From Kent Malmros', "Everything Old is New Again," Fall '99 From Kent Malmros', "Everything Old is New Again," Fall '99In a world of "I have more graduate degrees than you do," the prospect of not having a consistent, guaranteed paycheck scares many people. Starting your own business isn't even an option. When Krause founded his own company fewer than three years ago, the only guarantee was its name, Cookies & Creams. And even that has changed since -- so much for guarantees. Krause financed the company now called Jeremy's MicroBatch Ice Cream on $70,000 worth of stock holdings. He chanced even more than most entrepreneurs by putting such a large sum of money into the venture so early. But it is a chance more students in the University setting should be willing to take. Mark Fraga, Penn's managing director for entrepreneurial programs, says that such risks can make sense for college students who have yet to enter the real world. "If you want to say, 'what the hell' and give it a shot, then for a lot of students it is a sensible career path to go out and fail on somebody else's time," Fraga said. At a school like Penn, intellectual resources abound. The campus is a veritable playground for entrepreneurial interest -- you just need to ask someone who knows how to help you develop your idea. And you might not fail. Krause just won network television commercial time worth $1.6 million -- a 30-second spot that will run during Super Bowl XXXIII and be seen by an estimated 130 million viewers. In an instant, Penn most celebrated entrepreneur of recent times will no longer be Wharton's little secret. Krause's face will be the symbol for entrepreneurial possibility. Krause won the "See Your Small Business on the Super Bowl Search," a nationwide contest sponsored by Mailboxes, Etc. An MBE spokesperson told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the panel was impressed Krause's decision to pursue his dreams, despite the job possibilities his Wharton degree opened up for him. It seems sad that a business school background should be Krause's distinguishing mark in the entrepreneurial community. However, with the pre-professional mindset that exists on college campuses today, entrepreneurial endeavors are all too rare. What Krause did choose, as Fraga said, was to gamble on someone else's time. Hell, it beats working for someone else from nine to five everyday. Wharton's entrepreneurial business center, founded in 1973, was the first in the country. The success of the program is unmatched in the country. More importantly, Wharton is taking crucial steps towards opening the bank of entrepreneurial knowledge to the entire University. And you don't need to be a business person to tap the knowledge of those who are. Now, Penn has taken the next step towards trying to promote creativity and chance-taking. The Business Plans Competition offers a $25,000 reward to the group of students who present the most well developed business plan for an entrepreneurial enterprise. Fraga says that the competition is openly seeking students outside of Wharton to team up with business students to develop their ideas. "If we get a scientist from the Chemistry Department or a musician, it is beneficial to the program -- it isn't just a good business thing," Fraga said. "You have to have a product to sell. By tapping into the talents and skills of other people around the college we enrich our program." The entrepreneurial program has tried to tackle a difficult task: mixing hard-line business theory with the what can be at times the least straightforward realm of the business world. "Learning to be a good entrepreneur is like playing the piano," Fraga said. "You have to have some basic skills if you are ever going to be really good at it. But there are tools that you can learn along the way to help you get along in the learning process." Those tools may belong to someone pursuing a degree in biology, but who has the desire to begin her own business in agricultural development? "Some things about creativity, we'll never learn how to teach," Fraga said. "There are things about taking advantage of an opportunity we can teach." And the resources are here for students to tap. As Fraga says, "we can't make someone comfortable with not having a guaranteed paycheck," but for those that have already chosen to test their discomfort, there are avenues to explore while at Penn. Krause was the exception, not the rule. He took a chance, and after his marketing lectures, decided to make ice cream. But you don't have to be in Wharton to be an entrepreneur.
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