Gucci Belts and Venture Finance

Venture Finance was engaging. With his designer shirts and big ol' Gucci belt, Professor Rossi paces around the front of the classroom in an attempt to get more steps added to his pedometer. Enthusiasm sweats from his brow.

I was pumped about venture finance. At the time, I was working for a private equity firm so I had a natural interest in a non corporate-finance finance class. Also, it seems that private equity is popping up everywhere, so the timing of the class seemed fitting. 

The Handsome Flying V's Final Presentation

We learned about angel investors, private equity funding, bootstrapping, having your "skin in the game" and lastly, how to succeed in life. "How to succeed in life" (my coined term) was my favorite part. In the last class, Rossi puts finance to the side for a bit and presents corporate brands that dominate. He highlights Apple (of course), Southwest, Harley Davidson and Disney. I'm a branding strategy guy, so the conversation was music to my ears. As Rossi put it, "it's all about the experience," which I couldn't agree with more.

At one point, he described a Gator football game, of which I attended two this past year (SC and LSU). Dang those games are such a blast (even for someone who can't name but two players on the field). Rossi asked a question, "Why do we opt into standing in the scorching sun for four hours, screaming next to sweaty drunkards, dealing with overloads of traffic, buying $5.00 bottles of gatorade? Especially when your couch is so much more comfortable? Why would nearly 90,000 crazies do such a thing every Saturday?" Of course, it's about the experience. 

Rossi showed us how to gauge the health of a company through their financial statements, and he taught us how to ask the right questions to understand the most important part of a company - the people. But outside of the people, the class really came down to understanding and quantifying risks. Risks are everywhere and management risks, sales and marketing risks, development risks, and commercialization risks are the foundation of valuation. 

We got a double whammy of risks in this Term 2 - while Rossi was busy caressing his Gucci belt, we were also learning how to not be like the former BP CEO in Risk and Crisis management, taught by Professor Florig. 

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For the finance final, every team had to put together a valuation and presentation for Zipcar, the hippy, Boston-born car-sharing club. If you want to learn more about it, let me know - you learn a lot about a company after sitting through 14 presentations on them. No question, our team's presentation was the best. Brad, our New England accented sports fanatic, thought it'd be fun to have a cocktail party in the front of the classroom. We popped open a fake bottle of Sam Adams, and we were off. Rossi was speachless, and awarded us an A.

Cocktail Party Final Presentation

I was glad the term was over because it meant a party was due. Derrick, in his infinite wisdom, opted for a keg of magic juice (or whatever drink name would imply a sugary liquid that goes down too easy and effects your brain too quickly). We partied at the top of the Holiday Inn, sun shining strong, Five Star pizza trying to soak up that sugary goodness, and stories of the semester floating around the pool. We were halfway through this MBA venture and our risk of making it through were slowly being mitigated.

Precious Moments with Dr. Jane Douglas

One of the first assignments I completed for Dr. Jane Douglas' Professional Writing class was a personality test. I love those dang tests. I've probably taken 800 of them in my lifetime, and they continue to surprise me with accuracy. I remember one of the questions, "Do you prefer being alone or being with a group?" I picked the group answer, and shortly after, Myers-Briggs told me I was an extrovert. Well I'll be.

Dr. Jane Douglas laughs in the face of your stereotypical professor. She cusses, talks about Jesus and nuns, and wears fitted clothing my grandmother probably wouldn't appreciate, all in the name of tenure. I liked her style - Jane told you how it is. If your writing was crap, she'd let you know through "track changes" notes that read longer than your submission. If your writing was good, she'd tell you why your writing was good.

I was torn apart by her grading, which I liked. I'm not talking about 50-Shades-of-Grey-Torture-Weird-Stuff liked. I'm talking Mr-Miyagi-Teaching-Daniel-Son-Wax-On-Wax-off liked. I much prefer and benefit from a class where I get a B and learn a ton rather than a class where I get an A and felt like my time would have been more fruitful had I been cross-stitching Precious Moments scenes.

I write using "it" and "that" way too often, and Jane let me know those words are the devil. Of course, I would have known this if I had nuns for teachers in grade-school, but alas, my only editorial corrections over the last several years have come from Words with Friends.

Jane had us pick writing assignments that are of personal and professional interest - I picked the blog post assignments and the executive summary. The final is a group final, which sounds better than it is. Our assigned group was responsible for putting together one page of writing. We were writing an announcement to employees. Easy enough.

Jane gave some priceless advice before the final, "If this assignment collectively takes you longer than two hours, your paper is probably going to make me want to stab my eye with a sharp object." She was right - if your group didn't connect with the assignment right away, it would promise to be a long project that progressively loses quality from over-thinking. Our paper took five hours, and Jane now sports an eye-patch.

The night of the finals, Derrick, in his amazing event planning wisdom, got the class a stretch limo and a night at 101 Downtown, an urban, music-so-loud-you-have-to-yell type of place. Yah - the bottles of vodka came out with little sparklers attached to them. The bends from my final slowly and melodically turned into awkward dance moves and injured vocal chords. Our first term was officially over. And the next day, at 7:30am sharp, we'd be at it again, save for those who were a little too excited about those pretty sparklers.

Zack Morris and Pekin Ogan

If you're in the Internet, Executive or Traditional UF MBA program, it's probably very unlikely that you'll run into the cutest, most lovable old man you'll ever meet - Dr. Pekin Ogan. He only teaches the working professionals (yup - we're the best), and he only teaches one class a year (yup - he's over it) - Managerial Accounting: Critical Perspectives on Decision Making.

Pekin's smile and Matt's sideburns

Pekin, as he prefers to be called, teaches Managerial Accounting with flawless engagement, focusing on class discussion and endless whiteboard brainstorms as the primary source of learning. He sings, dances, loves his wife, hates the "word" incentivize (it should be motivate), and lives for teaching. Pekin indirectly teaches from a triple-bottom-line management perspective, where people, profits and planet have to play nice together. He despises dumb business, where managers thoughtlessly choose "short term gains" and end up with "long term pains." This concept was drilled through our heads.

Our cohort just ended our second term, and we celebrated with a pool party on the roof at the Holiday Inn with Sonny's Barbeque, Firehouse Subs, Five Star Pizza and kegs of Miller Light - ahh college. Pekin, in his khakis and smile, showed up to join the fun. By the end of the night, he was doing keg stands and playing Flip Cup like it was nobody's business. As Zack Morris used to say, "Hey Slater - I bet your mom can't do keg stands like that!" Actually - I'm pretty sure Zack never said that (wasn't he like, 14?), and I'm pretty sure Pekin never did keg stands, but he was still at the party, shirt off and sipping some cold ones. He was chatting with us about his love for students and his love for companies that choose people over profits.

I learned a ton in Critical Perspectives on Decision Making, and worked hard for an A, thanks to some help from powerful study sessions with a Pepsi financial analyst and New England sports fanatic, Brad, and a tall, finance guru named Jared, who I shared a room with at the Paramount for the first few weekends we were in Gainesville. Jared was the best roommate ever - we stayed up late those first weekends in Gainesville, chatting about our families, our faith, and the anxieties of being in the UF MBA program and having to find time to work on the side.

I was a little bummed out about how, in the first term of the UF MBA program, all of our major tests were on Sunday instead of Saturday. Instead of our cohort flooding downtown Gainesville on Saturday night, celebrating the conclusion of the month's tests by cheerfully volunteering to self-inflicted dehydration, low blood sugar and inflammatory responses from our immune systems, most of us were staking out break-rooms at Hough Hall until 1:00am, doing that last-minute cramming that inevitably becomes from working while going to school and possibly raising a family.

Towards the end of the first term, Pekin told me secretly, as I was showing him his quotes (my tweets) tickering on the giant screen in the middle of Hough Hall, that he just loved our class - it was one of his favorites. I'm sure he says this "secretly" to everyone who tweets him as if he's some renowned business thought leader (which he is in my book), but he had a sincerity and humility about him that sold me. In fact, Pekin has a humility that transfers to your soul every time you shake his hand, or study his smile, or watch his quirky dances. And UF MBA lesson #2 hit me, "Be sincere, be humble, and care more."

My tweets from a weekend with Pekin (and Dudley).

Extroverts and Corporate Finance

I'm an extrovert. I don't think before I talk, I prefer going out every night of the week instead of staying home, curled up on the couch with A River Runs Through It, and I drink tons of water (hoping that I'll have to pee more often throughout the day, inevitably resulting in shorter stints of solitude in my office).

Luckily, us loud-mouth, dominant types are rewarded in the workplace for our ostensibly faulty behaviors. Architects design office space now, completely built around the idea that everyone should have to collaborate all day long with every breathing thing in the company - also known as the open office concept.  Meetings are often biased towards the extravert's ability to think on his/her feet, instead of the introvert's aptitude to actually think about problems and reason through solutions - and then talk. Premiums are paid more for presentations than for substance and critical thinking.

In the UF MBA program, I'm always happy to see that class participation counts towards/against your final grade, and I can imagine that 1/3 of the class is not so happy to see this addition in most syllabuses. Whelp, in Corporate Finance with Professor Dudley, I became an introvert for the first time in my life. Discussions about CAPM and WACC and Cost of Capital and Risk-Free-Rates and Debt and Equity and Risk Aversion and Puts and Calls and Bonds and Stocks and the Black-Scholes Model shut me right up. I was at a loss for words, and every time I opened my mouth to achieve that 10% participation allotment, a sudden sweat would hit my palms, my voice cracked, and my pretend confidence was shattered.

Corporate Finance was difficult for me. My brain just doesn't operate like TJ, a sell-side hardline retail broker in Tampa, who probably could have taught Corporate Finance with his eyes closed. I guess I could be complimentary compared to Modigliani and Miller, who said with Nobel Prize Winning authority that finance is a crock of #$^@. Maybe I'm exaggerating their study, or maybe I just like to make myself feel better about not being overly financially inclined - either way, my ignorance in Corporate Finance made me feel naked and vulnerable (don't picture that - otherwise, a hairy back and belly and everything might haunt you forever).

It's funny, I took a few classes in Corporate Finance in my undergraduate business program, but after six years or so, when you have no need to calculate the present value of future cash flows of anything -because you don't have anything - you forget which buttons to press on the financial calculator.

After all is said and done, Corporate Finance was a great class, and the "hotness" rated Dudley was a good professor. He knew his stuff, presented it in a way that kind of made sense (it's me you're talking about), and encouraged thought that went beyond the numbers.  It was like learning a new language to me, where before, all I really knew how to do was conjugate verbs. And I suck at conjugating verbs.

I now know that managers are more scared of debt than equity, I know that Beta is an important yard stick, and I know that the cost of capital is the same exact thing as the required rate of return. I know that MS Excel is responsible for smart-looking people's smartness. I know that forecasting is somewhat of a guessing game with more assumptions than facts, and therefore, reason must accompany numbers. I now know that Dudley's quizzes are easy, and his finals are difficult.

I ended up really appreciating Corporate Finance and getting a B+ for the class. And now, with confidence, I can step away from my computer every hour and tell every living soul on my way to the bathroom how much I know about complex financial forecasting. My poor office-mates.

Happily Peeing Next to UF MBA's

After you have a kid, life flies by. One day, you've got a little baldy with no teeth and a bunch of eczema, and then you blink, and that little rash infested, old-man looking, skullet-sporting creature turns into a walking human being, saying "no" to everything you say. The first term of the UF MBA program rushes by in a similar fashion, but instead of measuring time by rash reductions and length of hair, you measure time by Jason's Facebook posts. 

Every few months, Jason would post up on our cohort's Facebook page how far along we were to receiving that little piece of MBA paper with the $200 frame. When we made it to "P1MBAS13 = .3125 (MBA)," I could hardly believe it. 

As time sneakily flew by, our cohort magically started becoming one giant group of friends. Maybe these friendships were the result of collectively understanding what it's like to sit in a weekend of classes while everyone else is at the beach, or maybe this was the result of a bunch of Type A's with presumably similar interests - Gator football, Tim Tebow, less government intervention, Gator football and Tim Tebow.

Who knows how we all made friends, or how little groups of friends started getting tight, or how anyone becomes friends with anyone. But I like what the articulate and thoughtful C.S. Lewis says about the initial emotion - "Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one!'" 

I pretty much hate Facebook, but using it for groups is genius (and also for stalking people). Every class, we all used our closed Facebook page to write what we were thinking about the class, or to post up a picture of something funny. When I felt a vibration on my iPhone alerting me that the beautifully bearded Matt was asking the tall, body-that-makes-you-not-want-to-take-your-shirt-off-at-a-pool-party Derrick what color deep V t-shirt he was going to wear that evening, I'd watch the whole class gradually smile, like a bunch of drunks doing the wave at a Jaguars game. Or when Candace posted up a link to the Titanic Coloring Book (because every child should be coloring dead bodies in ice cold water, as our eccentric writing professor, Jane Douglas, matter-of-factly presented in class), I randomly laughed out loud, confirming the brand I carried of a bearded homeless man that talks to himself and creepily laughs at his own thoughts.

Our cohort studied together, peed together (those bathrooms are packed during breaks), drank together, learned together and made fun of things together. I read once that a Harvard MBA isn't a Harvard MBA because the curriculum is so far beyond anything else. A Harvard MBA is a Harvard MBA because you're studying with - and peeing next to - really rich and smart people - people that will become major industry and market leaders. I'd say those are good people to know.

At UF, it's no different. I like peeing next to smart, articulate people- people that will, no doubt, become leaders, if they already haven't. I like learning from them and debating with them. I like being philosophically challenged and I like when people have answers to problems that I can't even seem to comprehend. My humble and engaging father told me last week, "It's not about what you know. It's about how you handle what you don't know." No matter how criticized MBA programs are for lacking true value, this personal piece of value goes under the radar in cheap quantitative studies about MBA employment rates and salary levels. The true value, as in anything, is in the people. The UF admissions team, turns out, is not only funny, but good at finding quality people with big bladders. And maybe that's why we're all okay peeing next to each-other - we're in this program to learn, not just from the professors, but from each-other.

What a handsome group! (P1MBAS13) 
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