Published
Type
SPEAKING
From Student Founder to Guest Lecturer
From Student Founder to Guest Lecturer
GUEST LECTURE / USC MARSHALL
Returning to where I first learned by building, this time to share what building has taught me.
USC has been part of my entrepreneurial journey from the beginning. I studied business at the Marshall School of Business and began building Frenzy while I was still a student, learning as much through the process of trying to build a company as I did in the classroom.
In the years since graduating, I’ve had the opportunity to return as a guest lecturer, usually for a class each semester, to share what I’ve learned from building across technology, circular materials and early-stage companies.
The conversations have ranged from entrepreneurship and company-building to sustainability, circularity and emerging technology, but the underlying question is often the same: what actually happens between having an idea and making it real?
Learning by Building:
When I was a student, entrepreneurship often looked like the process of finding the right idea and executing against it. Building companies taught me something messier: the proposition changes, markets move, constraints appear, and the work rarely stays within the boundaries of one function.
Returning to the classroom gives me a chance to share that less linear version of building, including the decisions, uncertainty and iteration that usually disappear from the finished case study.
Themes:
01 / BUILDING
How do you move when the answer is not yet obvious?
02 / ADOPTION
Why does a good idea need an ecosystem around it to take hold?
03 / LEARNING
How do you treat experience as something to study, not just survive?
The value is in returning to the experience, extracting what it taught you, and passing that learning forward.
GUEST LECTURE / USC MARSHALL
Returning to where I first learned by building, this time to share what building has taught me.
USC has been part of my entrepreneurial journey from the beginning. I studied business at the Marshall School of Business and began building Frenzy while I was still a student, learning as much through the process of trying to build a company as I did in the classroom.
In the years since graduating, I’ve had the opportunity to return as a guest lecturer, usually for a class each semester, to share what I’ve learned from building across technology, circular materials and early-stage companies.
The conversations have ranged from entrepreneurship and company-building to sustainability, circularity and emerging technology, but the underlying question is often the same: what actually happens between having an idea and making it real?
Learning by Building:
When I was a student, entrepreneurship often looked like the process of finding the right idea and executing against it. Building companies taught me something messier: the proposition changes, markets move, constraints appear, and the work rarely stays within the boundaries of one function.
Returning to the classroom gives me a chance to share that less linear version of building, including the decisions, uncertainty and iteration that usually disappear from the finished case study.
Themes:
01 / BUILDING
How do you move when the answer is not yet obvious?
02 / ADOPTION
Why does a good idea need an ecosystem around it to take hold?
03 / LEARNING
How do you treat experience as something to study, not just survive?
