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.

First Week in Kansas City USA

I arrived in Kansas city after 20 hours of traveling to the sight of snow everywhere, which covered the ground for the following week. First impressions: cold, white, sprawling.

The week began on Tuesday with a tour of the Kauffman Foundation, an introduction to its CEO Carl Schramm and the rest of the Kauffman directors, including the program organizer Wendy Torrance. Wendy explained to us that over the course of the next 5 weeks we would go through an intensive training course in business and entrepreneurship. In the first week we received lectures from Carl Schramm, Ted Zoller, Craig Armstrong.

Carl Schramm explained to us why we are here learning entrepreneurship in America: because Americans do it best! but the interesting thing to me is why Americans do it best. In Carl's mind is that it practically an accident that it turned out this way, heres his take:

1. American law changed pensions liability from company to individual.
2. American law changed to allow pension fund holders to put money into venture capital.

The reason these laws changed at the time had completely different political motivation but the effect was dramatic towards entrepreneurship.

1. Moving liability to individual made the workforce more mobile as they were no longer tied into one company, they could work where they wanted to more easily.
   
2. Pension funder holders could choose to invest there capital into high risk high return VC market, which gave Venture Capital Funds a huge boast in money to invest in start up companies.

One final piece which makes the American people entrepreneurial is that employment is at 95%.

If I'm an American employee and I want to start a company there's very little risk (compared to other countries).

• First I can be practically guaranteed a job should my venture fail due to the very high employment rate.
  
• Second should my start up require funding there is plenty of Venture Capital available.
  
• Third my pension is still fine, as its connected to me personally and not my company.

So the American Entrepreneurship culture is an accident? I certainly don't think America has been engineered to be this way; but there is certainly more to it than just these 3 chance factors, otherwise it would be straightforward for other countries to copy.

And there'd be no reason for me to be here ;) Thank goodness thats not true!