Mike Gardner, VP of products of Ketera came in to speak this last Friday at the PIE. According to their website, the Ketera Network TM transforms business buying and selling by integrating an enterprise-class spend management solution and an active community of 250,000 business buyers and suppliers that have transacted over $4 billion in spend and actively collaborate to improve results.
Mike started off describing his story of his story of Peach Pit Press. Him and his friend had an idea to write a book of how to use a printer. Mike and his friend noticed that many of the books that were written to teach people how to use printers were too technical to be of any use so in their free time they wrote a book and then published a small first print. The books took off and the turned into a full-fledged business. It ended up being bought by a large publisher and is still publishing with the name Peach Pit Press. He used this story to illustrate four main points of advice for the ambitious student audience.
1. Know when to get on and when to get off:
Mike commented that there are many “almost” stories in Silicon Valley. Though it may be easier said than done, we must try to time the right moment to invest our time and energy in an experience, and then time our exit towards something better. This is something people talk about a lot with investing, but it must also be something that we consider in our jobs and everyday lives.
2. Evaluate an opportunity for a learning experience
In any experience it is important to learn. We all have our own expertise to share, but it is important that a company can teach you something. If a company can’t offer you a good learning experience beyond your scope of expertise it might be worth it to seek out different opportunities.
3. Know the people you’re working with and know what they don’t know
Its important to know who your working with and what they know. This is related to learning in the job, but it is also a way of determining the strength of a company you work for. As analysts look at the core competencies of a company so too must you when evaluating your next move, which will help you in evaluating the risk of your new endeavor.
4. Link in to your network
Our network is valuable not only based on the contacts we have now, but those we will have 5-10 years from now. Then, we will have not only many more contacts, but also our current network will have gone through career development. Mike commented that he uses LinkedIn as his professional contact list and encouraged the students to do the same.
My take from his presentation is that as young professionals and students, we must learn as much as we can and learn intelligently. Mike also described the new trends in the market place and how we must adapt our learning to benefit us in the new economy. I believe that the old ways of finding a job and where the jobs are located are changing. Through the Project for Innovation and Entrepreneurship the student interns will learn how to succeed by learning from those such as Mike who are in the middle of this rapid change in our economy.
