(Reposted from http://whartonjournal.com/?p=1317)

By Thomas Baldwin, WG'13

The trend of viewing entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to more traditional career paths such as banking and consulting continues to gain momentum at Wharton. In one sign of how times have changed since the days when a CV drop at McKinsey and Goldman was default behavior for MBAs, this September marked the start of the Semester in San Francisco (SSF) program, a new initiative designed to cater to Wharton MBAs focused on entrepreneurship, startups, and venture capital. Wharton’s increasingly entrepreneurial profile was also in evidence at Disrupt SF, the highly anticipated annual tech / startup conference organized by TechCrunch. This year’s conference, which over 25 Whartonites from the MBA class of 2013 attended (more than any other business school), featured a who’s who of luminaries from the technology, startup and venture capital arenas. Among the more high profile speakers were Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, Jessica Alba of The Honest Company, and Jack Dorsey of Twitter.

Wharton descended on Disrupt in a big way. In addition to the 25 SSF participants who attended, several alumni entrepreneurs made their presence felt as well. Jacob Rosenbloom (G’11/WG’11), co-founder of Emprego Ligado, a Sao Paulo-based, 500 Startups-backed company focused on disrupting the Brazilian labor market, was an exhibitor at the Brazil Pavilion. Emprego Ligado, which was recently “TechCrunched”, leveraged the conference to generate awareness around its innovative model for enabling employers to recruit blue-collar candidates via mobile phones. Davis Smith (G’11/WG’11) was also present at the conference, and took time out of his schedule to visit Wharton West and discuss how he raised over $22M in capital from top-tier VCs less than 2 years after launching Baby.com.br.

While several hot topics were in discussion at the conference, three themes resonated particularly powerfully during the 4-day event: (1) The rise of Mobile as the next frontier for investment and innovation within the tech world; (2) the emergence of Latin America as a fertile breeding ground for some of the world’s hottest new startups; and (3) education as a space ripe for tech-enabled disruption.

Excitement around each of these themes was driven by different factors. With respect to Mobile, given the rapid rate of global smartphone penetration to date, and the widespread belief that nearly every human will have a smartphone in hand within the next 15 to 20 years, it’s no surprise that Mobile was on everyone’s mind. The high level of excitement around Latin American startups was driven by the presence of country-specific startup pavilions for four Latin American nations – more than for any other region of the world. Pablo Pedrejon (WG’13) echoed this sentiment, stating that he was “excited by the significant expansion of startup culture in Latin America on display during the conference.” As for education, Ariel Quinones (WG’13) captured the sense of excitement around this theme when he stated that “the panel on education was outstanding. Panelist Sal Khan (founder of Khan Academy) captured the imagination of many in the audience when he mentioned that we were “at the top of the first inning” when it comes to using technology to empower educators.”

(Reposted from http://whartonjournal.com/?p=1323)

Chirag Chotalia, WG’13, Mariya Nikiforova, WG’13, and Satya Tammareddy, WG’13

San Francisco is a place teeming with opportunity for the creative mind of a startup junkie and the analytical gears of a serial investor. For the Wharton MBA student participating in the exclusive San Francisco pilot, the program offers an incredible first look at what could be a promising career on the West Coast. But, what is the city all about? What draws so many entrepreneurs, investors, and families here?

We attempt to answer these questions by “living” in the shoes of Cohort SF (Cohort San Francisco) – from TechCrunch to Crunch Gym; from Off the Grid to the local Starbucks; and from Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation to Development of Web-based Products – this cohort is getting an intimate educational experience so many East Coast MBAs would love to have.

It’s been an exciting first two weeks – starting off with an exhilarating first day, with all of us bright and early and into campus by 8am. Despite widespread jetlag, we were all in awe of the amazing Wharton West Campus, with a view of the Bay Bridge and sunshine streaming through the windows as we enjoyed breakfast.

On the social front, our cohort has been very active in getting to know each other and San Francisco. We kicked off our first week in traditional Wharton style with PUB, sponsored by the WGA, downstairs at Palomino’s. One overall observation was that there was a lot more wine being consumed than beer…we are in the wine capital of the US after all! This PUB kicked on to another PUB with Wharton Alumni, where we met many of our predecessors who are now working all over the Bay.

The festivities continued all weekend, with a dozen of us heading out to “Off the Grid,” a roaming mobile food extravaganza at Fort Mason, to gorge on delicious street food and enjoy some rock music. We also took the opportunity to hit up the legendary “SF Bootie” at DNA Lounge, to see what all our Wharton friends who were in SF over the summer were talking about.   Many small students also took impromptu trips to Napa Valley and capitalized on the proximity to wine country!

Furthermore, we’ve been treated to some amazing guest speakers so far. Peter Farago (WG ’03) of Flurry gave us an animated presentation around the mobile app analytics industry and stressed the importance of mobile in the future.  Davis Smith (WG ’11), co-founder of Baby.com.br, made for an extremely inspiring guest speaker before our Venture Capital class (thanks Tom Baldwin for organizing this!) as he recounted the now legendary story of how he started one of Brazil’s hottest and fastest growing startups. It was serendipitous that Professor Wessels was sitting in the seat that Davis was in only a few years earlier when he took the same course.

Several pilot participants are engaged in career related pursuits outside of the classroom—and have found the Wharton pilot program to have already enhanced their pursuits given the curriculum and location. Mike Taormina (WG ’13), co-founder of CommonBond, a provider of student loan alternatives said “participating in the SF pilot was an easy decision, both for me and my start-up. The ability to leverage the resources of the Wharton Venture Initiation Program here in SF as well as connect with the entrepreneur ecosystem in San Francisco is great for students serious about taking their companies to the next level.”

It is not only entrepreneurs but also those engaged in more traditional career pursuits that have found the pilot to be of value. Vishy Venugopalan (WG ’13) is currently working with Bessemer Venture Partners, a leading VC firm. He works most closely with a Boston-based deal partner and is able to help this partner “identify and source potentially interesting opportunities in the Valley.” Additionally Vishy has found the location incredibly conducive to general networking—“in Philadelphia, you could hop on the bus to New York to meet companies, but here there are hundreds of interesting companies in our back yard.” For Jake Samuelson (WG ’13), being located in San Francisco has allowed him to continue to work for his Menlo Park-based start up, Kuato Studios, a company focused on bringing technological innovation to education. “Being in San Francisco allows me to stay close to company executives…as well as to potential customers, ” said Samuelson.