Cornell Team - Day 2

Day 2: Mark Cuban is Ridiculous

Day 2 started early with an 8 o’clock stroll to the city’s Contemporary Arts Center, where we set up shop for the first half of the Monday program. We were welcomed by the Idea Village team, and treated to a nice opening session with Walter Isaacson, the current CEO of the Aspen Institute, recognized author and businessman, and a native to New Orleans. The Week’s corporate sponsors and faculty advisors then rounded out the rest of the morning by introducing themselves and offering to help in any way possible. After a quick lunch break, Dr. Scott Cowen, President of Tulane, spoke to the changing course of both Tulane’s path and curriculum, and the city’s education system as a whole. He again proved as a great example of the ingenuity and spirit currently guiding the city.

We then walked our way down to the IP Building, the home of Idea Village, Launch Pad, and a large number of entrepreneurs and start-ups to kick off the work portion of the week with Chris and Schedulist. We used the segment to strategize about the team’s goals and deliverables, and set up a great framework to help meet Chris’ objectives, and to help his business succeed. Chris and his team have developed a true software-as-a-service solution to deal with nurse staffing issues currently plaguing acute and long term care health facilities. With a clear and present market opportunity, the team set out to help build the company’s launch plan and sales process, and to inform a number of other initiatives.

The evening started off with a dinner at the Superdome, provided by NakedPizza, and a short presentation by none other than Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban. True to form, Cuban made sure to blur the line between reasonable and completely ridiculous, and in between some pretty entertaining anecdotes, he did ultimately manage to provide some pretty pertinent advice for today’s entrepreneurs; work ethic, dedication, and sales are all part of the components that make a company successful. We then wandered over to the Hornet’s arena to catch the evening’s game, which saw the Hornets come back from a big deficit to pull out a nice win over the Mavericks. And of course the night wouldn’t have been complete without the obligatory stop at Bourbon Street to chat up the locals and to further check out the local fare…