ANN ARBOR, Mich., Sept. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- University of Michigan MBA student Merrill Guerra spent five minutes with billionaire software start-up kingpin Kevin O''Connor at Entrepalooza 2007: Anybody Can Do It on Sept. 21. The brief encounter recharged her entrepreneurial aspirations for building her recently launched clicks-and-mortar venture, RealKidz Inc., into a successful business.
Annually, the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan brings the best and the brightest business minds to the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor to share the secrets behind their success with students, alumni, faculty and members of the broader business community. This year''s event featured leading entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business executives who offered advice on the full spectrum of entrepreneurial activity, from start-ups on a shoestring to private equity mega-deals. Networking opportunities enabled newly minted entrepreneurs to make personal contacts with potential backers and future clients.
"We talked for about five minutes," Guerra said. "I told him I had created a new business model by combining retail sales with online social networking. He said, ''Good job.'' The fact that he could see value in what I''m doing and approved my new business model was important validation that I''m on the right track. It was definitely encouraging."
Guerra says she plans to follow up in the future with O''Connor, who co-founded and served as CEO of the Internet advertising network firm DoubleClick from 1996 to 2001 and sold it in 2005 to Helman & Friedman for $1.1 billion. "You have to realize he is a billionaire now, but once he was just like us," she remarks. "It''s great to have successful people giving back of their time and knowledge to help us pursue our entrepreneurial dreams."
The Entrepalooza 2007 headliner was Chicago real-estate magnate Samuel Zell, a University of Michigan alumnus, visionary and founding benefactor of the Institute, and the chairman of Equity Group Investments in Chicago. For the first time publicly and to a crowd primarily comprised of University of Michigan students and alumni, Zell used his keynote to share a blow-by-blow recounting of the events that led up to his record-setting $40 billion sale of Equity Office Properties Trust to New York-based Blackstone Group LP last February. He also offered his current assessment of the financial markets in the wake of the subprime-mortgage meltdown to the gathered group of more than 350.
The Blackstone-Equity Office transaction represented the days of enormous unfettered liquidities, unlimited and undisciplined syndication, and the creation of new entities called collateralized loan obligations and collateralized debt obligations, which pooled a series of debt and created a cascade of "sliding pieces" that obfuscated risk, Zell said.
On a reassuring note, Zell said: "I really don''t believe the current environment is quite as catastrophic as everybody would suggest. The amount of liquidity that existed six or eight weeks ago still exists today." That absolute amount of liquidity, he added, will not change until the world grows enough to better use and absorb the level of capital it has created over the last 10 years.
Following Zell''s remarks, four concurrent panel discussions examined strategies for launching new businesses on the cheap, growing start-ups, investing and pursuing career paths in venture capital and applying "intrapreneurship" and innovation across industries.
O''Connor, who now heads his own venture capital business, O''Connor Ventures, which provides seed capital to start-ups, closed the morning session by offering tips to entrepreneurs on ways for increasing their chances of success. He recommended identifying a key problem and finding ways to solve it 10 times better than competitors or at one-tenth the cost. He also stressed the importance of idea generation, trend identification, talent recruiting -. and 100 hours of work a week.
"The odds may be against you, but the rewards at the end of the day definitely outweigh those odds," O''Connor concluded.
Entrepalooza 2007 keynote presentations and panel discussions can be viewed at (video services provided by Veodia ).
About the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies / Center for Venture Capital & Private Equity Finance
The Institute and its Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance bring together a potent mix of knowledge, experience and opportunities from the front lines of entrepreneurship and alternative investments. The student learning experience is further enhanced through internships, entrepreneurial clubs and organization and events that serve to provide viable networks and engage the business community. The School''s two student-led investment funds, with over $3M in management, immerse students in the business assessment and investment process. Members of the Advisory Board include Samuel Zell, Chairman of Equity Group Investments; Michael Hallman, former COO of Microsoft Corporation; and Eugene Applebaum, Founder of Arbor Drugs, Inc. For more information, visit the Institute at
Source: Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies