SPARK's 'boot camp' - long hours and persistence

Partners learn meaning of 'stumbling blocks,' and how to avoid them

Ann Arbor News – Saturday, April 28, 2007

By Jenny Rode

David Liu has had five hours of sleep.

For an entrepreneur, that's not too bad.

The lifestyle of trying to get a company off the ground has a way of eating up your time and energy. If you're not passionate and driven, you might as well forget it.

But Liu is both of those things, and his attendance at Ann Arbor Spark's entrepreneurial "boot camp'' seems to have stoked those fires for him even more.

He and his business partner, Danielle Zhu, were one of 15 teams at the Michigan Information Technology Center attending the two-day seminar, designed to help people define their business plans and launch new companies. The event was sponsored by Spark, which uses Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti business taxes from the Local Development Finance Authority to fund the camp.

Thursday night, Liu stayed up until 1:30 a.m. working on his Web site, kantalk.com, and polishing his "elevator pitch,'' a quick and concise way to verbally describe a company and its mission. A member of each team gave a pitch to the whole group Thursday morning, got feedback, and came back Friday to try their "new and improved'' pitches again.

Entrepreneurs need to perfect these short presentations so if they run into a potential investor in an elevator or some other place short on time and space, they can quickly get the listener interested in their company.

Friday morning, Liu delivered his elevator pitch to rousing applause. He was focused and articulate, and despite little sleep, he was enthusiastic with his message. Instructors and other campers complimented him on the dramatic improvement.

He'll need that energy to sustain him. The road to entrepreneurial success is long and winding, with plenty of stumbling blocks.

"Stumbling blocks - that's the right word. I just learned that word today,'' said Liu, who moved to the United States 14 years ago from China and is still perfecting his English. "For me, I never would have used that word. ... There's a fear of making mistakes in front of others, and that fear is a big deterrent to improving your social skills.''

He already has more than 3,000 people using his Web site to improve their spoken language skills and meet others trying to do the same thing.

To figure out how to turn the site into a revenue-producing business, Liu and Zhu spent Thursday and Friday at the boot camp going to workshops, presentations and meetings with mentors to help them define the company better and identify funding sources.

Their next steps are to recruit business partners and investors and grow the number of users on the site. It's hard to know how long that might take, or how long it will be until advertising or membership revenue might come in. For now, they aren't paying themselves a salary.

Liu understands that can be part of being an entrepreneur.

So is fear, but he's using that to his advantage.

"A little bit of fear can be a good thing - it can help you work a little harder, a little faster.''

Jenny Rode can be reached at jrode@annarbornews.com or734-994-6843.