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Entrepreneurship Education for Engineers Who Don’t Want to Be Entrepreneurs at MIT

by Larry Chiang on March 16, 2012

Larry Chiang crashed a school and became a VIP. He took business school classes before he graduated engineering school. He now teaches at Stanford Engineering on “technology entrepreneurship”. It is also the focus of his Bloomberg BusinessWeek channel “What They Don’t Teach You at Business School”. He loves being street smart. After Chiang’s Harvard Law keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“ (it’s the same title as his NY Times bestseller). He is Entrepreneur in Residence at Stanford University. If you read his hilariously awesome “What a Supermodel Can Teach a Stanford MBA” and “How to Get Man-Charm”, you will like his latest post even more that you loved the Duck9 rebate:

Entrepreneur Education for Engineers Who Do NOT Want to Be Founders.

By Larry Chiang

Entrepreneurship as a career is rocky.

Entrepreneurial skills are unquestionable extremely valuable.

Let’s explore “Entrepreneurship Education for Engineers Who Don’t Want to Be Entrepreneurs at MIT”

Currently, entrepreneurship is overly influenced by VC. VCs need a whale like Zynga, facebook or Duck9. This thwarts your entrepreneurship education. Your engineering entrepreneurship education should be octagonally faceted.

#1 of 8) Be entrepreneurial in your internship search

I had a theory that led to my teaching at Stanford. Teaching in the engineering school, not the business school. My theory is that once you enter Stanford you should plan for “Three Legendary Internships In a Row“.

#2 of 8) HiLarryAss Entrepreneurship Skills

Have you seen pop up stores in NYC.

It’s a temp store that sells something fashionable or does a trunk show. Key to it is that its temporary.

Execute a pop up lemonade stand business


#3 of 8) Host something

It is very entrepreneurial to host something. Starting up a party is 95% similar to starting up a company. Do I want you to be at risk financially or emotionally?!

No risk

Execute a MVP.

#4 of 8) Engineer out all the risk

Have you seen the MIT movie about engineers in Las Vegas called ‘Bringing Down the House’?!

That’s what I teach.

Engineer out the risk.

People think I took massive risks starting a company, hosting events at the Oscars, starting a venture fund. I did not take any risk. I made the market take the risk. I made the system take the risk.

#5 of 8) Dabble in entrepreneurship

Start a joke business.

I call these businesses lemonade stand businesses. There’re a complete joke. People will laugh at you and with you.

For example…

If you don’t currently have the creativity of starting a Larry Chiang Lemonade Stand Business from scratch, Use these…

#6 of 8) Leverage an existing Larry Chiang franchise

By franchise I don’t mean a Subway sandwich shop where you pay $300k for an 80 hour a week 80k j.o.b.

I mean a Larry Chiang franchise.

My franchise are all 100% affiliate revenue share (ie u keep all of it), no rights reserved, no copyright protection. My NY Times best seller isn’t copyright protected either.

What are my franchises??!

#7 of 8) Leverage an existing parade

Starting a parade is risky.

Pattern recognizing an existing parade takes a whack out of risk. Pattern replicate and pattern iterate these Larry Chiang franchises. I pattern recognized franchise risk minimization and pattern replicated them into my Engineering 145 class for students to pattern iterate.

My franchises are I’m my tumbler Tumblr feed. And Facebook fan page’s wall. $0.oo subscription fee required. Light google-ing skills a moist 🙂

Err a must. Light googling skills are a MUST

#8 of 8)Reclaim your youth

You are a 19 y.o. junior and you spent your youth getting into MIT.

Kids play in parks, go on family vacations all summer, work part time jobs and start lemonade stands. You and your parents did MIT prep work every living breathing moment.

I can’t take you to the park but I can take you on Geek Spring Break with me to SXSW in 2013.

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