Lester Center for Entrepreneurship

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship
Motto	Leading Through Innovation
Established	1991
Type	Public
Location	Berkeley, California, USA
Affiliations	Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley
Website	entrepreneurship.berkeley.edu

Eastern Entrance

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship is an internationally recognized program and the primary locus for the study and promotion of entrepreneurship and new enterprise development at the University of California Berkeley. The offices are located in the Faculty Building of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Lester Center...

• fosters teaching of successful entrepreneurship and innovation,
• encourages Berkeley students in the creation of new businesses,
• conducts research and disseminates knowledge on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance to the business and university communities, and
• facilitates interaction between the entrepreneurial community and the university.

The Lester Center's constituency beyond the university consists of the founders, owners, and managers of innovative and high-growth companies, their investors and advisers, and young entrepreneurs. Within the university, it is an interdisciplinary, campus-wide research center with public programs designed to be a resource to the campus and beyond. Over the years, students and faculty, especially those in business, engineering, computer science, law, and the biosciences, have led in developing the center's programs.

History

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship was founded in 1991 through a gift from W. Howard Lester, Chairman of Williams-Sonoma, Inc. W. Howard Lester was a business icon, who for over 32 years guided the development and success of the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. portfolio of brands. Howard strove to improve the lives of others through his philanthropy. With his wife Mary, he supported education, medical research, youth programs and the arts. The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship aspires to carry on his legacy of business enterprise.

Core Mission: Education for Venture Creation
The Lester Center's core mission has not changed since its founding. It is education, inspiring our students and colleagues to do what entrepreneurs do best: look at things in fundamentally new ways, create new ventures, discover new sources of value and change the world for the better.

The Lester Center’s most important resource is its cadre of distinguished Faculty, fellows, mentors, judges and other entrepreneurs who continue to inspire students across our entire portfolio of courses, events, competitions and other activities. They are supported by the Lester Center staff, led by Andre Marquis, the Executive Director, Jennifer Walske, the Director of Social Entrepreneurship, and Toby Stuart, the Acting Faculty Director. Andre Marquis joined the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship in 2010. He is a serial entrepreneur with a long record of starting successful biotechnology and information technology ventures with a particular focus on winning in markets where scalability and evidence-based decision making are critical including online advertising, media and pharmaceutical development. Andre holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business and a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of Rochester. Jennifer Walske has been the Director of Social Entrepreneurship at the Lester Center since 2011. She is also a Faculty Director of the Global Social Venture Competition and a Adjunct Professor at Haas School of Business. Jennifer holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from Boston University. Toby Stuart has been a visiting Professor at Haas School of Business since 2010. Before coming to UC Berkeley, Toby has taught courses in Business Administration and Marketing at Harvard Business School, the Eugene Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School, and the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Toby holds a BA in Economics from Carleton College and a PhD from Stanford University.

Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum

For 20 years the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum has provided an intimate and informative setting for students and the public to meet and hear from seasoned entrepreneurs. The Forum aims to foster the growth and success of entrepreneurial ventures through the exchange of information and the development of productive relationships among entrepreneurs and those who finance and advise them. The Forum encourages professionals to meet each other and the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. The Forum generally meets on the last Thursday of each month during the academic year: August to November, and January to April.

Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series

The Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series brings the best practitioners from the Berkeley and Silicon Valley communities to the Haas School of Business to speak about the practical aspects of entrepreneurial activity. The series is timed to match the academic year and also the business plan competition season, particularly the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition and the Global Social Venture Competition. Entrepreneurs from the UC Berkeley campus and the external community are encouraged to attend.

Business Competitions

The Lester Center supports four premier business competitions. Year after year, these competitions have helped to identify and promote promising business ideas through the education and exposure afforded by the competition’s events, mentors and judges.

The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition

The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition (Bplan) is the vehicle that connects UC Berkeley’s best entrepreneurs and world class research with the Bay Area’s business elite to create viable businesses. Founded in 1999, the Bplan Competition has become a leading Bay Area event and one of the nation’s foremost business plan competitions. The competition brings together entrepreneurs, students and alumni from across the greater UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco communities. Each Fall, students organize teams through sponsored networking events, classes, and on their own in order to submit brief executive summaries shortly after returning from the UC Winter Break in January. Accepted competitors then refine their venture plans and presentations, which are later judged by Bay Area venture capitalists to determine the semi-finalists, finalists, and ultimately, the winner. Throughout it all, teams are matched with area mentor volunteers who provide guidance and help in developing a full-fledged business plan. Taken together, the Bplan Competition is truly a unique offering made possible by leveraging all the assets of the Berkeley universe – its students, alumni, and location.

Global Social Venture Competition

The mission of the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) is to catalyze the creation of social ventures, educate future leaders and build awareness of social enterprises, and the competition supports the creation of real businesses that bring about positive social change in a sustainable manner. Founded at the Haas School of Business in 1999 as the National Social Venture Competition, it is the largest and oldest student-led business plan competition providing mentoring, exposure, and prizes for social ventures from around the world. It is co-sponsored by the Lester Center and the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership. Haas manages the Global Finals & Symposium at UC Berkeley with the support of a leadership team of Haas MBA students and an innovative partnership with Columbia Business School, London Business School, the Indian School of Business, ESSEC Business School in France, and Thammasat University in Thailand. The competition is also supported by several Outreach Partners in Asia, Europe, and the US. Since its inception, the GSVC has awarded more than a half a million dollars to emerging social ventures and has introduced early-stage social venture entrepreneurs to the investment community.

Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley

In collaboration with Intel, the Lester Center hosts The Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley. The Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley (formerly the Intel®+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge) is where the best engineers and scientists present how they plan to make the world a better place through their innovations and entrepreneurial skills. The Intel Global Challenge partners with the best research institutions around the world and affiliates with regional business plan competitions to find the technologies and teams that can have the greatest impact. Participation in the Intel Global Challenge gets you, your technology, and your institution onto the premier world stage for technology entrepreneurship. Since its inaugural year in 2005, teams have come from Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Mexico, Russia, Singapore and the United States to compete.

Venture Capital Investment Competition

The UC Berkeley Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) is, in essence, a "reverse business plan competition". Compared to a traditional business plan competition, where teams participate as entrepreneurs seeking venture capital funding, student teams in the VCIC assume the role of venture capitalists and evaluate and "fund" investment opportunities. Select teams evaluate real business opportunities presented by entrepreneurs currently seeking funding, while being judged by experienced venture capitalists.

Regional winners progress to the Grand Finals at the University of North Carolina, where a Haas team took the National Title in 2005. The International Venture Capital Investment Competition is a trademark of the University of North Carolina's Kenan–Flagler Business School since 1998.

Courses in Entrepreneurship

The Lester Center also works within the Haas School of Business to provide a series of academic courses on entrepreneurship, taught by exceptional faculty:

   MBA 294: Life as an Entrepreneur
   MBA 295A Entrepreneurship and Innovation
   MBA 295B Venture Capital and Private Equity
   MBA 295D/EWMBA 295T New Venture Finance
   MBA 295C: Opportunity Recognition: Technology & Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley
   MBA 295E: Case Studies in Entrepreneurship
   MBA 295F: Customer Development in the High-Tech Enterprise
   MBA 295G: Investing in Entrepreneurial Opportunities
   MBA 295H: Managing the Legal Environment of Business (formerly Top Down Law)
   MBA 295I: Entrepreneurship Workshop for Start-ups
   MBA 295J: Entrepreneurship in Biotechnology
   MBA 295T: Business Model Innovation & Entrepreneurial Strategy
   MBA 290E: Marketing Emerging Technologies
   MBA 290I: Managing Innovation and Change
   MBA 290N: Managing the New Product Development Process
   MBA 290V: Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Telecommunications & Media
   MBA 290T: Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Wireless Services
   MBA 290T: Strategy for the Information Technology Firm
   MBA 290T: Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Telecommunications and Media
   MBA 290T: Innovation, Creativity and the Entrepreneur
   MBA 292N: Social Entrepreneurship
   MBA 292T: Social Investing: Recent Findings in Management & Finance
   MBA 264: High Technology Marketing Management
   Boalt 255: Venture Capital and IPO Law: Advising the Emerging Growth Company
   Boalt 256: New Business Counseling

The Lester Center offers an MBA Certificate in Entrepreneurship to students at Haas School of Business.

A. Richard Newton Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series

Additionally, the A. Richard Newton Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series/Life as an Entrepreneur Series provides talks from distinguished entrepreneurs from organizations at various stages of development and representing a broad range of industries. Entrepreneurs will talk about how their organizations were created and share lessons they learned throughout their careers.

Distinguished Faculty

Entrepreneurship classes at Haas are taught by a combination of tenured faculty and experienced professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area business community. The tenured faculty are not just from the Haas School of Business but also other departments across the campus. Together they bring to the program the depth of learning for which UC Berkeley is justly famous. We are very proud of our corps of lecturers and business professionals. Drawn from the venture capital, high tech and biotech communities that have built the San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurship model, they have chosen to give back to that community by teaching at Haas.

• Sara L. Beckman - Faculty Director of UC Berkeley’s Wurster Design and Innovation Studio, a partnership of the Haas School, the College of Environmental Design, and the School of Information Management and Systems
• John Danner - Senior Fellow at the Lester Center
• Jerry Engle - Senior Fellow and Executive Director Emeritus of the Lester Center
• Andrew Isaacs - former Executive Director of UC Berkeley's Management of Technology Program
• William Kell - Founder and Supervising Attorney for the New Business Counseling Practicum at Boalt Hall School of Law
• Lloyd Kurtz - Research Fellow and Program Administrator for the Center for Responsible Business’s Moskowitz Research Program
• Larry Lasky - Partner at U.S. Venture Partners
• Mario Rosati - Adjunct Professor at the Haas School of Business and a Partner of the law firm of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto
• Toby E. Stuart - the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
• David J. Teece- the Thomas W. Tusher Professor of Global Business at the Haas School of Business and the Lester Center's Faculty Director of Research
• Jennifer Walske - Adjunct Professor at the Haas School of Business, Managing Director of Myriad Investments, LLC and Lester Center's Director of Social Entrepreneurship

Programs for Startups

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship offers a variety of programs to assist scalable startups by Berkeley-Haas students and community members:

UC Berkeley Startup Accelerator @ Skydeck

The purpose of the UC Berkeley Startup Accelerator (UCBSA) is to accelerate the launch of fundable startup companies with scalable business models out of UC Berkeley. It’s the successor to the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship’s Berkeley Entrepreneurship Lab (BEL). This new approach to incubation matches a small group of companies with high-quality mentors with the goal of driving the companies through that experimental, exploratory process of process of validating their product, customers and business model to prepare them to scale.

The focus is on having a smaller group of mentors with deep expertise and connections to industry and strong links to angel and venture capital investors combined with a structured process and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. The UCBSA can also provide temporary office space to a limited number of startups at the downtown Berkeley Skydeck incubator space.

Mentoring

Since 1996 the Lester Center has recruited successful Bay Area entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and professional service providers to serve as student mentors. These generous individuals act as leaders, mentors and educators through our Entrepreneurs Corner Office Hours available to students who need advice or help with their business ideas and career goals. Our mentors provide wisdom and guidance to UC Berkeley’s emerging entrepreneurs.

Click here for for more information on the Entrepreneurs Corner Mentoring Schedule and Signups.

Competing

The Lester Center administers two business plan competitions each year: the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition and the Global Social Venture Competition. This year's competitions drew in nearly 650 entrant teams, over 125 judges from the venture capital, law and entrepreneurial communities, and gave away nearly $100,000 in cash prizes to the teams with the winning business plans. Students from all over the US, the UK, India, and Europe were involved in these competitions.

Networking

Network with Professionals: The monthly Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forums are one of the most valued and popular programs at Haas, where students get the chance to listen to and interact with entrepreneurs from various fields of business including energy technology, VoIP, social ventures and more. Students can also attend the Entrepreneurs Corner Mentoring Sessions.

Student Groups and Activities: Join one of the Student Groups dedicated to entrepreneurship at Haas. These groups organize their own events and programs with the support of the Lester Center. For example, every year, the Entrepreneurs Association and the Lester Center collaborate on the annual Venture Capital Roundtable - a great opportunity for you to meet with over 35 leading venture capitalists from the valley, all in one place... plus great food! Another annual signature event is the Entrepreneurs Roundtable which brings together students and fellow entrepreneurs who have started companies and can talk with budding entrepreneurs about the challenges and excitement of the start-up world.

• Entrepreneurs Association
• Partners for Entrepreneurial Leadership
• Ideas@Cal
• Career Treks
• Roundtables
• Berkeley Collaboration Mixers
• Berkeley Lab Tours
• Berkeley Solutions Group
• Young Entrepreneurs at Haas

Recognizing Excellence in Entrepreneurship

The Lester Center believes in recognizing outstanding individuals for their contributions to entrepreneurial education, business, and society as a whole in helping inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Lifetime Achievement Award in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Through the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lester Center seeks to identify exemplars of entrepreneurship whose success can teach future generations by the example they set. Further, it allows us to bring outstanding practitioners to the Berkeley campus, creating opportunities for exchanges of ideas with faculty and students. We believe that by enhancing the interaction among academics, entrepreneurs, scientists and faculty, pragmatists and idealists, we help foster entrepreneurial success for individuals and the community as a whole.

The Lester Center has identified three distinct components shared by successful entrepreneurs. First, the award recognizes entrepreneurial excellence. Second, the award acknowledges the individual’s leadership in both business and community. As a leader, the award recipient models behavior that young entrepreneurs can emulate. The third component of the award recognizes the efforts by which the entrepreneur returns value to his/her community. The award recipient’s contributions may be to the preservation of the environment, improvement of educational opportunity, or some other substantial contribution to the well-being of the community.

Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellowships

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship is proud to administer the Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellows award each year. This award was established in 2006, with support from Leo Helzel, in recognition of the former Haas Dean and his pioneering efforts not only in teaching entrepreneurship but in bringing experts from the community into the classroom. The selection of a Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellow recognizes the generous contributions of time and talent of a member of our community who has consistently participated in our classrooms, enriching the education of our students and enlivening the academic discourse with their expertise and real world experience.

Gloria W. Appel Award

The Gloria W. Appel Award for Outstanding Leadership in Entrepreneurship is presented upon nomination by the Haas School community to a second year MBA candidate of outstanding caliber who has made an extraordinary and lasting contribution to the entrepreneurship program at Haas. A $5,000 fellowship accompanies the award. The award is funded by an endowment from the Louis and Harold Price Foundation in honor of Gloria W. Appel, the late president of the Price Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies and a great benefactor of the Lester Center. The criteria for the award are based on Gloria Appel's passion for students and the refreshing ideas that they have consistently brought to the entrepreneurship program.

Haas Venture Fellows

Haas Venture Fellows is a select group of Berkeley MBA students who receive hands-on experience in the venture capital industry by undertaking project work for prominent Bay Area venture capital firms. The group develops relationships with general partners at VC firms, agrees on projects to undertake, and delivers results directly to the venture capital firm. The group also maintains a network of UC Berkeley alumni working in the venture capital industry and contacts to entrepreneurship initiatives across UC Berkeley.

Mayfield Fellows

The Mayfield Fellows Program is a year-long program at the University of California at Berkeley. It is a unique program designed to bring together graduate students from the Haas Business School, College of Engineering, and School of Information Management who share a passion for entrepreneurship and technology. The program provides a broad entrepreneurship experience by combining ongoing mentoring with faculty, company executives, and venture capitalists and Silicon Valley networking activities. Fellows further have an opportunity to travel and study entrepreneurship in Asia in the summer.

Turner Fellowship

The Turner Fellowship has been established to support MBA students in their entrepreneurial efforts. One $5,000 award will be given to an outstanding MBA student (Full-time or Evening/Weekend). Daniel K. Turner III, founder of Montreux Equity Partners, is the sole sponsor of this fellowship. Mr. Turner has 17 years of experience as an entrepreneur, operating manager and venture capitalist.

Larson Scholarship

The Jack Larson Scholarship was established in 2008 to support MBA and undergraduate Haas students interested in an entrepreneurial career. The Lester Center wishes to thank Jack Larson for his ongoing contribution to entrepreneurship education.

Rankings for Entrepreneurship at Haas

The San Francisco Bay Area has long been a hotbed for new business creation, and the Haas School remains one of the world’s leading centers for the study and practice of entrepreneurship. Through academic and experiential learning, the Berkeley MBA program offers its students the skills and knowledge to launch fast-growth, high-potential enterprises and teaches them how to start careers in the venture capital industry. Some Haas students begin their own firms while in school or launch startups immediately after graduation.

Full-time MBA Program

• #1 (US), #3 (International) Economist Intelligence Unit, 2009

• #2 The Wall Street Journal, 2008
  • #4 for Entrepreneurship

• #4 Best in Entrepreneurship Financial Times, 2008, US MBA Programs

• #7 for Entrepreneurship U.S. News & World Report, 2010

Other Research Institutes at Haas

Central Courtyard

• Energy Institute at Haas
• Cleantech To Market
• Institute for Business Innovation (IBI)
• Blum Center for Developing Economies
• Center for Open Innovation
• Fisher Information Technology Center

External links

• The Lester Center Homepage
• The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition Homepage
• Global Social Venture Competition Homepage
• Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley Homepage
• Venture Capital Investment Competition Homepage
• Haas School of Business
• Haas School of Business YouTube Channel

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