REQUEST: Beyond Teaching and Research: Entrepreneurship Professors as Startup Partners, Angels, Advisors, Consultants, Part-time Offices, etc

[entrepreneurship-phd at lists.uni-due.de]

From: Luiz Ojima Sakuda [mailto:luizsakuda at gmail.com]
Sent: Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:57 PM

Hi All,

Are there studies about the experience of professors that have other
role(s) besides the academic ones - as Startup Partners, Angels,
Advisors, Consultants, Part-time Offices, etc? I found something of
complement themes (e.g. ASQ article Entrepreneurs in academe: an
exploration of behaviors among life scientists), but I didn't find too
much, maybe I'm not searching properly.... As far as I know, Timmons
used to have "market" activities besides the academic ones, and he was
sure not the only one.

My focus would be Entrepreneurship Professors, but other professors
would also be interesting. Personal experiences and other people's
cases would also be welcome. Professors linked to Entrepreneurship
Centers do have other roles, I suppose that most of the cases as
University's agent, but sometimes independent of the University (with
different schemes of compensation and risk/return). Both scenarios
would be interesting too.

I imagine that many variables should be important to understand the
different cases, such as type of the relationship with the University
(tenure, part-time, etc), role (teaching - executive, undergrad, grad,
research, head of entrepreneurship center, etc), previous experience
(as entrepreneur, executive, investor, or other), age/seniority, local
entrepreneurship ecosystem, and so many other things that we have in
our various entrepreneurship models ;-) Thoughts on what matters also
would be good to hear/read.

Full disclosure: I'm coming back to this mailing list after a while
out, and this is a theme that is very important to me to support some
life decisions I have to make. I had some health issues last 2 years
(2 surgeries to take tumors off, chemotherapy), and I'm not sure that
I will have the energy necessary to be an entrepreneur again (at least
not as main role), although I'm 35. The metaphor I have to me is the
sports player that has to retire and restart as coach - it's not the
full story, but sometimes that's how I feel. The good part is that
many coaches were not that successful players, but were/are wonderful
coaches and make a lot of money ;-) My personal project now (I may
change it later) has the academic life as central and the
entrepreneurial activities as a complement - the opposite of what I
had done most of my life (if you get curious about me, I put my bio
below). I would like to have more information about how other people
structured their lives to do that, and how to serve emerging companies
needs considering that they don't have that much resources and I'll
not have that much time. Personally, I believe that emerging companies
may need someone that is closer to the operation than a board member,
who participates on weekly directors' meetings, but not necessary on
the daily operations. Maybe someone that is more alike the VC in
charge of a particular company of the portfolio, I'm not sure about
it. Compensation mainly in a high risk/return basis is ok to me as the
salary pays the monthly bills.

Depending on the feedback I get, I may write a paper about this, if
you are interested in co-authoring, please feel free to email me. If
you got interested in discussing PVT the "personal" part of the themes
I put here, feel free to email me too.

Best,
Luiz



Luiz Ojima Sakuda is Professor at FEI on innovation and
entrepreneurship, and remains at Globond International as Chief
Effectiveness Officer. Sakuda has a very diverse experience in
Entrepreneurship as entrepreneur, advisor, consultant, academic, and
investor; and has still does different things such as volunteering to
Artemisia and Endeavor Foundations, helping to judge Business Ideas
for GV-Intel Challenge, moderating the Sakuda Community (focused on
new business development), and giving his 0.02 as specialist to GEM
(Global Entrepreneurship Monitor). He also co-coordinates the cultural
area of the FGV Alumni.

Sakuda earned his BA in Public Administration, and his MBA at
FGV-EAESP, where he also completed the PhD coursework. He also studied
at ESSEC (France) for part of his MBA. Sakuda was Senior Managing
Director at Globond, consultant to the Schreier Family Office, Partner
of Orbe Investimentos and Director of Business Development at Yavox
Latin America. Sakuda also has academic experience as a professor of
MBA programs for FGV Management and BSP - Business School Sao Paulo,
on strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation related courses.

He wrote and published his own book of poems and short stories at 18,
and acted in two Shakespeare plays. As a Japanese-Brazilian, Sakuda
has been exposed to different cultures since birth. Living abroad in
France and in the USA was also a very important life experience.
Sakuda has a very curious mind, and participates in several different
communities - business, academic, artistic and others. He is
conversant in French, fluent in English and of course his native
Portuguese.