Weak 2: Kansas City

The snow just doesn't melt here in Kansas, the weather is so cold that it stays 5-6 inches deep all week. Which is great for snowball fights but not so good for learning my way around the city: everything looks the same: white and bland.
This is our first full week of lectures and visits. First I want to briefly introduce the Kauffman Foundation. The Kauffman Foundation was founded in the late 1960's by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman. Ewing set the vision of the Foundation to be:

"a society of economically independent individuals who are engaged citizens, contributing to the improvement of their communities."


Practically this means promoting entrepreneurship with a particular focus on youth. However this is only a small part of the Kauffman's reach in and around Kansas and America. Kauffman is one of the most prestigious foundations in America, employing many serial entrepreneurs, former Government advisor's and science magazine editors. One of the first things I noticed about Kauffman was the gravitas given to its name, speaking to Americans I met as I was out and about, they would ask what are you doing here in America and as soon as I mentioned Kauffman their eyebrows raised and I almost felt like i'd been given an extra level of respect just for associating myself with the name.

The most memorable speakers of the week were Ken Harrington, Howard Aldrich and Scott Shane.

Ken Harrington, who is the Managing Director at the Skandalaris Centre for Entrepreneurial studies, set us a task of evaluating our business based on scoring different aspects of our business development. For the whole lecture he put one slide up on the project- the slide showing the matrix of business aspects versus scores - and then we held a discussion on what it all meant. The interesting points which came out of this lecture were:

• There are 3 motivating factors for a business founder: Control, Impact and Money.
• It is good to first be aware of where you stand, which factor(s) motivate you the most to help determine what you want out of a business.
• Often the founder who likes control, creates a company which slowly but inevitable seeds control from him/her
• The Founder effectively creates a company he/she doesn't want to be a part of!

This is not a bad thing. There are different roles required of the company leader throughout the company's lifetime, and sometimes one leader isn't suited to all these roles.

This has really helped me re-evaluate why I want to start a company and what I want to get out of starting a company.