"Who wants to be a multimillionaire?" venture capitalist Mike Michalowicz asked a group of students gathered in Ballou Hall on Friday for an entrepreneurship session. "Who wants to start a company that is known the world over?"
The event, sponsored by Young Entrepreneurs at Tufts (YET), examined how students can succeed even as the current economic recession complicates startup initiatives.
Young businesspeople from Tufts, Harvard, MIT and Babson attended the gathering, which featured presentations from Michalowicz and a number of students.
Michalowicz, who has started three multi-million-dollar companies and now runs a venture capital firm, drew on his own experiences to offer advice to attendees. In particular, he stressed the need for young people to have confidence in themselves.
"When you believe you are excellent at something, you will act like it," he said. "And if you slip up once, you will slide back up again."
Michalowicz, whose company Obsidian Launch helps young businesspeople unravel their ideas, encouraged participants to trust their instincts and feelings.
"Your gut is telling you exactly what is right for you," he said. "If you feel it in your gut, do not wait. Go, go, go for it."
He advised members of the audience to develop visions for their futures, but cautioned that overly regimented plans lack the necessary flexibility.
"To get there, you need to tack," he said, referring to the back-and-forth route of a sailboat going upwind. "Only worry about what you're doing in the next 90 days, because no one knows what's happening after that."
Attendees enjoyed his presentation.
MIT junior Renaldo Webb called the talk "very motivational."
"He mentioned the parts of the human psyche that [prevent] you from going forward on some crazy idea that might work. It taught me, if I have a good feeling, I should run with it," he said.
Also as part of the event, 15 students highlighted their entrepreneurial endeavors, which ranged from the creation of a jet propulsion device to the development of hunger-suppressing breath mints.
Tufts junior Greg Hering, for example, promoted his wind power consulting firm, which aims to map the potential effects that wind energy can have on municipalities and schools. Sophomore Katrina Pennington presented her company that sells Andean jewelry to American markets.
A number of students talked about Web-based businesses. One featured site allows students to build packs of vocabulary flash cards; another lets teachers collaborate with students and share resources with them.
In the face of an economic downturn, other initiatives focused on financial issues, like a Harvard project that facilitates alumni efforts to give current students loans with 0 percent interest.
Other examples of student-led companies featured during the event include Levant Power, which markets generators that collect energy from shock absorbers, and OnLatte, which built a printer that uses caramel cartridges to impose images on top of latte and cappuccino foam.
"These people here tonight are some of the most powerful, connected, sophisticated and ballsy people," Hering said.
Still, entrepreneurs are suffering, particularly because of the bleak economic outlook.
"The success rate [is] disgustingly low," said Hering, a former YET president who founded Kairos, a national group to support young entrepreneurs.
Hering said the recession "stopped" venture capital, but that angel capital -- investments from very wealthy individuals -- and seed capital -- investments from the family and friends of the entrepreneur -- have been filling the void.
As Tufts students work to exploit these resources, Hering said that YET could provide helpful guidance.
"[YET] lowers risk of failure," he said.
