A Visit from Ron Kornfeld

Ron Kornfeld has gorgeous hair. His beard was magnificent to behold and he has great taste in shoes. He recalled working with MCI in the 80's meaning he must be in his forties, yet there was not a single grey strand to be found. But I regress...

Today Ron Kornfeld was the guest speaker in my Entrepreneurship class. It was really interesting to hear about the importance of business plans from someone who works with them on a daily basis. The way he broke down the process into steps and was very specific about how important those steps are was excellent and led to me feeling much more comfortable about the process.

One very poignant thing that he taught me was when he talked about the worst case scenario. To me the worst case scenario would be nobody buying your product at all. He told me that isn't the worst case. What is much worse is a company that produces enough to grow and slowly stops being profitable. The logic is that if your company failed out the door it wouldn't hurt as many people as if it slowly stopped being profitable. By the time it fails it could affect the lives of tons of employees and many investors in a much larger way than if your business had just failed in the first place.

Another thing I took away from him is the importance of presentation. Ron discussed the idea of different business plans for different audiences, and how to make sure you present a polished, well constructed plan. I liked the idea of reading it backwards.

Overall it was an excellent presentation and I learned more from him than any other guest speaker I can remember.

-noodles