What would be an exciting thing to do over the Spring Break? Well, a group of us in the MSL program headed out to the Bay Area in California for a class project called the Entrepreneurship Team Project, or EnTP. The EnTP is an elective course in the MSL program, where MSL students participate in a series of meetings with entrepreneurs, companies like Uber & Google, venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, and private equity funds, like Golden Gate Capital – basically, an “entrepreneurship immersion.” The week is heavily scheduled with back-to-back meetings in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley; before the trip, we met as a class and did some work and research to prepare for the trip. In addition to MSL students, we are participating alongside JD students who study entrepreneurship and work in the law school’s Entrepreneurship Law Clinic. Throughout this week, we are going to provide you with reports on our various activities – please check back and follow our exploits.

A group of us started the trip early by heading out to San Francisco during this past weekend.  One of us didn’t quite make it after a series of airport mishaps that included an hour-long visit to Vegas, a cranky dog, and a return flight to Chicago, but that’s another story. The other 5 of us had an incredible start to the week. After arriving on Saturday, we headed out to Vista Point to take in the Golden Gate Bridge.  We had a hot-pot dinner at the Old Mandarin Islamic Restaurant and ended the night by playing billiards at a local watering hole. On Sunday, we walked around San Francisco’s main tourist spots and celebrated Persian New Year at the Maykadeh restaurant with Atefeh, one of our Iranian students.

The first official event of the EnTP started on Monday, when we all (JDs, MSLs, and faculty) got together to have dinner with Hal Barron.  Hal is the President of Research & Development for Calico Labs, a company founded by Google to tackle issues associated with aging. Hal started as a clinical scientist at Genentech and eventually rose up to become the Chief Medical Officer.  After working for Genentech for about 17 years, he left to join Calico labs. Hal spoke with us about entrepreneurship and the innovation process and he was an awesome speaker.  Now we will get some rest so that we are ready for tomorrow’s meetings.  We’ll update you again soon.