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Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset
This spring, students in the Entrepreneurship Seminar developed business plans and pitched products or services in a bid to win the endorsement of a panel of alumni judges. This yearlong, elective course, popular among upperclassmen, engages students with its “Shark Tank” vibe and guest speakers that include some of the school’s most successful alumni, who are themselves entrepreneurs and industry leaders. Looking forward, school leaders have a vision to expand the course into a new Entrepreneurship Program that will build on the current curriculum, emphasizing the importance of sustainability and social responsibility, and how to embrace Frederick Gunn’s entrepreneurial spirit today.
Andrea Marron ’04, top left, spoke to students in Entrepreneurship Seminar via Zoom about launching her company Ragtrades, and what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.
said Sean Brown P’22, Chief Development Officer, who co-taught the class in the Fall Term with Head of School Peter Becker, and in the winter and spring with Teaching Fellow Madison Smith. “We’re trying to teach them life skills. If they leave this class being better presenters, understanding what it means to pitch a product — whether that product is an actual, tangible thing or you — we’re teaching them how to do it.”
Students come to the class with varying degrees of knowledge. Some have taken economics, and some have aspirations of launching a business of their own. Within the first week or two, most have what Brown described as an “aha moment.” Instead of striving to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, students recognize that being an entrepreneur is the same for anyone who runs any business.
“They understand that ‘entrepreneurial’ is a term that describes lots of people, not just those who are the top of the list of the wealthiest people of the world. The question, ‘What does it mean to
– Xavier Parkmond ’11
We try to give people a lot of freedom to build almost their mini-businesses. Some work, some don’t work. We take the things that work and we really focus on those things, and we don’t worry about failure. Failures are just learning opportunities.”
– Patrick Dorton ’86
be an entrepreneur?’ is no longer answered with, ‘It means you come up with the next incredible piece of technology.’ It means that you’ve identified a problem that can be fixed with efficiencies. If there’s a market for that solution, it can become a business. And if there’s no market for it outside of your task list, you’re still an entrepreneur and have identified how to solve a problem,” Brown said.
According to Smith, who is also teaching AP Economics and a section of The Declaration (the junior-year course in the school’s four-year citizenship curriculum), the seminar provides students with general business literacy skills. “A lot of the students have become very fixated on how to pay taxes or get a license to do something. While we can’t answer all their questions about their imaginary business, we can teach them how to find that information on their own when the time comes,” Smith said.
The course provides an overview of basic business principles, such as marketing and human resources, and through discussions covers practical considerations such as overhead costs, purchasing issues, shipping costs, how to rent office space, and the importance of a competitive advantage. When the question of licensing came up, Brown introduced the class to Dan Troiano ’77, who sold his electronics company to NASA. Troiano was able to talk about licensing, trademarking, strategic partnerships, niche products, and engineering in the context of his experience.
Caleb Elston ’05, who was recruited by an internet startup while he was still in college, and has worked in Silicon Valley for a decade, talked with students about his experiences launching multiple businesses, about the importance of finding your team, and It was an opening night many months in the making, a celebration why and when to leave to find another opportunity. of art, music and nature, of the contributions of many individuals Xavier Parkmond ’11, who earned a degree in finance at George Washington University and completed a one-year internship at and an entire community — a vision brought to life.the White House under President Barack Obama’s administration,
talked about his decision to walk away from a successful career as a consultant for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, where he worked with public and private sector clients, including Google.
“I felt like I was at the peak of my career, if you will, and I wanted to gain more skills, build my network, and also learn from people who thought differently than me,” said Parkmond, who is currently wrapping up his second year as a graduate student at Stanford University School of Business. For him, the decision was not about putting his career on hold. It was about shifting gears. “You have two years to focus on yourself and learn some of the softer skills, which I think is super important if you want to become an entrepreneur and also no matter what you want to do if you’re in a leadership position. How do you have difficult conversations with people? How do you lead a team? How do you work with people that have different opinions and bring them to consensus? As you move forward in your career, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or not, those things become really important.”
Patrick Dorton ’86, CEO and Managing Partner of Rational 360, Inc., a communications and public relations firm in Washington, D.C., and Chairman of The Frederick Gunn School Board of Trustees, advised students to try to learn from everyone they meet, to ask questions, and to work harder than anyone else. He began his career on Capitol Hill, where he worked for senators and congressmen for eight years before moving to The White House to serve as Special Assistant to then-President Bill Clinton. Following that, Dorton took a job as chief spokesman and Director of Media Relations at Arthur Anderson. He left the firm to start his own company, which now has 40 employees.
“Everyone here is an entrepreneur. That’s what we value. We try to give people a lot of freedom to build almost their mini-businesses. Some work, some don’t work. We take the things that work and
we really focus on those things, and we don’t worry about failure,” Dorton said. “Failures are just learning opportunities,”
Andrea Marron ’04, who launched her first company while in college and became Vice President of Ecommerce and Retail at fashion brand Nicole Miller in New York, talked about how she identified a problem in her industry and solved it. In her case, that involved going to graduate school and finding a business partner to launch another company, Ragtrades, which represents the intersection of fashion and technology.
“Being an entrepreneur is not as glamorous as I thought it was maybe when I was younger,” she told students. “It’s really, really hard because the highs are high and the lows are low. You’re kind of on a roller coaster. It is really challenging. Something that people told me when I was in grad school is, if you want to make a lot of money, don’t be an entrepreneur. Go into finance or something like that. I think that’s for sure true. There are a lot of jobs that are way easier than being an entrepreneur. You really only do it if it’s the only thing that you can do and you’re super passionate about something.”
One of the goals of Entrepreneurship Seminar is to encourage students to use business as a force for good. “With corporate responsibility, we’re looking at how to balance being a profitable company with also being a socially and environmentally responsible company. We want to teach them that money has power in the society we live in, and they have the potential to use that to give to their communities to make life better for other people,” Smith said.
In those discussions, students are thinking critically about the impact that companies can have in terms of sustainability, climate change and equity, in part by aligning their thinking with the values of Mr. Gunn. Students learned that Certified B Corporations, which meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, have a Declaration of Interdependence, and in the first line it states, “We envision a global economy that uses business as a force for good.”
“Someone in class actually said, ‘Isn’t that what our school is trying to do?’” Brown said, referring to the school’s belief that Frederick Gunn School students can make a difference, in the same entrepreneurial way that Mr. Gunn did, by becoming active citizens who can Be a Force for Good in the world.
One of the ways the school plans to accomplish this is by using Entrepreneurship Seminar as a springboard to launch a new Entrepreneurship Program. The vision is for entrepreneurship to become a fundamental element of the student experience over the course of four years.
“We’ll have classes in entrepreneurship but we’re also hoping that in the same way that we want citizenship to be a thread, and outdoors to be a thread throughout, we want entrepreneurial thinking to be a thread throughout,” said Brown, who hopes that one course will build on the next, from year to year, similar to the curriculum created by the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, which is also based on the values and ideals of Mr. Gunn. By the time students are seniors, they will have had three years rather than a semester or two to think about what product or service they want to pitch, and can make it not only meaningful, but truly marketable. “Our founder was an entrepreneur, so we want our students to have this mindset,” he said.
– Andrea Marron ’04
