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Giles Shih - The importance of education

Giles Shih, President and CEO of BioResource International, talks about how his education contributed to the growth of his business. Giles also discusses three key elements of starting your business as well as the significance to problem solving and being motivated by a cause important to you.  Created by Kauffman Foundation.

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  • blobby green style avatar for user thomasramirez02
    The title/label of this piece is the importance of education. I was expecting Giles to discuss this, but I was disappointed by how little the importance of education was discussed.
    Would you agree this piece is not titled appropriately, or placed appropriately with Khan Academy?
    (9 votes)
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  • starky ultimate style avatar for user Lesha
    what are the benifits of being creative? exept for getting ideas.
    (3 votes)
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  • leafers tree style avatar for user Surfista36
    At Giles mentions Venture Capital and then Angel Capital, what do they mean? Thanks
    (2 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user http://facebookid.khanacademy.org/695492751
      Capital refers to an Investment given by someone (called a Capitalist - Both Angel and Venture) to fund an idea or an already existing company (or venture). A Venture Capitalist (and are part of a venture capitalist firm) usually invests large amounts of money in ideas which have huge potential (upto hundreds of million dollars ).
      Compared to Venture Capitalists, Angel Investors invest lower amounts of capital (about hundreds of thousand dollars or more or less), and mostly invest in new ideas where the investment (seed capital) required is low.

      Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists are basically part of individual networks, called Angels and VC's, who collectively invest in an idea(s) and work as a network of investors and advisors.

      Hope this helped. You can find more information on sites like Harward Business Review or by just google-ing terms that you did not understand.
      (7 votes)

Video transcript

- [Giles Shih] My name is Giles Shih. I am President and CEO of BioResource International. People ask me, you know, does your PhD help you as you grow your business? And I think more than anything the persistence and perseverance, the discipline of just day in day out going after something and setting goals and achieving them. I think a lot of people that go through that PhD process will tell you you have to really be driven and have to be detail-oriented and you have to deliver a product. A dissertation at the end and defend it in front of your professors and your peers. So I think the training has helped me to develop more of a long term view and being persistent and diligent. I'm not the first one to say this but usually when you start a business there's three elements that need to happen. We call it the three legs of the stool. You have to have good technology. And that typically is the research institute or a academic or government research institute. The second is good people. I work with a great team and everybody's got a great vibe and spirit and culture. Initially we saw people as just kind of a list of skills and experiences. At least for me that's how I looked at it. But as I'm realizing, there's a lot of other issues and things and fit and culture and drive and those non-tangibles. I'd much rather hire somebody that I feel is willing to learn and has a energy and spirit rather than someone this is fully trained, but doesn't have those qualities. So, those the things I've learned about in terms of hiring people and letting people go. Or putting them in different positions or spots so they can perform better. People told me this and I didn't believe it until I started the business is the people are what makes the business. You could have a mediocre technology, but do you have a great team, you could really build a good business around it. As opposed to if you have a great technology and a mediocre team, it doesn't amount to much. So the people are really key. And thirdly, you have to have capital. And that is in the form of venture capital or angel inventors or uncles with deep pockets that can help support the business. Because especially in life science ventures, those first few years are money losing entities. And we had to burn through a lot of cash to get to a point where we had a product that we could take to market. For life sciences companies there's just a lot of up front investment necessary to fund a research lab to do the research, to fund the scientist to do the work, and typically it takes several years just to get even a prototype out there. And so, I think that it's a real challenge now in terms of funding early stage companies to become middle and late stage companies that are successful. A good company is only as good as the last problem that they've been able to solve. If you can't solve some problem then you're going to be constrained by that. And there will always be challenges and problems. Your success will be tied to how you solve those. What I would encourage folks that are in the sciences, why are we doing this? What impact does it have? Ask why? And then if there's something that really gets you going, something that becomes personal and a cause for you, pursue that and harness that and go with it. I think that will get you through a lot of the difficulties and challenges. I think that helped me knowing that what we were going to do at the end of the day would help the industry and help feed the world.