Thomas Eisenmann

So thank you.

I'm really nervous kind of being here, 'cause Tom Eisenmann showed up, and he's sitting in the front row.

And I don't give group lectures a lot, and I'm not used to working with these sliding Harvard blackboards, and, um, so I feel, uh, terribly unprepared and out of my element here.

I mean, mostly I sit around, uh, either talking to people on the phone all day or maybe going out to visit companies, uh, as I was doing this morning, and, um, you know, just asking annoying questions.

Teaching it again this year, January term.

There are two sections, myself and Tom Eisenmann, each teaching one.

So that's the quick backdrop on me, um, and my, uh, journey here.

So I grew up in Boston.

So our format today, Eric will come up and make some remarks.

And then my colleague, Tom Eisenmann, who I've mentioned, who is in addition to leading his course on launching technology ventures and in addition to leading our first year entrepreneurial manager course, is also the head of the elective curriculum here.

Tom will come up and interview Eric a bit, ask him some questions, and then he'll be glad to take some questions from the audience as well.

So with that, Eric, welcome.

So I'm immediately going to bridge for you guys with the rest of the Harvard schools.

So when you go to HBS, for those of you who don't, you will learn something from a great professor, Tom Eisenmann, and many others, something called the diamond.

And he describes the business model in terms of a customer value proposition, a go-to-market model, a technology and op- technology and operations model, and a cash flow formula.

So those of you who aren't in business school, you're probably going, "Well, what are those things?" So I'm gonna make it super easy for the rest of you.

Um, I'm gonna talk about Boston.

When I, when I came to HBS in a faculty capacity, last year I started, uh, with Tom Eisenmann teaching this class, Launching Technology Ventures.

Um, one of the things I realized is that a lot of people come to school and don't know anything about the scene that they're immersed in.

And so I wanted to give you sort of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Boston startup scene so that you can access it and take advantage of it.