It's time to take notes — Professor Paul Orlando is bringing his class to session. 

For 11 years now, Paul has worked as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California (USC) shaping future entrepreneurs.

That’s on top of the 15 years he has spent in the startup and venture capital world, where he currently serves as the director for USC’s Marshall/Greif Incubator. He is also the author of ‘The Why Now Question,’ a book that focuses on the ideal timing for market entry.

His entrepreneurial path began in the middle of the 2008 financial crash after he was fired in a round of layoffs. Forced to adapt, he connected with a few friends and decided to launch a telecom startup in New York City.

It was during this time that Paul decided to start a founder roundtable series, meeting every week or two. 

When he initially formed the group, he approached it like one of his lectures – binder and all.  But by the end of the inaugural meeting, he knew his lesson plan was worthless.

“They wanted to talk about what they were struggling with,” he says. The sessions became a series of natural exchanges. “So I threw out the whole curriculum.”

While it was meant to be a one-off workshop, more and more people kept requesting to join. The success of these groups left an impression and shaped Paul’s larger goals.

“I realized I wanted to make this a bigger part of what I did.," he says. "That led me to think about joining a startup accelerator."

Today, his students – and now you – benefit from his unique approach to the business world.

Class is in Session: Venture Initiation

Paul’s step into academia began with a relocation to LA and cold call introduction, leading to an impromptu interview for a job he didn’t know existed. 

Despite this, he was hired to help build out their incubator program, later being asked to teach students about topics from analytical growth marketing to feasibility analysis. 

One of his more intensive classes focuses on venture initiation, which was designed for grad students with an interest in launching a business. Each person must apply to the program by presenting a concept they are currently or want to work on. 

“The class is actually like an incubator, but in classroom format.” 

It also teaches the process of finding a startup’s target customer, which includes learning directly from these individuals to better understand what they value. But, he emphasizes, you should really leave that class with a few things. 

“One is understanding whether you are on the right track or not. Is there a potential customer or market for what you want to do?” he asks. “Then, on the more personal side, is this something you are committed to? Are you ready to devote years of your life to working on this?”

He offers his best advice for early founders below.

Reinforcing Accountability

In both my classes and the incubator, I split the students into these small groups, like five or six people, where they have to meet every week. They go through what's called a standup meeting, where they talk about what they did last week, what they're working on this week, and any problems that they're having. 

It’s literally as simple as that, the whole purpose is to hold people up to standard and ensure accountability. 

You don't want to be the person who shows up for three weeks in a row saying the same things or making no progress, which can result in push back from others in the group. You want them to learn how to volunteer their struggles, which allows for them to receive new solutions. There’s a lot of value in that.

Research Your Investors

It is essential to do the same level of due diligence researching your potential investors as they will do on you. That means everything from reviewing their online presence, blog posts, videos of speaking engagements, and speaking to their portfolio companies.

If you are already in discussions with an investor, they should be happy to make intros to their portfolio companies, if they're any good anyway. That's when you really hear, or at least read between the lines, of what it's like to work with that investor.

Ideally, there's a good fit in terms of personality types, good knowledge exchange, and network exchange. 

You also have situations where founders get desperate and take money from someone who has nothing to add to other than a check.

A really valuable investor is one who is not overbearing on running your company. Instead, they can do things like make an introduction to help with hiring, or open the door to a potential customer, or help you raise the next round – all the things a founder will have to experience. 

An investor is much more than just the dollars that they put in.

Lessons for the Future

A big change to my class has come with the mass adoption of AI. For example, I have people practice interviewing before they go out into the field. They practice with an AI that's trained on what they know about their customers.

The stuff that we're doing with AI today wasn't available a few years ago – the prototyping, the data analysis, the training. So, through my experience, founders need to be sure to incorporate that technology. 

But overall, things like mindset are important. It’s very easy to beat yourself up or think negatively when things are difficult. You can either learn to keep yourself in a more positive state of mind, or use negativity as a springboard. Whatever works best for you,  it is about taking the time to compartmentalize your internal thoughts.

‍