Riz’s Rotman Blog

I know there are some who would disagree with me but Venture Capital was one of the best courses I’ve taken. The course is really interesting and I learned a lot! Many great speakers (but it was suspect that almost all of them were named Mark or Marc ). I strongly recommend the course for people who are looking to learn how this industry works and get some practical experience evaluating companies from a VC/start-up perspective.

I apologize for my absence from this blog recently (VC was taught as a 2-week intensive course), I’m going to attempt to respond to all the comments/post the information requested over the course of the next week. No promises though as I’m taking a short vacation.

Have a good weekend! 

…I know someone will in the comments.

I just like to have all the readings (and if possible, assignment details) made available from day one. Why? Because of days like today where I have one reading today and an entire afternoon and evening free. I’d like to do the readings for tomorrow and possibly start on the assignment that’s due on Friday, unfortunately they’re not available on the course website or in the course pack that I bought.

It’s not a big deal at all. I just have nothing to do this afternoon and figured I’d complain.

As mentioned before, I just wanted to do a basic wrap-up of my thoughts on the 1st semester courses. I know that my opinion differs from some other people’s opinions on these courses so just keep that in mind.

• Corporate Financing
  • Interesting and fun course
  • Great Professor (Heather Irwin)
  • Very practical knowledge
  • Funny stories told in class
  • Not a lot of “high-level” new learning, it’s mainly applying what you learned in 1st year to many other situations. A lot of very good detail on the intricacies of how companies raise capital and return it to shareholders
  • A must take for anyone who will be working in finance
  • A moderate to high workload
• Real Estate Economics
  • My favorite course this year
  • A course that I think everyone should take
  • You learn some really interesting theory and it allows you to understand a lot of important information for anyone in business
  • The course I probably learned the most from this year
  • Amazing professor (William Strange)
  • A low workload until the end of the year when your final paper is due (of course you could write it during the rest of the semester). The toughest exam I wrote this semester
• Management Science
  • Not a fan of this course. It would have been useful if I wasn’t an Engineer. It’s very simplistic numeric work relative to what I’ve done in the past. For anyone who isn’t good with numbers but is looking to be, this course might be good for you.
  • A moderate workload. The Exam questions weren’t hard, they were just annoyingly time consuming, requiring a lot of repetitive “grunt work.”
• Entrepreneurship
  • This course is NOT very useful if you want to learn how to be an entrepreneur but I don’t think any course can do that. If you want to be an entrepreneur, read The Art of the Start, join a startup, and make mistakes! The book (I feel) is a great guide for how to accomplish things and what is important in a startup. This course is really much more useful if you’re interested in analysis of existing companies and how they got big or a little practice writing business plans
  • Some good speakers
  • A low to moderate workload. No final exam
  • For the person who asked (in the previous post’s comments) about coming to Rotman as an entrepreneur, let me say a few things:
    • I’m not personally sure if the MBA is the right program for entrepreneurs, maybe something like UW’s MBET program (here’s a blog) is something to consider? It was a program I strongly considered before I applied to Rotman but decided against it given that it was a new program back then. By now they may have gotten the kinks out.
    • All the data shows a negative relationship between entrepreneurship and MBA graduates. That is, if you’re looking to meet a whole bunch of people interested in doing a startup, look elsewhere. I think this has a lot to do with the opportunity cost of having your MBA and then doing a startup—you simply get paid much more with the MBA at a large company so it costs you a lot more to risk that on a startup.
    • I’m not saying you shouldn’t do the MBA. Many people have done it and started great companies, just make sure you evaluate the reasons for doing the MBA and consider the tradeoffs versus other programs or just joining  a start up, and always remember the costs of the MBA (both cash and time/opportunity costs)
• Corporate e-business strategies
  • I was disappointed with this course because I didn’t really feel I learned very much. If you know nothing about social technologies or how companies have use the web to make $$$, this course could be useful. I’m just so immersed in it already (e.g. this blog) that I didn’t get much out of it.
  • The all day saturday classes are just brutal!!!!!
  • A moderate workload. No final exam

I hope that proves useful to a few people and perhaps spurs some discussion. Let me know if you have any questions. Merry Christmas.

It’s officially exam time! Well not quite, I still have a stupid e-biz class to go to all day saturday which will hurt my studying since my corporate finance exam is on Monday.

I am also in the process of setting myself up a pretty great next semester since if my Add/Drops go through (not sure about one of them and wait listed for another) I’ll only have class on Thursday and Friday! It wasn’t planned (entirely) that way. I did pick courses that sounded interesting to switch into. My new schedule will look like this if everything works out:

Thursday:

• 8:30 am – 2:00 pm -> Case analysis and presentation 
• 4:12 pm – 6:15 pm -> Advanced Game Theory
• 6:15 pm – 8:15 pm -> Business Law (Wait listed in position 1)

Friday:

• 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm -> The Opposable Mind (taught by Roger Martin but the change request is currently “pending,” whatever that means. I’m pretty sure that this is the text book :) )

It’s all about the 2-day work week.

I’ll let you know how that turns out as well as post my “exit-thoughts” on the courses from this semester. 

It’s alwasy a bad feeling when you’re heading to school before the sun is up. I have to hand in a Real Estate Economics group paper and give a 10 minute presentation this morning.

The topic? Understanding the Rosedale—St. James Town Neighbourhood disconnect. It’s interesting to try and understand why 2 such totally different area’s exist so close together for so long. How can (on of) the richest area be right next to the poorest area in Toronto?

Anyways, I’m off. 

FYI: Just got through a great talk from Matt and Dan, two guys who helped startup Workbrain. Rotman 2000 Grads. Probably the best part of Entrepreneurship class.