Weekly eClub Newsletter

When: Thursday, March 5, 2015 from 12:15-1:15 pm Where: Jacobs G05

As part of WBA Week, please join us for our third Kellogg eChats event, featuring Joanne Wilson, a.k.a. The Gotham Gal, a top angel investor. Joanne will be joining us via Skype to share her perspective on big technology shifts over the next ten years. Joanne invests in startups that are technology based, including some in the consumer products and even restaurant space. Many of the companies she works with are owned or started by women. In addition to her success as an angel investor, Joanne is the co-founder of the Women's Entrepreneur Festival and has been an avid champion for women in tech. 

Lunch will be provided. Register here.

Northwestern University Law Professors have scheduled office hours in order to answer your questions and offer advice on the myriad legal issues that are encountered by startups. There are a limited number of 30-minute time slots available, and the opportunity is first come first serve.

Register now to attend Entrepreneurship Law Office Hours with Professor Stephen Reed:
Wednesday, January 28th from 3:00pm-5:00pm »
Wednesday, February 25th from 3:00pm-5:00pm »

Register now to attend Entrepreneurship Law Office Hours with Professor Esther Barron:
Monday, February 9th from 1:30pm-3:30pm »
Monday, March 2nd from 1:30pm-3:30pm »

Are you interested in pursuing a summer internship or post-graduate career focused on corporate innovation? Would you like to learn about trends in corporate innovation? Join KIEI and the Career Management Center for a lively panel discussion featuring corporate leaders who understand the importance of innovation to keep their companies relevant and competitive. Panelists will share what type of skills they are seeking for innovation roles and how they align their innovation department with the rest of the company. 

Lunch will be provided. Panelists TBA on Campus Groups.

Join ten of your classmates and two Kellogg alumnae, Danielle Langone '14 and Nicole Staple '12, for this WBA Alumnae series event. The dinner is designed to provide a low-pressure environment to ask honest questions about career paths of women who have experience in a particular field. Attendance will be limited to facilitate personal conversations. Attire is business casual and the cost will be $10. Be sure to register here.

Allstate CIO, Mr. Suren Gupta, will discuss the business disruptions and opportunities created by the accelerating pace of technological change. Mr. Gupta leads a global organization delivering innovative and transformational solutions for Allstate’s customers, agency owners and employees. As the top technology executive at the nation's largest publicly held personal lines insurer, Mr. Gupta brings exceptional insights into digital innovation and its use to serve customers and develop new business models. 

Allstate is sponsoring a “Business Challenge” at Kellogg, in which three student teams are competing to develop strategies using Allstate’s telematics data to enhance the customer experience. The keynote address will mark the conclusion of the challenge and the winners, who will receive a $20,000 cash prize, will be announced at this stage.

"From a Basement Start-up to a Billion Dollar Business: Qualtrics and the Creation of the Insight Industry" by Michael Maughan. Mike Maughan is the Head of Brand Growth and Qualtrics. He specializes in helping organizations develop global demand for their brand by leveraging various tools from partnerships, social media, and corporate visibility to thought leadership, events, and public and analyst relations.

Ben Parr is the author of the new book CAPTIVOLOGY: The Science of Getting People’s Attention. He is cofounder of DominateFund, an early-stage venture fund.  He is a columnist for Inc. Magazine, the former Co-Editor and Editor-at-Large of Mashable and a former Columnist and Commentator for CNET. Parr was named by Forbes as one of its current “30 Under 30” and by StatSocial for its Top-100 Social Media Power Influencers, 2015, and Say Media identified him as one of the top ten tech journalists in the world.

He appears regularly on CNBC, CNN and “Entertainment Tonight”. As an award-winning journalist and editor at Mashable he wrote more than 2,400 articles on science, technology, media and business. He has a degree from Northwestern in Science in Human Culture -- the study of how science has impacted history, society, medicine, sociology, and economics. Today he works with startups and Fortune 500 companies showing them every day how to apply the science of attention. He will be using his research for the book to create several unusual marketing strategies designed to captivate potential readers.

From the initial idea to launching a new venture, an entrepreneur encounters legal questions every step of the way. Northwestern University School of Law's Tenth Annual Entrepreneurship Law Conference is designed as a forum to explore various legal issues that entrepreneurs face when considering new ventures. Panel discussions include such topics as entity selection, founder agreements, venture and angel financing, intellectual property, and employment issues. The focus of each of these discussions is to provide practical, relevant information on these and other legal issues. Thomas Morsch, Professor of Law Emeritus at Northwestern University and Emeritus Director of the Entrepreneurship Law Center will be this year's keynote speaker.

Space is limited. Based on past experience as well as the exciting roster of panelists and participants, we expect the conference will be fully subscribed. Attendees come from various backgrounds, including start-up executives, aspiring entrepreneurs, financiers, service providers, thought leaders, and students from law, business and engineering schools as well as high school students enrolled in entrepreneurship classes. Due to this overwhelming interest, please register early to reserve your spot.

Webinar Agenda

Fundraising sources
Key terminology
Pros/Cons of taking outside investment
How do you decide how much $ to raise?
What do investors look for?
The JOBS Act & Equity Crowdfunding
Q&A

Registrations are still open on a first-come-first-served basis. Email registration@mbaodysseyteam.com with the list of 4 team members. Please include school name, all 4 team members’ names, school email address and specific the point of contact for the team. Only regular full time MBA students may register. Note, if you school is mentioned, it is open to all of its global campuses. Please note that students will need to self fund their travel to NY unless otherwise communicated. Once qualified, teams should select an additional student to round out their team for the finals to ensure the strongest possible composition for the various games at the finals.

“What do you mean, Proctor & Gamble agrees to reduce the amount of cancer-causing chemicals?" That was Kate's first reaction when reading about the reformulation of Tide Free and Clear, a laundry detergent marketed to parents as 'free of harmful chemicals.' As she learned more about the detergent market, Kate was propelled into action, and formulated her own laundry detergent and cleaning products based on simpler ingredients. In 2013, she founded Meliora K, a socially-focused business that illustrates that companies don't need to rely on secret formulas and mysterious chemicals. Come learn from Founder Kate and CEO Mike '12 about their journey so far launching a socially-minded business, and the challenges and opportunities they currently face.

This year SEED celebrates 10 years of SEED Awards. During that time, we have recognised 175 SEED Winners from 37 countries and accompanied them in their initial scale-up. In this 2015 Award cycle, SEED will make available up to 29 SEED Awards to enterprises in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa. Two SEED Awards are available to enterprises that are run or owned by women and prioritise women‘s empowerment; one of these is for an enterprise in any country that is not an OECD or EU member, the other to an enterprise in Kenya.
 
Candidates can apply from 02 February 2015 until 31 March 2015, 23:59 CET. For detailed information please refer to the attached call for applications and press release or to the SEED homepage.

For more information visit our new website at www.seed.uno and stay updated on the development of SEED Winners and other enterprises through the SEED Blog

Are you interested in working for an existing startup?

Meet startups looking to hire students for both summer internships and full-time positions at the Northwestern-wide Startup Career Fair.

Who are we visiting? The trek will consist of 4 – 5 company visits. The list of companies will be finalized based on attendee preferences
How will we get there? The group will meet in Evanston and take the train together. We will use Ubers for within city transportation
How much does the trek cost? Train/Uber plus the cost of lunch. Confirmed trek attendees will need to make a refundable deposit of $250 (check written out to Northwestern University)

Sign up by Friday, 3/6: http://kellogg.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0D4XjeSolxZaTfD  (this will take less than 10 minutes).

From February 24 until April 7, 2015, the Financial Solutions Lab will accept applications from innovative entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations competing to receive up to $250,000 in capital, along with national partnership opportunities, industry expertise, mentorship, and cutting-edge consumer and design insights necessary to power the next generation of leading financial services innovations. Solutions from approximately eight winning organizations will embrace consumer-friendly design, promote consumer success, build trust, and create opportunity in order to generate mutual benefit for providers and consumers.

Winners will be selected by an expert, cross-sector group including leaders from JPMorgan Chase, CFSI, and strategic partners in human-centered design, behavioral economics, community outreach and for-profit entrepreneurship. Winners will be announced at CFSI’s Emerge Conference on June 11th. 

More info here

BucketFeet’s mission is to connect people through art. We now work with over 12,000 artists in more than 80 countries to create content and sell our products via BucketFeet . com, through direct retail (studios in Chicago and New York), wholesale via Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, and other retailers, and through our leading international distribution partners in over 20 countries. 

The 10 week summer internship provides students the opportunity to work in a growing start up company on various projects that will be analytical as well as creative. The internship also provides opportunities for interns to learn on the job from other team members, to think through critical questions the company is prioritizing and to help implement changes.

More details on Kellogg Job Board.

A local non-profit that is nationally recognized, HaveDreams.org, works with autistic young adults. One of the ideas that emerged in a recent meeting is that there may be tasks on Mechanical Turk that could be great job opportunities for these individuals. I am looking for a person who has used Mechanical Turk  in some way to discuss possibilities with the organization. This would be a one meeting engagement.

To apply, please email interest/resume to Prof. Linda Darragh (l-darragh@kellogg.northwestern.edu).

Chicago ed tech startup, Infiniteach, recently graduated from Impact Engine and is now entering Village Capital’s education accelerator program. The company is hiring a person to be responsible for developing and implementing a marketing and sales strategy, initially focused on the launch of the next product in April 2015, in addition to wearing the many hats of a start-up / entrepreneurial business. For more details, see the attached job description.

To apply, please email interest/resume to Katie (khench@infiniteach.com).

Foxtrot is searching for a business development intern during the winter and spring quarters to build out an exciting new business line. The role will involve working closely with the marketing and technical team to bring a new service offering to market. This exciting and hands-on project will combine elements of strategy, marketing and operations, resulting in a live new product by the spring. 

Deadline to apply is 2/13. Refer to the Kellogg Job Board for more information.

Location: Cambridge, MA

Deadline: March 22

Mardil Medical, a venture-backed cardiovascular device start-up, is looking for an MBA Summer intern to build business cases for prioritized new therapy platform applications working with leading researchers, cardiologists, CV surgeons, and company Sr. executives to get it right. The position will manage an undergrad biomedical engineering student intern also hired to assist the MBA. Reporting to CEO, the person in this role will also become one with the venture cap, private equity, public market and strategic investor financing pursuits that the company is engaged in while raising $25 million in the 2nd half of 2015. Please visit the Kellogg Job Board for more information about the opportunity.

Location: Cambridge, MA

Each year Flagship runs a Fellows program within its VentureLabs unit targeting between 8 and 20 graduate and recent graduate students to work on creating new startups over the summer. It’s a great opportunity as many of the students that participate in the program go on to work at Flagship, or within our portfolio companies.

If you are interested in creating the next disruptive companies, then the Flagship VentureLabs Fellows Program might be perfect for you.  This 12-week, intensive program is where exceptional innovator-entrepreneurs participate in venture creation. Flagship is very interested in attracting entrepreneurial students from Kellogg who have a science background.

For more information, refer to the related attachments.

Type: Full time.

A Chicago Tech Start-up, KnowledgeHound, is revolutionizing the way Fortune 500 companies are using market research. Known in the industry as, “The Google of Market Research”, the two-year start-up has been growing at a rapid pace and is looking to hire top talent to continue the growth. If you have a background in market research/consumer insights and have a passion for driving business strategy and building organizations, reach out to KnowledgeHound to learn further about their VP of Business Development and AD of Client Manager roles.  

For applications and more details, please email Kristi Zuhlke – kristi@knowledgehound.com

Luxury Garage Sale ("LGS") is a fast growing startup in Chicago. LGS is a curated, high-fashion retail experience and consignment boutique rolled into one. We sell standout merchandise through our retail channels and our emerging online presence.

We are a rapidly growing company (about to close a round of Venture Financing with Brian Spaly joining our board to help us with expansion), and we are looking for great candidates to run business development and manage our sales teams (both on the consignor relations and retail stylist fronts).

If interested, please email your resume and a cover letter to Kelsey Lutz at careers@luxurygaragesale.com

The Diplomat Fellowship is dedicated to creating and discovering solutions for the greatest social impact, in urban communities throughout the world. The Fellowship is an experiential, relevant, practical and exciting way to rethink our assumptions, our collective genius and the ways we solve problems. We aim to produce the next generation of thought leaders who will change not only a community, but also the world.

The 2015 Diplomat Fellows will be visionary change agents, hard at work, incubating new approaches to the planet’s toughest challenges. The program—exposing Fellows to negotiation, entrepreneurship and innovation—is committed to social impact through entrepreneurial action.

More info and applications here

The Wireless Innovation Project application period is now open! Competition for the best movile and wireless solution designed for social impact. $600,000 in prizes awarded over three years. Apply online by February 27, 2015 at vodafone-us.com.

Deadline: February 27, 2015

vodafone-us.com