Last Wednesday, the Daniels Entrepreneurship Society (DES) got the chance to learn about engineering in mixture with sound business.
The speaker, Michael Hirschman, identified the major pitfalls involved with systems engineering and described how his company, RIGOR Engineering, LLC, is working to offer products that solve these problems. Hirschman also described how to transform the entrepreneurial spirit into successful business practices.
“What is cooler than learning from top-notch business people about how to develop ideas and how to be a successful entrepreneur?” said DES Chief Executive Officer Seth Brodie when describing the weekly meetings of the DES.
Past speakers have covered a variety of topics, including business etiquette, real estate management and running a successful pizza business. At the DES’ meeting, Hirschman described both the pitfalls of systems engineering and how better business practices can help to overcome those problems. “RIGOR Engineering is a real-world example of an entrepreneur combining passion with good business,” said Hirschman. “A lot of times with entrepreneurs they come up with great ideas but don’t do anything with them because they lack focus.”
One of the most important lessons that Hirschman passed on to the DES was that small business can be the vehicle for realizing one’s passion, whatever it may be.
This type of energetic learning opportunity is typical of the Daniels Entrepreneurship Society.
According to Brodie, the DES was born “because the board of directors saw a void and the need to bring the entrepreneurial spirit to the Daniels College of Business and the University of Denver.”
“The DES has chosen two ways of working toward this goal. The first is by holding meetings on a biweekly basis that would feature veteran entrepreneurs sharing from personal experiences with entrepreneurship. Second, by challenging the members to use their entrepreneurship in a variety of small businesses run by students the DES would utilize the insights gained from their speakers,” Brodie said.
The DES’ first major and successful student business venture was the Cupid Connection flower business this past February. The DES also hopes to expand on that success by facilitating “a small student-run business every quarter” said Tracy Phan, chief operations officer of DES.
“Our long-term goals are to develop more of a ‘society feel’ since this year was a first year and we are growing. In addition, we have plans for a large student-run business and entrepreneurial/business related TV shows on DUTV,” Phan said.
All of this began over pizza. “Basically, DES was started over a dinner at California Pizza Kitchen about a year ago,” said Nathan Evans, head of the DES strategy. “It seems like most of our really good ideas happen at dinner.”
Brodie, Evans and Phan came up with the idea of creating an organization that would share their passion with the entire DU community. The trio worked over the summer to create the DES constitution, create a club logo and design a Web site.
DES held its first meeting in September and since then has continued to grow.
Membership in the DES is open to all DU students. Additionally, non-business students are encouraged to get involved. The DES maintains a Web site at www.desdu.com, which contains information about both the society and the executive board.
