Not going to say much here other than that I got a paid internship for this summer in London! It’s ten weeks starting at the end of June, and I’m really excited. (I’m holding off on saying the name of the company until I’ve got everything signed, sealed and delivered! E-mail me directly if you’re curious.)

Other MBA classmates have been getting jobs, even in some hard-to-get finance areas, but it is a bit more bleak than a couple of years ago. I still believe that if you’re willing to reset your expectations you’ll still get a great job and be set for a great career.

That’s all for now… hopefully more soon.

Simon has had a fascinating career. He skipped his A-levels (similar to SATs for the Americans reading this) to join the crew of a merchant ship as it sailed around the world. Eventually he found his way to the French Foreign Legion, where he served for five years in Algeria. Passing up the option to become an officer in the Legion, he came back to the UK. Simon eventually became a hugely successful and highly regarded businessman in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Probably the most prominent of his current activities is being on the Board for Vodafone. More recently, he became the oldest man to reach the South Pole unsupported, at the age of 63. (It was a two-month trek!)

Career Advice

Simon had some really interesting insights for us as we approach our future careers. Specifically, one of his key points was that when thinking about jobs, we need to separate what we want TO BE from what we want TO DO. As long as you’re doing something you like, it really doesn’t matter who you become. (And if you’re doing something you like you tend to be really, really good at it!) What YOU DO is what YOU BECOME, so live your life to become the best at whatever you enjoy.

Another of his main points is that you have to grab opportunities as you see them. It was just a chance meeting that originally got him connected in Hong Kong, and Simon talked about how grabbing it was a seemingly small thing but an event that was a key to his future success.

Simon had two quotes that I thought were really interesting. Take them as you will:

• “Don’t go where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail.”
• “On bad roads you meet good people.”

Finally, he told a story about trying to get to the heart of what a potential candidate really wanted to do with his life. Simon, not getting an answer, finally asked him what he would do if he had the next day off with nothing to do. The guy (a recent university graduate) thought about it, and told him “windsurfing.” Simon at the time owned a company that made windsurfing sails. The new graduate was sent to that company and became a great success and has gone on to very significant successes since. That concept, that we decide what to do in our career based off what we would do if we had a day off, is interesting. As Simon mentioned, it may lead to unexpected places, but as long as we do what we enjoy it should be fruitful both personally and professionally.

Summary

Simon was a fantastic speaker. His mix of great stories and fascinating personality made it one of the top tier talks this year. I’m definitely going to have to buy his book and learn a bit more about his early years in the French Foreign Legion.

Kevin Roberts, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, is also the CEO-in-Residence at Judge Business School. He came in to talk to us recently about Winning with an MBA, which was particularly useful considering the somewhat dismal job market that we’ll be entering later this year.

First off, he’s really an incredible speaker. His staff has a virtual command center to run his presentation, with multiple laptops and a sound mixer! Impressive, and it certainly created a good first impression toward Saatchi & Saatchi. I’m really, really looking forward to the Creativity Workshop that he’s going to be running for the MBA class later this year. From what I’ve heard, it’s a very unique experience.

I don’t want to write too much about his talk with us, but do want to point out three challenges that he set out for us. I think these apply no matter who you are or what stage in life you’re at. We’ve been tasked with thinking about these and writing the answers down; you should do the same:

• What’s my 5-year dream?
• When am I at my best?
• What will I never do?

Particularly on the 5-year dream, he pushed us to push ourselves. He called the 5-year dream of running your own business, etc., “pathetic.” It was a bit of a shock, but a fair point. That’s not much of a dream; we can do that right now if we chose. What’s our real dream, something that seems completely impossible right now? That’s what we should be aiming for.

The other two questions are more straightforward. Still, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves when we answer them in order to really get an insight into our own abilities and preferences.

I went out to dinner with some of my classmates straight afterward, and we started talking about these questions - specifically our dreams. It was interesting to hear what people thought. Perhaps it’s the current job market, but it was generally difficult for everyone to really expand their horizons to answer the question.

While I think I’ve come up with my answer, I’m going to hold off from writing it publicly. But I invite you to really think (and feel) hard and answer the questions above for yourself; it could make for an interesting revelation.

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person’s name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, “binge drinking.”

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, “I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I’m annoyed by it. I’ll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings.”

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don’t have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.

Have you done a Google search on your name?

I blog because when I do, I can start to control what Google finds first.

1) Meet the class before classes starts. The first few pub outings were essential ice-breakers: even if you couldn’t remember anyone’s name afterwards…they remembered YOU!
3) Give up trying to remember the 5 different log-in names, 8 passwords and 29 websites you are supposed to check daily. Make friends with “responsible” people in class and have them inform you of all important notices.
4) Go to class. You don’t want to be that “person who doesn’t exist”.
5) Make sure you have an accountant in your study group. If you don’t, task someone besides yourself to become an accountant.
6) Bring a blanket to LT3 and iced-drinks to LT1, no matter what the temperature is outside
9) Accept every possible formal hall or fancy dinner party invitation. Otherwise you will forget how to use a fork and how to dress sensibly. The everyday jeans and sandwiches do not reflect the real world!
10) Do prepare a “plan of attack” for your career search. You will probably not follow it but it will make you feel better knowing you tried… when you realise you don’t have a job.
13) If you get a bicycle remember to get a helmet…and body armour to go with it.
14) Join rowing. Otherwise you will be envious of the people who wake up at 6:00am to go exercising in the freezing English mist and show up in class smelling like the Cam. (Really, that would make you more pathetic than them)
15) When playing Management Practice games remember that whatever you do and no matter how you excuse it, it IS personal!
16) There is only one Matriculation, one Halloween and one Christmas a year. Celebrate it at your college….and bribe colleagues to take you to theirs.
18) Go out after class and get drinks. Loads of drinks. Make Browns your second home!
- Get a backpack. They are not exactly fashionable but unless you have a masseuse fund, you should use one. It will save you great pain.
- Go to Enterprise Tuesday. These weekly lectures are basically a course in themselves, and celebrate the contagious entrepreneurial spirit of Cambridge.

I hope that this helps future Cambridge MBA’s! If I missed anything, please add it to the comments section below…

Here are some photos from the day (my apologies for the blurry ones):

You’re getting close when you see this… you can’t miss it

Here’s the venue, Caffe Nero on King’s Parade

This is the view from the front door of Caffe Nero

In this photo I managed to catch Laurence, Geoff, Peter, and a couple others. (Geoff also blogged about OpenCoffee here.)

Louise was one of the women to show up (a fellow MBA)

The group ended up taking up a good chunk of the back of the shop; this was taken after people had started leaving.

It was a fantastic day, and virtually everyone I met and talked to today was either an entrepreneur or an investor. I want to specifically thank Laurence John and Richard Brockbank from Amadeus and Alex van Someren from Cambridge CfEL for showing up and being so enthusiastic for the idea of OpenCoffee.

After a little bit of research, it seems the two best options for organising a group like OpenCoffee is a Meetup group and a LinkedIn group. Since LinkedIn groups are free, that’s what I’ve setup first. Please click here to sign up. (Currently moderated to prevent spammers.) I think it would be great to start a Meetup group, too, but would like to gauge opinion before the $144/year charge. UPDATE: Peter Clark/Broadersheet has sponsored the Meetup group: sign up here! Please sign up so that we can let everyone know if/when we change venues… if we have a few more weeks packing Caffe Nero like we did today we won’t be welcome there much longer!

On a completely different note, a number of people had some interesting conversations about Cambridge and entrepreneurs. Talking with people today, it seems there are a few different issues that currently exist in the Cambridge startup ecosystem.

• Social events - OpenCoffee Cambridge is meant to address this. Entrepreneurs just need a place/time to meet each other, demo what they’re doing and network.
• Demo nights - Cribbing off of the NY Tech Meetup, I think Cambridge needs a night where entrepreneurs can show off what they’ve been working on, get feedback, and have a broader networking event.
• Judge Business School - Judge is a great business school that could really make a difference to startups, but not enough MBA’s, MPhils, etc get involved in the startup ecosystem.

Initial thoughts on furthering the Cambridge startup ecosystem

Cambridge is an incredible cluster of startups, but it’s not perfect. These are three things that I personally think would be useful in order to address the issues above.

OpenCoffee Cambridge

After today’s success, this is certainly going to become a regular event.

Based on the feedback I got from everyone today, I think this will be most valuable as a weekly, daytime event. It ensures more angels and VC’s can attend (since that’s their day job), and needs to be weekly to develop the kind of relationships that are necessary. That doesn’t mean people need to show up every week! Just that it happens every week for the people that want to meet up.

Full Moon Madness Demo nights

A monthly demo night for entrepreneurs looking to demo their software, products, services would address the second issue. It would take place at night, ensuring as many people as possible can attend. (Both current and aspirational entrepreneurs.) Let’s face it… all entrepreneurs are a little bit mad so let’s celebrate it by demo’ing during a full moon!

This would mean that the first demo night would be Wednesday, March 11th. Are there any conflicts with that night? I’ve got one volunteer to demo already… are there any others? If there’s interest I’ll look into setting something up.

Cambridge Entrepreneurial Speed-dating

I’m not sure how this would work, but there’s a real opportunity to connect science and engineering students working on new ideas with business school students that have the business background to help commercialize them. Sometimes this will be science/engineering ideas looking for business help, other times it will be business ideas looking for science/engineering help in building prototypes, etc. I think it’s critical to get some creative types involved with this, too, but I’m not sure how.

This would ideally happen very early in the school year, and perhaps be repeated after a few months. It may be too late to effectively do this year, but perhaps if it gets developed a bit it would be ready for the fall?

Summary

OpenCoffee Cambridge is ON. Please stay tuned in for more information, but the next one will happen next week at the same time & place. (Thursday, 26 Feb, 10am-12noon at Caffe Nero on King’s Parade)

What do you think of the other ideas? Useful, not useful, something else entirely? I’d be happy to chat in the comments below, off-blog or at the next OpenCoffee.

This era’s company is Apple.

I’m officially sick of them. The iPod, the iPhone, the iTunes ecosystem, the Halo Effect, Steve Jobs, a culture of innovation…

WE GOT IT.

I love Apple products, and own/use a MacBook, iPhone and iPods. But enough is enough.

Can we start using other examples… please? Pretty please?

(We recently had a case study on Banyan Tree Resorts, which was unfortunate since it looks like I’m going to have to go there on holiday with LondonAnnie sometime post-graduation. But that’s more like it…)

YouNoodle has designed an algorithm to calculate each university’s significance as a startup community. Significance is determined by factors including the number and quality of the startups in the university, activity of its groups, business plan competitions, availability of talent and investment in the area, and the success of past startups.

I’m not surprised that Cambridge ranks just behind Silicon Valley and Boston. While this list focuses on University startup communities, I believe that Cambridge is an incredible place to be for entrepreneurship no matter the criteria. I’m sure Charlie would say that something from New York should be on the list (and I would agree), I think it’s both fair and correct that Cambridge is ranked as one of the top startup communities in the world.

Silicon Valley and Boston are clearly in a class by themselves based on the sheer size of the communities there. But Cambridge is a hidden gem. You must recognize that the startups coming out of Cambridge are only rarely the consumer-focused, trendy companies. What gets funded here tends to be hard science, technology, microchips, sensors, biotech, and the like. If you’re reading this blog, I guarantee you that technology invented here is within a few feet of you right now… virtually all mobile phones use ARM chips, for example. Recent successful startup founders I’ve met have developed sensors for chemical detection (and have received a multi-million dollar contract from the US military), and a wearable sensor to help women accurately track their body temperature and fertility cycle to help them get pregnant.

To put numbers on it, nearly 10% of all venture investment in Europe was in Cambridge. What do we have here:

• One of the world’s best Universities, with significant science and technology focus
• St. John’s Innovation Centre, a fantastic incubator for nascent businesses. Mailboxes, virtual offices, general offices, and services for growing businesses.
• Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, which provide workshops for entrepreneurs and hold a series of business plan contests each year.
• Very experienced venture capitalists, such as Amadeus Capital.
• CUTEC (Cambridge University Technology and Entrepreneurship Club), which hosts a large conference in May of each year, as well as smaller events and networking sessions throughout the year.
• A VERY large angel funding network, the most prominent of which is the Cambridge Angels. Many of these angels are very available to students and local entrepreneurs, and they tend to be very active in and around Cambridge.
• Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, which hosts events like the famed Enterprise Tuesday sessions, as well as a full programme of other events.

So I’m very happy I’m here in Cambridge as I work on my plans. If you’re starting anything in the science or technology fields in Europe, Cambridge is one of the best places to be.

The MBA program works a little differently than any other Cambridge degree, in that you’re first accepted into the MBA, and then you’re accepted into a college. (Traditionally you’re apply to your program through a college, and then are accepted into both.)

On an MBA program, your college can be part of your core MBA experience or virtually irrelevant. If you want to participate in sports, everything is done through your college. (Unless you’re good enough to start out playing at a high level for the University.) Housing is all done through your college, and a significant part of the admin you have to do with your program is done through a college. But while it’s a fairly significant choice, it certainly doesn’t “break” your MBA, though it can help “make” it.

I’m at Jesus College, which is quite an old college in the north part of central Cambridge. It’s a big, fairly wealthy college with lots of space on the grounds for sports. Arnoud De Meyer, the Director of Judge Business School, is a Fellow at Jesus and it’s been great to meet him from time to time at the college.

I would say the biggest things to think of when picking a college:

• Housing - Do you intend to stay in college housing? Do you have a partner and/or children? If you want something other than a single room for one person the availability can be dramatically different between colleges.
• Location - This is tied into housing, too. If you do plan on living in college, how close to Judge do you want to be? (If you want to be close to the boathouses for rowing, pick Jesus.)
• Sports - If you’re really interested in a particular sport, check to see which colleges are the best. (That’s how I got to Jesus, to be honest.)
• Old vs. New - Do you want to be in one of the older colleges, one of the newer colleges, or do you just not care?
• Grad/Mature/Women - Some colleges restrict admission to mature students, grad students, women or some combination thereof. Is that something you care about?

Finally, remember to have a few different choices that you’d be happy with when you talk to the MBA office. (They have much more information than I have about colleges other than Jesus.) Each college can be very quirky and they may very well not accept you, though you are guaranteed a place in one of the colleges. The MBA office will help guide you through all that. But I’d also recommend taking a look at the various colleges on Wikipedia for some basic comparative information and links to much more detail.

But without further ado, here’s my guide to Cambridge Colleges for the Cambridge MBA:

Ancient Colleges (founded before 1600)

The ancient colleges tend to be more popular, and thus a bit harder to get into. People like them because there’s much more tradition, the dining halls and chapels are old and beautiful, and they’ve got quirky histories (and world-famous alumni) to impress family and friends. Unfortunately, many of these colleges rarely seem to accept MBA’s. But there are some (like Jesus) that are a bit more enlightened!

Virtually none

Unless you’re an alumni of the college already or have family connections, it’s unlikely that you will get a spot at these colleges.

Peterhouse
Clare
Gonville and Caius
Trinity Hall
Corpus Christi
King’s
St. John’s
Trinity

Handful or more

These colleges certainly take MBA’s, and are all great choices.

Queens’ -Quite popular, >10 MBA’s/year

Queens’ is quite close to Judge, and was quite a popular choice this year.

Pembroke

Pembroke is one of the closest colleges to Judge, and is a great choice. We often go to the cafeteria there for lunch because it’s convenient. I think if you register early enough with them you may be able to get a room in the main college grounds, which are beautiful.

St. Catharine’s

St. Catherine’s is also convenient to Judge, and I believe has a small number of scholarships for MBA’s. [UPDATE]- I have since been informed that St. Catharine’s only accepts MBA’s that are Benavitch Scholars.

Jesus

Clearly the best college for MBA’s, bar none. Fantastic rowing club, and convenient housing. It’s a little further away from Judge (~15 minute walk), but you get to see the heart of Cambridge every day because of it!

Emmanuel

Another good college with a handful of MBA’s this year.

Sidney Sussex

The Master of Sidney Sussex is Professor Dame Sandra Dawson, who was formerly the Director of Judge Business School, and is also on the Board of Directors of Barclays Bank and Oxfam International. (She was one of our professors for Organisational Behaviour last term.) It’s a very nice college, right by Jesus.

Small number

I’m not sure if these colleges fall under the “Virtually None” category or not, but they accepted MBA’s this year:

Christ’s

Very beautiful college about 10-15 minutes’ walk from Judge.

Magdalene

Magdalene is on the banks of the Cam, just over the bridge from central Cambridge. Very quaint. Apparently their May Ball every year is white-tie, which is interesting.

Old Colleges (founded between 1800 and 1900)

I don’t know much about many of these colleges, so I’ll write what I do know.

Hughes Hall [mature only] -Most popular, about 30/year

Hughes Hall is very popular amongst MBA’s, with about 20% of the class there. Having so many of your classmates at the same college is great for people that like that.

St. Edmund’s [mature only]
Downing

Downing is the other college that’s very close to Judge. Very beautiful grounds, and it feels more like one of the “ancient” colleges.

Girton
Homerton
Newnham [women only]
Selwyn

Modern Colleges (founded since 1950)

Wolfson [mature only] -Very popular, about 20 MBA’s

Another popular college for MBA’s. A surprisingly strong rowing club, too.

Darwin [grads only]

Darwin is fairly convenient to Judge, and is just past Queens’ on the other side of the Cam.

Fitzwilliam
Clare Hall [grads only]
Murray Edwards (aka New Hall) [women only]
Churchill
Robinson
Lucy Cavendish [mature women only]

[UPDATE] - The post from James Barker of the Judge Admissions Office is an absolute must-read on this topic!