Serial entrepreneur, tech guru and concerned businessman Yobie Benjamin urged Green MBA students last night to think big in order to succeed, especially as they position their future businesses for funding.
In a wide-ranging and lively talk, Benjamin described his adventures both in big business and start-ups. He arrived in the U.S. from the Philippines at the age of 22 with an engineering degree and a lot of hope. He landed a job in high tech and his career took off. He was named Partner and Chief of Global Strategy for Ernst & Young, when he had never heard of the company. This was at the dawn of the dot com boom, and he had the smarts, energy and experience to take the company into the Internet age.
Benjamin was very frank and open about his business strategies. One example illustrated the need for resilience and assessment of an enterprise, especially in the face of new data. He described changing a recent start-up’s business model from the ground up when feedback and further thought dictated that where he had begun was not working and was not going to work.
In addition to audacity and resilience, Benjamin urged the budding entrepreneurs in the Green MBA to consider carefully and preserve their intellectual property, and always have an exit strategy in mind from the very beginning of a business plan.
Yobie Benjamin is a regular blogger for SFGate’s City Brights feature. Most recently he has been aiding and writing about efforts to provide solar-powered water filtration systems to help Haitians recover from the devastating earthquake.
See previous post on Yobie Benjamin here.
Follow his blog on SFGate here.
