Entrepreneurs Get Their 20 Seconds

Posted by: Louis Lavelle on November 2, 2010

Entrepreneurship is all the rage these days on college campuses and MBA programs, with students at many top schools launching their own businesses. To tap into the trend, Babson College recently partnered with the Business Innovation Factory, a Providence, R.I.-based nonprofit, to create an Entrepreneur Experience Laboratory to “design, develop, and test new entrepreneurship support solutions.” The goal: to give entrepreneurs the tools they need and accelerate the creation of new ventures.

As the first step in the process, the partnership has launched something called the Entrepreneur StoryBooth, a web site where people launching new ventures of their own can share their stories (you can record a 20 second video), or watch those of others.

There were only a few dozen videos when I paid a visit, along with a bunch of written comments. But it was interesting. The budding business owners answer a series of questions, from the philisophical (“What is an entrepreneur?) to the practical (“What habits do you try to cultivate as an entrepreneur?”) None of them manage to get very far—there’s not much you can say in 20 seconds—but they all give it the old college try, and occasionally come up with a few pearls of wisdom. Michael Anton Dila advises entrepreneurs to be “voraciously curious,” while Monika Hardy suggests “dreaming boldly.”

Whether you’ve already launched your own business and you’re seeking advice, or your business only exists as a few scribbles on a cocktail napkin and you’re seeking inspiration, it’s worth a visit.