CIM Week, and pre-term with it, have finished. So in theory I've now got some more time to myself. In reality, it's the first day of class and I'm finding I'm still struggling to keep up with everything. Here is what we have going on at the moment...

Group work: The Leadership and Organisations course (aka MORS) that we had packed into pre-term has a group coursework outstanding. Each of us in our groups of six has to interview a top leader to ultimately produce an analysis of how these leaders use their social networks. I'm looking forward to getting some insights from these leaders. My only gripe is getting time with top leaders to talk to interview them about this. If we all can, this could be a really interesting project.

Social scene: The social scene at Kellogg is very active. Thus far, people seem to be hitting the bars quite regularly. Some people seem to be focused entirely on "networking" - I come across too often at every event I frequent. What I've also found interesting is how quickly stories spread across the student body. Any story of any kind of incident spreads like wild fire.

Reading: Pretty much all the courses have reading that they require. There is far more reading to do for courses than there is time to do them. Some of the reading is quite fascinating, while other parts of it are dry and put me to sleep. Not all the professors seem to use the readings to the same extent. At this stage, I'm still trying to figure out how to best go about tackling the readings.

Extra-curricular: All the clubs at Kellogg have started emailing the students about their events and kick-off meetings. They are keen to recruit first years to leadership positions. On an aside, I've signed up for the MIT Sales competition as a way of developing my sales skills.

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CIM has been compared to an army bootcamp, where you are "broken down" and your behaviours retrained to survive in new environments. At business school, this new environment seems to consist of frantic team bonding, late night drinking and then struggling through classes afterwards. ©

I felt myself gasping and clutching my seat. It was the first day of business school. The 2nd year leaders of our 72 person first year group had just uttered some words to unleash hell, "you need to come up with five cheerable chants among you; you guys can organise yourselves to do this". The sudden vacuum in leadership among 72 A-types opened the doors to a sudden gigantic wave of chaos. Rather than repeat Shobit's summary of CIM, Kellogg's orientation progam (official details here), I'll provide some anecdotes of my experiences.

Who could have thought that so many blatantly idiotic activities could inspire so much passion and energy? From a battle to produce the best chants, to treasure-hunt style races and "the name game", every 72-ish person "section" that the class of 2011 is broken down into competes during CIM to win various competitions. One girl called it genius - "we're forced to bond with each other super-quickly!"... Personally, I've been awed by how many people want to lead something - anything: even competitions as weird and meaningless as these. Perhaps more interesting is the joint realisation by everyone that chaos is a lose-lose situation for all. Eventually, people learned to rally around the people who spoke with the most common sense and enthusiasm. The cry of another person, "we can't all be leaders", captured the essence of the situation.

Between the chaotic team bonding, first year Kellogg students also partake in a pre-term class: Leadership in Organisations. Each class is a massive learning itself, requiring a lot of reflection to really appreciate. For example, a recent class broke up into small teams of 3 that paired up with other teams of 3 to negotiate. One of the teams got completely whitewashed! Perhaps most amazing was that the team that got whitewashed thought that they had a good deal until they came back to the classroom and found the options each of the teams really had to negotiate with. One of the negotiators on the rival team was revealed to be an expert: start negotiating from a really ambitious target price: the wider the gap between your target price and your "reserve price" (your lowest price), the more room you have to negotiate with. The professor summed it up: what matters is how much negotiation you do - the more the other party feels like they've had to work for it, the better they will feel - even if really they got a bad deal (.... because they don't know it - they think they've done great because they worked so hard for it). This also means that if someone offers you a really great initial price, you should not accept it - if you do, they'll think "damn, I could have got a better price". Instead, making them work for an even better deal makes them feel they got a good deal and you get an even better deal.

The last component of CIM, beyond crazy competitions and classes, is the socialising. There are Kellogg people out every night, though only the hard-core are out every single night. In a town in which everyone lives four blocks from each other, the same five or six bars become the places that everyone is at. Socialising becomes very easy. Doing so in wacky costumes makes socialising even easier. I was out one night, when my glittering green wig caught the attention of not only every passer-by, but also the locals in one of the bars that Kellogg students frequent. After much banter, it materialised that one of the old gentleman at the bar, a little removed from the social chatter elsewhere among Kellogg students, was a the owner of a chain of restaurants around Chicago. Who'd have thought networking could be this easy?

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I've been in Evanston for two weeks now. Already the American culture is slightly tiring me. So, yesterday's inspiring opening welcome to international students by the Interim Dean, Prof Sunil Chopra, could not have come at a better time. It's a shame the general opening welcome to all students today was not as eye opening.

While I spent my first week in Evanston setting my apartment up, I did manage to get out on some of the evenings to meet some fellow students. One of my 2011 classmates organised two events for people to meet before the official school activities began; I attended the second of these events - staged in a strange bar based within a cinema theatre complex. Several hundred students attended and I was not prepared for my first impressions:

hoards of guys chasing after cute girls - sometimes these girls would be circled by several men

people actually complaining that one of their fellow students had taken the initiative to organise these events; they'd say things like, "what does this guy want from me?!".

everyone going through the same motion of "what do you do? where are you from?", only to forget five seconds later and only for the same conversation to restart when the next new person joined each conversation

In hindsight, I was naive to not be more prepared for these things - to be more prepared for the way things are in American business schools.

The last point on "what do you do? where are you from?" was addressed in a unique way during my second week at Kellogg. KWEST is a week long trip that students in groups of 25 go on around the world: a sort of a team bonding activity. On these trips, everyone is instructed not to reveal anything about themselves to others on the trip until the near the end - when there is a "big reveal". The idea of this game is to enable people to get to know each other beyond the stero-types that people perceive of others. In this environment, I noticed that

People grappled for something - anything - to talk about. Often this meant talking about films, TV shows and music. Inadvertently, I think this made if difficult for anyone not familiar with some of the American culture to relate to some conversations.

Some personailties were able to attract more attention than others. American rowdiness and cheer was more amenable to social interactions than I expected.

For me, the "big reveal" game prevented me really getting to know people. It came too late in the week, by which point I almost no longer had the energy to delve deeper into getting to know people

The trip was great, the people were fantastic, but I personally feel that I did not engage as well as I could have done - again I misjudged the culture of American business school students.

For me, the welcome to international students by Interim Dean, Prof Sunil Chopra, came at the right time. He spoke about research done at Kellogg showing that the most successful people are those who can connect different "small worlds". People live in "small worlds" of people they are connected to - people who know each other. This could be the community of industry experts in a field or students from a similar country at school. Those who are successful are those who can reach beyond these small worlds. Coming to a different country, as international students are, it can be intimidating and easy to crawl back into the circle of friends and culture we already know. However, we should challenge ourselves to become connectors - to become people who can inhabit several of these different small worlds. If we are able to do this, we will find that we are able to do more - innovation, for example, comes most easily when different small worlds connect.

While Prof Sunil Chopra's speech to international students yesterday seemed to emphasise the connections that we made as being the most important asset of business school, the proceedings today, the first proper day of school, were the expected dull welcome introductions to the academics.

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I arrived in Evanston, Kellogg's home, on Sunday night. Thus far, my entire attention has been on getting myself set up on in the US. In some ways, it has been easier than I expected. Some frustrations remain, nevertheless.

60201 – Evanston – is a quaint little university town. Thankfully, this means some of the numerous amenities around the town know exactly what my requirements as an international student are. The bank made it almost effortless to get an account, even sorting out proof of residence for me through their knowledge of the university intranet and contacts at the university. The cell phone shop automatically game me my student discount for my monthly phone bill – without asking for any form of student ID. While I stood at the front of my apartment, waiting to direct them, the removal people already knew how to find my apartment block’s rear loading entrance and had started moving furniture in.

However, what frustrates me is that there seems to be few grocery stores in my part of Evanston that provide genuinely student prices. Living in Park Evanston, Whole Foods is next door and extremely convenient. However, the cheapest priced bread (for example) is $4. This is still over twice the cost of what even the premier groceries in London would charge. In fact, that kind of price could only be found in London if you lived next door to the Queen. The Northwestern campus is nice, but it’s not Buckingham Palace. To save on the weekly trip to Jewel-Osco, I’m thinking of using an online grocery service. This would also help me plan my meals upfront – a sure way to control those notorious US calories.

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I'm running out of time. On Sunday I fly out from London to Evanston. The to-do list has shrunk - partly as a result of pruning out some of the more ambitious items (e.g. learning speed reading and touch typing), but I've managed to get quite a bit done, though there are still a few things left to do.

The most tiresome to-do item has been the prepartory online courses that Kellogg was "pleased" to provide incoming students with. It was tiresome because they required quite a bit of time, and I'm sure a good chunk of the material is already covered in the GMAT and CFA Level 1 (both of which I've had some exposure to). Nevertheless, I appreciated the effort that was put into making the course material applicable for real business situations. Scenarios ranged from a startup's accounting practises to Pepsi's pricing strategies. I think I could really get into some of these courses when they kick off properly in the Fall. However, if a paradoy of those courses is what you're looking for, this video is it.

Among other things, the apartment and living situation is sorted out, and my money is the US - in time for the first tuition (and health care) bill to arrive: over £17,000 for the first quarter - getting that was like getting a punch in the face. I'm also mostly packed up: extraordinarily, it seems that I may just be able to fit my who life into two suitcases, a carry-on and laptop bag... I wouldn't have thought it, but it seems possible.

So what's left on my to-do list? I need to revisit my LinkedIn page and CV. The latter of these has to be put into "Kellogg format", which seems to be just Kellogg's way of standardizing CVs into a standard format for easy perusing by employers. Beyond that, the most important things are those related to my entreprenurial ambitions. I've got a rough prototype. I will soon need to start putting together a list of target companies to approach to see if they'll be first customers. This will be a learning experience in itself. Finally, I also want to make some subtle changes to this blog.

The mania continues. Will it ever stop?

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The romanticized view of entrepreneurship is of creating something world beating. This is still the view of many VC firms, I'm sure. Yet - in the the VC firm where I've been working - this is not necessarily true. This may be because this particular VC firm is moving later stage with its investments, which may be true of many European VCs comparative to Americans. In any case, the experience of intern'ing at a London based VC firm has coloured some of my thinking on start-ups. Here are some of my take-aways.

You doesn't necessarily have to have something market leading. You just need something that gains market traction and generates revenue. If it makes enough of an impression on the market, it'll be acquired and generate a payout for the entrepreneur and the investors involved. It is not necessary to build a new way to brush teeth; a better way to brush teeth is fine.

There are lots and lots of startups everywhere. It is amazing how many there are. They are flies circling VC firms. The VC will say that only thing that ultimately differentiates one against another is revenue, profitability and the opportunity for growth.

It's not necessarily about creating a good business as much as creating a good exit. Having mentioned how important revenues are... on the flipside, if you can sell the hype that a service with millions of people using it, yet no revenue, will in some future generate large revenue returns - so be it! The classic example of this is Google's purchase of YouTube.

Entreprenuers fumble about a lot before hitting the jackpot. There are a number of examples of companies that are successful now, but which weren't originally as successful. As they started investigating a problem, they stumbled on something which was the real money making opportunity. A recent British example of this is Skimbits, which eventually found a neat way to monetize links and created Skimlinks.

Some entrepreneurs are more impressive than others. Some of the most impressive entrepreneurs have a long track record in the field they operate in, with deep industry knowledge, know-how of the market and what users want from the product. They also have lots of connections within the industry and experience of the technology or innovation involved. One entrepreneur I've come across has such a reputation in his industry, a firm he was interested in acquiring dropped their asking price from £1M+ to ~£150k for a 50% stake in their business: they believed he could dramatically increase their revenue.

Presentation and clear articulation are important. Many companies will approach a VC firm in many different ways. Some companies can be overlooked quickly merely because the concept is not clear. This is particularly true if the financials are not particularly impressive. The clarity of the message is important. How well the entrepreneur communicates this can reflect on him/her positively or negatively. Realism with a slick, carefully thought out presentation can go a long way. The first presentation everyone (including a VC) will look at is the company's website.

There are signals for good and bad. A company seeking investment for international expansion is attractive. A company seeking investment to expand by going into a new market (which it may not have direct experience), is much more risky. If the company has a foot in the door (e.g. a pilot) for the next growth opportunity that they promise, this is a good sign. If the company needs lots of physical assets to operate, it can be difficult to scale it.

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August is here. For many of us starting our MBAs, there are at least two turning points fast approaching us. The first is the thought of having yourself plucked out of everyday reality and crammed in with hundreds of other people from all parts of the world and all walks of life - restarting student life in quite a different place to where-ever we are now. Whatever gradual path we've been taking thus far will soon be batted into the stratosphere. The second turning point will come approximately 22 months later. At that point, our paths will again be smacked out to other parts of the stratosphere - in different directions. With the career goals essays that the schools mandate, I feel like I've been thinking about these turning points and my future life path for several years. Recently, with the first of these turning points fast approaching, I've been inspired to think about them in three specific ways.

Be the best at three things, not one. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, suggests that to become to the very best at one thing, such as a NBA basketball player, is very difficult. Instead, he recommends picking three things that work in synergy to define your own niche. For me, I think this is media, entrepreneurship and technology. I've always been interested in media - from starting a school newspaper when I was 14 (a newspaper that never saw past issue 1, such is youth) to launching a online student new site (which I can't take full credit for, I admit). Entrepreneurship has come relatively easy in spits and spats - building torture devices (starting a public speaking club) and once running a hobby company organising embarrassing events (yes, speed dating). Technology was my undergrad education and has been the major part of my career to date. Maybe, just maybe, the MBA will give me the opportunity to properly fuse these together.

If you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours. Malcom Gladwell has written a book on this thought, and the gist of it can be found in many places. It makes a lot of sense that overnight success actually took several years of hidden effort. It also makes sense that perhaps the reason people never realise their true potential is because they give up before they reach those 10,000 hours. If media, entrepreneurship and technology are to be "my thing", I wonder - how many hours have I put in to date? Perhaps it is 10,000 hours that are required to start a business?... in which case, I'd still have lots more hours left to put in. The difference between success and failure is perhaps persistance. Do I have what it takes to put those 10,000 hours in? Because I spent a long time deriving my "three things", I think I do. Time will unravel if I will be right.

Personal Branding in the age of Google. Seth Godin points out that it's difficult to not have some kind of personal branding out there, on the Internet. He himself has built an unshakeable brand on the Internet. His three things are probably "hip marketing, author/blogger, thought leader/professional speaker". He has certainly put in at least 10,000 hours into this over at least the last 10 years - probably more. The culmination has been a personal brand that attracts for him the resources and opportunities he needs to be even more successful. Thus far, I've not proactively managed my personal brand on the Internet; a search for my name produces random things. There is barely any association to my three things - "media, entrepreneurship and technology" in what comes up. I'm now thinking about the kind of brand that I might be able to build for myself over the next two years, either side of the turning points, as well as beyond.

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