Category Archives: Princeton

How to Win Princeton Pitch 2013

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To win the Princeton Pitch competition, you have to explain the value of your idea, the market for it, and the business plan – all in 60 seconds. And if you could do all of that, you still have to have the best idea.

Princeton Pitch, a program of The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, held its third annual event in Dodds Auditorium last night. Thirty-three aspiring entrepreneurs pitched their plans, some just mere ideas, and some already in execution to standing room only in homes of winning first prize of 1K. A panel of six (mainly VCs) judged the competition. Continue reading →

9 Tips from Princeton Mompreneurs for Starting a Business

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So you want to start a business from home while you raise your kids? “It’s possible, but it’s going to be a lot harder that you think it is,” said small business owner Molly Vernon.

Vernon, who owns the children’s clothing store Luxaby Baby & Child, located in downtown Princeton, joined Mompreneurs Mimi Omicienski and Hilary Morris to speak on Continue reading →

All Massive Open Online Courses Are Not Created Equally

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Though there’s no monetary risk in taking a massive open online course (MOOC) from companies like Udacity and Coursera, it would be great to see reviews of particular courses to help you decide if you want to sign up or not. After all, time is a commodity too, and if you spend several hours in a class to find it’s not what you were expecting or is, quite frankly, subpar, it’s frustrating.

Since some of the MOOC platforms are so new you’re going to have to accept being the lab rat if you’re signing up to take them as they roll out. But, there are some blogging about their MOOC experience. And, Coursetalk.org, created by Jesse Spaulding, who took two MOOCs, is a repository for reviews of MOOCs offered from Coursera, Udacity and edX. So if you’re trying to decide between a few different classes, you just might find some reviews that help make the decision a little easier than trial and error.  Continue reading →

An Interview with Princeton University Sophomore and Entrepreneur Shubhro Saha

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This interview is with Shubhro Saha, a Princeton University sophomore and entrepreneur who co-founded Panther Logic, a company which makes “competitor-tracking dead-simple.” A graduate of Tigerlabs startup accelerator, Saha is running his company while pursuing a major in operations research and financial engineering.

What did you did in high school aside from academics?

I did the student council and the debate team. Our school would go to national teams, so I had the great opportunity to debate internationally as well.  In student council, I was president my final year and that was a great amount of work, but it was incredibly fulfilling. Continue reading →

Marissa Mayer and 10 Princeton University Students Talk About Burnout

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Marissa Mayer, the 37-year old CEO of Yahoo (formerly, Google’s 20th employee), is making headlines again with her belief that burnout is a myth. The gist of Mayer’s opinion about burnout – or what we think of as burnout – is that it’s caused by not getting to do what matters most to us. Here’s an illustration of her theory: Person X is working at a job that repeatedly gets in the way of her making it home to eat dinner with her husband and children, which is really important to her. Therefore, Person X starts to resent work, which causes fatigue and annoyance with long work hours.

While I think Mayer’s perspective on burnout has merit, I couldn’t help wondering if it’s really a “be all and end all” reason for burnout. And since college is in full swing, I figured Continue reading →

Interview with Social Entrepreneurs Arielle Sandor and Christine Blauvelt

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Christine Blauvelt and Arielle Sandor after pitching at the New York Stock Exchange.

Today’s jobtalk is with two up-and-coming social entrepreneurs, Christine Blauvelt and Arielle Sandor. Blauvelt and Sandor’s startup, DUMA, was inspired after they both spent time in Kenya working on their senior theses. Blauvelt, who majored in anthropology, studied HIV/AIDS in the Muslim community. Sandor, a history major, studied how community theater works to educate high-risk communities.

DUMA addresses unemployment in Kenya by connecting employers with qualified employees through a cell-phone based job-networking service. This month, Blauvelt and Sandor leave for Kenya to grow DUMA. Continue reading →

When You Can’t Find a Job, Start an Improv Club

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Olivia Fenshaw (left) and Mackenzie Kimmel (right) during Whose Cap Is It Anyway?

Mackenzie Kimmel was stumped. She was interviewing for a customer service-position at a startup company in NYC and had no response for the question, “What have you done to build team spirit at work?” except to say that she had once cheered people up with a sing-along to Adele. Never again, she decided, would she not have an answer to that question.

Kimmel, who graduated from Rutgers this past May with a degree in comparative literature, has been on a couple of interviews since the spring, but hasn’t gotten any job offers. Instead of chalking up her experiences as interviews gone wrong, Kimmel decided she would try to “live [her] way to coming up with better answers” to the questions she flubbed. Simultaneously building her resume. Continue reading →

From Economics to Theology: An Interview with Matthew Wong, Incoming Graduate Student at Princeton Theological Seminary

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Today’s jobtalk is with Matthew Wong, who has his master’s in divinity and will be attending Princeton Theological Seminary this fall to study theology. I met Wong several years ago when he started working at Princeton’s indie cafe, Small World Coffee, where he has worked on and off for 5 years.

While Wong’s decision to pursue degrees in divinity and theology is a marked departure from his undergraduate career at Cornell, he admits that he really had no idea what he wanted to do as an undergrad and went for a practical degree.

Title: Graduate Student Princeton Theological Seminary

Education:

B. A. Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, 2007

M. Div. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2011

Age: 27

What made you study economics?

I started off at Cornell as a fine arts major. I was planning on going into graphic design, something that was practical, but when I got to Cornell, I really didn’t like the program there, and since it was a university as opposed to an art school I had some leeway as to what I could do. I was thinking about going into advertising, which was kind of related, it’s a creative field. So, the most conducive degree for that was a business degree, but that Continue reading →

Make Networking Fun

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I keep meeting people who are looking for a job. New college grads, moms re-entering the workforce, unemployed folks, the demographics span age, ethnicity, and sex. And you know what I keep telling them? Take a guess. I bet you know.

Network.

“Argh.” you growl. You are so tired of hearing it. You prefer to hear, “Take this class, and that will give you an edge. Go to a recruiting firm, and they’ll help you.” And sure, you can take both of those actions, but even if you do, you STILL have to network. Continue reading →

Small World Coffee Is Hiring Baristas

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If you’re a new college grad and can’t find a job in your industry, consider applying to be a barista at the indie café in Princeton, Small World Coffee. O.K., so you don’t live near Princeton let alone anywhere near N.J.? No problem! Find your local Starbucks or mom-and-pop coffee shop and apply there.

We college grads are often quick to dismiss the valuable skills you can learn from coffee-shop jobs. In fact, we don’t just dismiss the skills you can learn, we often assume that there’s nothing to be gained by working in a coffee shop beyond learning how to pour a cappuccino. Come on, you know you’ve said to yourself, “I didn’t go to college to work in a Continue reading →