactly what I needed."
It was Stahl's interest in financial education that led him into his latest entrepreneurial venture, StreetSage. As he was looking at existing stock market games aimed at younger people, he recognized that most are too simplistic. They don't include complexities such as trading fees or capital gains taxes. They also don't have enough research to allow students to practice thoroughly researching their investments. Finally, the games tend to promote a short-term focus that leads to day trading and risky investments.
Stahl thought he could do better. Building on his experience with computer simulation games such as SimCity, he worked with friends and Penn classmates to develop a game that would provide a more realistic investment experience. They launched a pilot in Philadelphia schools in the fall and will be working with the Kansas Securities Commissioner's office on a statewide pilot in Stahl's home state of Kansas in 2003.
It is not just building the business that keeps him fired up. It is also his commitment to making an impact on other young people. "It is very fulfilling and intellectually stimulating to create and build an idea from thin air into an actual company," he said. "We have an opportunity to effectively educate thousands of students across the country about an important life skill. That makes you feel good."
Of course, once these active entrepreneurs arrive at Wharton, it sometimes isn't easy to keep them in the classroom. Stahl is taking a semester off this spring to travel around the United States to meet with potential partners for StreetSage, primarily government and private organizations that promote financial education. While his classmates may look for jobs, he is hoping to build a position for himself from the ground up. But he'll be back at Wharton to finish up. "I'm coming back next year," he said. "And I hope the business will be on a nice footing when I come out of college next year."
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