A few of weeks ago, Start Philly took the opportunity to check out Swarthmore College’s annual Lax Conference, entitled “Sailing in Any Wind: Risk and the Entrepreneur.” The agenda was an exciting one that included a plethora of round table discussions, panels, presentations and opportunities to network.  A surprisingly large turnout included a mix of current students, budding entrepreneurs, and founders/creators of successful start ups.

The conference opened up with a keynote speech by Peter Schwartz, Co-founder and Chairman of the Global Business Network, and a partner of The Monitor Group. The speech, both dynamic and engaging, encouraged entrepreneurs to look at risk in new ways. Mr. Schwartz asserted that entrepreneurs would have to learn how to “embrace failure” while noting that  one of our biggest cultural barriers is the idea of “instant success” which is becoming increasingly hard to achieve post-1990s. It was hard to feel discouraged as he maintained that future successful entrepreneurs would be those that had a willingness to persist.

After a stellar (free!) lunch, two panels: “Financing Your Business Venture” and “Using Social Networks to Build and Sustain a Business” commenced simultaneously, with the latter being the panel of choice. It was truly an interactive session, with real-time poll results from the audience shown on the screen to gauge interest in discussion topics, as well as live comments/questions from the audience coming in on TwitterFall. The panel was led by a group of savvy entrepreneurs (all Swarthmore alums) with impressive backgrounds: Dom Sagolla (Co-Creator of Twitter and founder of Dollar App) proved quite helpful in sharing helpful websites and other technical resources, while Ted Chan (Founder/CEO, Upward Mobility and MocaHealth) talked practically about how to get things accomplished using social networking. Chan also touched a bit on how social media technologies can be of great use when trying to get the word about how socially responsible your business is. The third panelist, Noël Theodosiou (Strategist and Facilitator, Luminous International Ltd.) gave concrete and concise suggestions about using social networking to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.

Following the panels were multiple round table discussions, which covered a wide range of interesting topics. A few titles included: “American Style Bootstrapping”; “The Patent Market”; “Business Tools and Technology for Social Change” and “What Is a Woman with Brains, Talent, Drive and a Good Idea to Do?”  Start Philly participated in the exciting round table discussion titled “The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: How Do You Create Value When All You Have is Vision?” led by Tracy Korman (CEO and  Co-founder of Longitude Health, Inc.). We only wish that we could have been at every round table discussion simultaneously.

The final panel, titled “Your Company: the First Five Years” proved to be a spirited discussion centering around issues like choosing business partners, creating company culture and of course, bootstrapping vs. accepting VC/Angel  and other outside funding. Heading up this discussion were Amity Cox (Former Vice President of Talent & Culture at Clarix LLC), Tracy Korman and Chris Pearson (CEO, Sound Innovations); all of whom provided detailed advice to audience members along with candid  insights into their personal experiences with startups.

The networking reception drew the conference to a close. Start Philly, ever the opportunist, did get a chance to chat with a few interesting folks. When we asked Twitter co-creator Dom Sagolla about the most surprising thing that’s happened to him within the past 5 years, he replied:

“My son. I’m surprised at how much having a kid is like having a start up.”

Pardon?

Sagolla clarified by describing the similarities: “You nurture it, obsess over it, and want it to succeed so much!”  His countenance noticeably brightened as he gushed about his startup- er, son and suggested that he was inspired to greater heights of innovation now, more than ever before.

We also caught up with Amity Cox and chatted a bit about her philosophy concerning company culture: “As a founder, you have the opportunity to mold the culture of your company into what you want it to be…it was important-to me at least- to create a values-centric work environment.” Cox added that “the first few employees are critical to your company: you want to make sure they really understand the goals and mission of your company because not only will they become the unofficial spokespeople and promoters, they will be training the next group of incoming employees…you want the values and mission of your company to be passed down in its purest form.” Cox also suggested that “bootstrapping it” is really helpful in maintaining control over company culture for obvious reasons.

Overall, the conference proved to be insightful, diverse in the topics it covered and a dispenser of practical guidance for people in all stages of startups. The food rocked too.

Did we mention it was free?

Next conference on the agenda:   The 85 broads 2020 Vision