Friday as a Stanford MBA
6:00am: Wake up to prepare resume for 8am submission deadline. Jam 2 page CV into 1 page template while incorporating feedback from a kindly second year. Catch-up on news and email.
9:00am: Drive wife to auto shop to fix front wheel of her car. Drive back to Escondido Village and walk to class (left bike at GSB South yesterday).
10:00am: Critical Analytical Thinking class. Fruit, scones and coffee provided. Thanks to J and J, hurrah! 16-person board room simulation debates merits of compensation policy assignment. Picked up useful tips and economic theories from discussion and prof in debrief.
11:30am: Catch up on email in computer lab. Heat up lunch. Thank classmate for helping me understanding M&A basics to prep for my interview yesterday.
12:00pm: Attend talk by Heidi Roizen, former VC, Apple VP, and networking guru famous for her HBS case. Board member for TiVo and Yellow Pages Canada, she launched her own start-up, SkinnySongs.com. It’s been featured on Martha Stewart, Forbes, USA Today, and a host of other publications.
Above: (Left) Fireside chat with Heidi Roizen in Bishop Auditorium. (Right) Heidi on Martha Stewart
Got to ask her the session’s closing question: How do you connect with people you meet for the first time? Her answer: “Homework never ends”. Know everything about the situation you’re entering. If it’s a company, know the annual report, SEC filings, the schools the board members went to—prepare.
1:00pm: Bike home, drive wife to pick up car at auto shop, drive back, park, bike back to GSB South.
2:00pm: Hanging out at the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. Skim course readers for entrepreneurial electives to figure which I want to take. Read through NetApp case for afternoon class. Did you know NetApp ranked #1 on Best Places to Work according to Fortune Magazine?
2:30pm: Mentorship meeting with Brian Ascher, general partner at Venrock (VC investor in Apple, DoubleClick, Polycom, etc.). Forbes listed Brian on its 2009 Midas Touch list after he sold DATAllegro to Microsoft and Adify to Cox Enterprises. Get some really useful insights on bootstrapping a company. Start to follow Brian on Twitter. Write him a thank you card.
3:15pm: Global Management class. Prof leads class discussion on NetApp’s troubled expansion into Japanese market. I make a point on how a growing run rate business in enterprise applications might be achieved using an effective partner channel rather than a direct sales force.
Above: NetApp website in Japanese
Next: We have a panel discussion on Japan from students who lived and worked there. One of the panelists, a former economist, provides an impromptu lecture on the impact of Japan’s baby boomers through Japan’s catch-up phase, Nixon Shock, the Plaza Agreement and Japan’s last 17 years of stagnation.
Then we have a special guest lecture by Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp’s executive chairman. He discusses challenges of working in Japan, at one point illustrating the cultural distance by asking a Japanese student to explain the norm of determining seating arrangements by hierarchical order. This point blows me away. I flashback to my last visit to Tokyo and how my Japanese colleagues shuffled awkwardly around the meeting table—after my random seating totally screwed up their system.
Dan pokes friendly fun at me for working at Microsoft and the resulting odd-ball view of reality. He’s right. Growing an indirect enterprise application business requires having “strategic assets” to attach onto. I’m deliberately paraphrasing Dan’s comments here to avoid quoting the “m” word. I get enough razzing by my classmates on this topic as it is, thank you 
5:00pm: I’m at Happy Hour hosted by the GSB Veterans Club. We toast the 25 vets from 6 countries at the GSB, have a moment of silence for those that died in the service, and people donate to care packages to be sent to Vets currently deployed.
Over beer and pizza (i.e. dinner), I touch base with a fellow Microsoft alum for a GSB seminar we’re holding next week helping classmates better use Outlook. I chat with a Parisian Sloan Fellow, getting tips for my upcoming trip to Paris—among them, a cafe where Karl Lagerfeld and other artists hang out.
7:00pm: Back home. Spend time with wifey. Catch up on email. Prepare for “Challenge 4 Charity” formal this evening, which will raise several thousand dollars for an array of non-profits this evening.
9:30pm: Arrive at Decathlon Club in Santa Clara for formal. Eat, drink, talk, dance into the evening. GSB band plays. A friend comments how our MBA is essentially the most expensive vacation he’s ever taken.
Above: GSB takes to the dance floor.
1:35am: Back home. Write up blog post. Try to get some good sleep in prep for tomorrow’s polo lesson. Hope my thighs hold up, but I know they won’t.
Having attended the formal in a suit and tie, I regret not getting a tux tailor made when I was in Beijing this spring (roughly $200 US for high quality). Fortunately, there’s a Men’s Warehouse in Sunnyvale. After looking up the address, I once again conclude Palo Alto is the most convenient place on earth. Men’s Warehouse is only 19 minutes from Escondido Village and it’s on the main strip, El Camino Real.
Life is good.
