Kairos Overview

The Kairos Society Overview

Kairos Overview

KAIROS – AN OVERVIEW MISSION The Kairos Society was founded on the principle that entrepreneurship is the phenomenon that drives innovation, progress, and prosperity. With the common person’s incredible access to information today, entrepreneurship has incredible potential. College students founded Kairos with the mission of propelling collegiate entrepreneurship by illustrating the vast opportunities available to college entrepreneurs now. They wanted to show each other what they all can achieve now, not months or years in the future. No other organization exists to bring together the best students from across the country and unite them with the greatest entrepreneurial firms and mentors. The Kairos Society will, on the national-level, take collegiate entrepreneurship to a higher level following three guiding principles: Inspiration, Experience, and Innovation. Whether it is introducing a fellow student in a teambuilding event, or running a speaker series on a niche market, Kairos will be the premier vehicle for collegiate entrepreneurial success.

CALIBER OF STUDENTS There are hundreds, if not thousands of professional organizations on university campuses nationwide. Kairos looks to invite the most passionate, professionally minded students from all backgrounds as part of one society of highly competent, high-potential individuals committed to incredible professional success. The stereotypical entrepreneur, as characterized by tech geniuses of the 1970s and 1980s, is that of scrappy young minds working long hours on world changing devices out of their garage while living off nothing. While that can still be the case today, entrepreneurship is changing. Kairos looks to recruit, nourish, and educate the entrepreneurial-minded student who would end up working in an entrepreneurial setting in a large corporation, but whose mind and talents are better utilized in an independent venture. Kairos will show the highest potential students what they can easily accomplish. To the many students in Kairos who have started their own businesses, the business development features of Kairos will show them how they can take their venture to the next level. Founding members of the Kairos Society build office buildings and power plants, import fine liquor and jewelry, sell online advertising to millions of people, start wireless service providers, start hedge funds, trade commodities, and make the most of the opportunity they have.

HOW KAIROS WILL RESHAPE COLLEGIATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP THE PAST: GROUNDS FROM WHICH TO LEARN Collegiate business clubs of the past have put on conferences for the students of their school, connected friends with friends, and helped each other out with internships here and there. In many cases, a top university may have a dozen students across a campus of thousands running successful, unrelated enterprises. Most of the time, these students do not know each other. When a business club puts on an event, it often tries to invite students from nearby schools to boost attendance and look better. The neighboring schools, questioning the caliber of the event, the quality of the speakers, who else is going, and how to get there, rarely attend. Business clubs might hold weekly meetings to teach high-level topics not covered in classes, but the high-potential students who have been disinterested in the past do not show up. With this fragmentation, disorganization, and inconsistent performance, the system is not sustainable. That was the past.

THE FUTURE: CONNECTING STUDENTS ON MULTIPLE LEVELS What do you get when you combine the most enthusiastic students in the country with organization and technology? You get a businessperson and venture-producing organization that simultaneously educates these powerful young minds. You get Kairos.

WEB-BASED DIRECTORY OF OPPORTUNITY Kairos is not a LinkedIn or Facebook, but it will have an organization-wide directory, student profiles, descriptions of student businesses and partnering organizations, and corporate profile pages. There will also be focus groups, online event planning and will look, feel, and act similar to a corporate directory and project management package rolled into one. For example, this platform will make it easy for a student on the East Coast to find a business partner in the Midwest with specialized knowledge in chicken coop management software, to pair up and start a business to corner the smoked salmon distribution management software market. It is an extreme example, but it, and everything less extreme, is possible with the Kairos web platform.

CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS THAT MATTER Furthermore, schools will be able to easily work together to plan top quality conferences that are well-attended and provide tremendous opportunity for Kairos members to meet other members, learn about various industries, and meet industry professionals. Transportation, logistics, automated registrations, catering partnerships, and tent supply partnerships will all be taken care of regionally through Kairos. The unification and consolidation of collegiate business organizations under Kairos eliminates the repetitive, constantly duplicated tasks performed by already time-deficient entrepreneurs.

INTERCLUB COLLABORATION Whether engineers from a school with no formal business program partner with business students from a neighboring school, or club marketing managers get together to discuss how to recruit freshmen the fastest, Kairos is the unified institution that helps collegiate entrepreneurs learn effectively from one another.

CORPORATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR INTERNSHIPS, JOBS, AND MENTORING Corporations, especially startups, like to know who they are hiring. They like to know the individual as much as possible but most of the time, do not have the resources to do so. Kairos will provide startups and entrepreneurial companies the best professional students America has to offer. Through corporate, academic, and peer reviews, companies will be able to identify top students from the Society who fit their criteria. In return, Kairos members will get premier business internships and mentored positions, giving them knowledge and experience to teach others in Kairos, further fostering entrepreneurship and business as well as education and collaboration. To rephrase, in return for doing the hard work for them, Kairos students will land the best training positions from the large entrepreneurial firms and startups. It is a classic “win-win.”

ANGEL FUNDING AND INCUBATION FAST TRACKING The jump from dorm room brainstorming to angel funding and incubator space can be a hairy one. Kairos makes it easier; and Kairos makes it happen. In so many instances, the brilliant entrepreneur is not willing to make the jump to forming a serious company with funding and incubator space because he or she fears the uncertainty. Startup or incubator organizations are not as successful as they should be because to the timid, first-time entrepreneur, they’re still an organization. However, in the Kairos environment, when a friend leans across the table and says they’ll help and the entrepreneur has the full power of a national organization behind him, the once seemingly cliff jump becomes a baby step off a curb. Through partnerships with angel funding groups, incubator organizations, and peer mentoring, Kairos will affect that change.

BUSINESS BUILDING Kairos will help start companies. Other business clubs already do that. Kairos will grow companies to an extent previously unconceivable by any collegiate entrepreneurial organization. How? Kairos can build companies to great sizes because Kairos members already have. These past experiences will allow members to learn from and teach one another in a supportive environment. Kairos members will be able to share past successes and failures, so that they can collaborate to create high-caliber, prosperous ventures now and in the future. When it is mentioned that Kairos will dig out the best of the best from the woodwork of American universities, it is serious. When it is mentioned that Kairos will be a society of America’s most innovative, entrepreneurial students, it is serious. Connections, friendships, and competency drive industry. Without a doubt, Kairos attracts and fosters all three.

PROGRESS TO DATE The brainchild of Wharton student Ankur Jain, Kairos became a reality in May of 2008 with the partnering of thirteen of the nation’s top university entrepreneurship organizations. It has raised over $40,000 to date to fund its web platform development, numerous local support programs, and “geocluster” conferences, and specifically the Boston kickoff event. In addition to the kickoff events, Kairos plans to have its first annual conference on the USS Intrepid Aircraft Carrier based in New York. Kairos is partnering with national tech transfer offices, incubator organizations, and venture creation outfits not only to provide limitless opportunities to its members, but also to act as the neighbor-like peer mentor as its members capitalize on such limitless opportunities. Currently there are nine members on each college’s board. Kairos will be marketing itself to the main student bodies of the thirteen founding schools for the first time this coming September as a way to bring the best collegiate entrepreneurs and professionals that American universities have to offer into the spotlight. This action is reversing the current trend of top entrepreneurs not joining these organizations due to their lack of value to them. Kairos is actively seeking startup firms, venture capital firms, and business law offices to work together in a relationship in which Kairos is the clearinghouse for top quality interns, collegiate businesses to hire, mentor, fund, and/or counsel.

NEXT STEPS: IMPLEMEN TATION AND EXECUTION Kairos has three major items to accomplish as it grows into an internationally recognized collegiate entrepreneurship organization. All of these objectives are integral elements to Kairos’ success and its ability to escape the fate of typical entrepreneurship organizations.

FIRST: STRENGTHENING EACH CHAPTER AND REGIONS OF CHAPTERS Kairos is nothing without its chapter schools being strong, local driving forces of entrepreneurship. The school’s chapters will be the proving grounds for young kids fresh out of high school to really learn about entrepreneurship, to live to their potential, and grow as competent, influential business leaders. To make this a reality, Kairos must reach out to these high-potential students and demonstrate the opportunities available to them. This means planning high-level networking nights and workshops. Having such events planned months in advance legitimizes the operation, attracting higher talent. As talent is identified, Kairos will find mentors and advisers to foster that person’s growth. Such actions will demonstrate the competence of Kairos and attract greater talent. Furthermore, in regions of the country with many Kairos chapters, events, workshops, and teambuilding will be consolidated to save time, increase the quality of each event, and promote face-to-face interaction among Kairos members. Boston’s Tufts, BU, Babson, MIT, and Northeastern chapters are already well underway in planning an entrepreneurship conference which will be the Kairos Boston Kickoff Event, scheduled for October 4, 2008.

SECOND: ADDING EXTERNAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR KAIROS MEMBERS Kairos plans to be valuable to technology transfer offices, incubator programs, and nationally recognized, highlevel internship programs by being the place of one-stop shopping for America’s best talent. This partnership begins with identifying the best external opportunities out there. That endeavor is well underway, the conversations and written agreements are the next step, only to be followed by implementation of such partnerships. Furthermore, Kairos will pursue and implement relationships with legal, accounting, and consulting firms looking to invest in America’s next generation of talent as a source of future business.

THIRD: ADDING CHAPTERS WHILE RAISING THE BAR Kairos believes we are all citizens of a global community. Kairos’ mission is to provide as many opportunities as possible for its members. Kairos explicitly wants to be exclusive only to the extent that it attracts and maintains the most passionate and creative students to keep the organization internally strong, dedicated, and effective. Both can be achieved by expanding geographically to other colleges, and eventually other countries. Keeping in mind the objective of connecting entrepreneurial-minded students all over the country and ultimately the world, geographic expansion is essential to Kairos’s long-term success. For example, and to generalize, the highly-connected, academically- and professionally-pedigreed East Coast college student looking to get into the transportation industry would benefit from a top student from the best mining school in Montana. They could work together to identify a way to corner a commodity market by using advanced mining, transportation, and trading methods. This is the innovation and value that Kairos, unlike any other entrepreneurship or business organization, looks to foster.

CONCLUSION Kairos will be the organization that ushers in a new era of entrepreneurship, one tailored for the Information Age in which we live, and the boundless future that awaits us. It will accomplish this goal by forming a solid organization that educates and supports all levels of collegiate entrepreneurs while simultaneously connecting them with mentors in the form of professionals and professors. Most importantly, Kairos will connect professionally-minded students from all backgrounds as part of one unified society.