Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series

Opportunity Recognition & Startup Competitions Launch

Wedesday, October 3, 2012

6:45-7:00pm Registration

7:00-8:30pm Panel Presentation

Wells Fargo Room - Haas School of Business

Sorry, this event is SOLD OUT.

Please join us for the first workshop of the 2012-2013 Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series and the launch of the UC Berkeley Startup Competition and the Global Social Venture Competition. This session will focus on opportunity recognition. There are lots of opportunities out there - how do you know which one is right for you? This session will feature three entrepreneurs who have made their choices and are developing their companies. They will tell you how they found their opportunity and the decisions they made in starting their ventures. Many entered our startup competitions - come hear why you should too.

For more information about the Entrepreneurial Best Practices Series, call 510-642-4255 or email lester@haas.berkeley.edu.

MODERATOR:

Steve Hahn

Stephen F. (Steve) Hahn
Research Fellow
The Dow Chemical Company

Steve joined the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan in 1982 and has worked in a variety of business and corporate research and new business development functions at Dow prior to assuming his current role in 2007. As Research Fellow, Steve leads Dow’s effort to identify emerging, strategically aligned chemical, materials and energy related business opportunities. He is focusing on the US West Coast region and is currently located in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area of Northern California.

Steve has a B.S. in Chemistry from Michigan Tech and an M.S. in Chemistry from Central Michigan University. He holds 35 issued U.S. Patents, has 40 publications in refereed journals, and 6 chapters in text /reference books. Steve was named a Dow Inventor of the Year in 1990 and 1996, the Distinguished Alumni Lecturer at Michigan Tech in 1996 and 2003, and received the Dow Excellence In Science Award in 1999. He was a Visiting Professor of Chemistry and IPrime Scholar at the University of Minnesota in 2002. He has represented Dow on Advisory Boards at the University of Connecticut at Michigan Tech. He received the American Chemical Society Cooperative Research Award in 2008 and the Council for Chemical Research Collaboration Award in 2010.

FEATURED SPEAKERS:

Mitch Gordon
CEO and Co-Founder
Go Overseas

Mitch Gordon is a serial entrepreneur, starting a number of companies in the fields of travel and education. His most recent company, Go Overseas, is the most popular resource on the internet for researching travel related programs around the world. He is originally from upstate NY and lived in Taipei, Taiwan for four years before moving to San Francisco, where he currently resides. Mitch is currently completing his MBA at UC Berkeley. When he’s not working you can find him playing rugby, hiking, traveling or reading.

Craig Hashi

Craig Hashi, PhD (EWMBA 12)
Corporate Strategy/Business Development
McKesson

Craig Hashi, Ph.D. (EWMBA 12) currently works in the Corporate Strategy and Business Development group at McKesson. He recently completed an MBA at the Haas School of Business, at which he was recently awarded the Turner Fellowship for entrepreneurship. Prior to Haas, he received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UCSF/UC Berkeley (CIRM Fellow and Lloyd Distinguished Fellow) and holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA. He was a Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of NanoVasc, Inc., where he successfully raised a Series A Round of $6.25M from two Venture Capital firms: MedVenture Associates and Burrill and Co. He was also the Principal Investigator for a $1.5M NIH SBIR grant.

Nanxi Liu (BA 12)
Founder
Nanoly Bioscience

Nanxi is founder of Nanoly Bioscience, a company that is developing polymers that enable vaccines to survive without refrigeration. Nanoly was awarded funding from Duke, Cornell, Berkeley, and Dell Corporation. It was also named NASA’s Top 10 New Tech Companies and received a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. While at UC Berkeley, Nanxi was elected Vice President of the student body and taught a course on student public policy. As a student, she developed a text-based 911 system that received funding from CITRIS and the Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion. Nanxi was a Clausen Center International Business Fellow where she conducted research on government social responsibility in Hong Kong. Her professional experiences include investment banking at Goldman Sachs, derivatives trading at Citigroup, and engineering at Cisco Systems. Currently, Nanxi lives in Los Angeles and is CEO of Enplug, a media software technology company. Nanxi serves on the Board of Directors for the West Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and on Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation Youth Advisory Board.

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