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Graduate Riley Kinser’s Experiential Learning, Honors Thesis Help Him Land a Dream Job

Riley Kinser

Riley Kinser kept himself more than busy in his time at Oregon State. Kinser was in the College of Business’ Honors program, took part in the Austin Entrepreneurship Program (where his team took first place in the Business Plan Competition), and served as the president of the Oregon State Investment Group (OSIG).

Even though graduation took place just over a week ago now, Kinser has already moved to the San Francisco Bay area where he’ll be working with Union Square Advisors, a middle-market investment bank that specializes in mergers and acquisition advice for tech companies. Kinser’s role as analyst will involve building presentations and financial models for clients. Kinser said that he was looking specifically for investment banks on the west coast that specialize in technology, which is how he ended up interning with Union Square Advisors in the summer of 2013.  After completing his internship, Kinser received an offer to come to work for the company full-time upon graduation.

“Nearly all of the people I know who had work right after graduation found their jobs because of an internship they did,” said Kinser. “It’s important to start doing internships as soon as possible, as the more experience you have, the easier it gets to land interviews in the future. Internships will also help you discover what you like and don’t like in a potential career,” he said.

Kinser’s completion of Oregon State’s Honors College program also helped prepare him for today’s competitive job market.

“My research thesis was brought up in almost every internship interview I’ve ever had, and I think it played a major role in differentiating me from other applicants,” said Kinser. “Writing my honors thesis was probably the most challenging thing I did in my entire college career, but I learned a lot doing it and had the opportunity to thoroughly explore a topic I found interesting. I think more business students should choose to join the Honors College,” he said.

Kinser’s thesis study looks at whether two characteristics — physical attractiveness and perceived competence — have an impact on financial analysts finding large discrepancies between current prices and target prices of investments. Kinser’s research paper presented some intriguing evidence that overconfidence in investment recommendations may be correlated with an individual’s physical appearance. This is an especially important finding because when investors behave irrationally and make financial mistakes, many theories point the blame squarely at that investor’s overconfidence.

“Using only physical appearance, individuals can form a variety of opinions of others ranging from how physically attractive someone is to how competent they anticipate them to be,” said Kinser. “These judgments we make of others likely play a subtle yet important role in how we interact with each other. If these subtle differences in how we interact with each other have a cumulative effect, it is possible we would see individuals who are perceived to be extremely attractive or extremely competent becoming overconfident in themselves,” he said.

Now that Kinser has moved on from Oregon State and is starting the next chapter of his professional life, he leaves future and current Oregon State students with this advice:

“My advice to everyone is to try something new and say yes to opportunities. When I was a freshman I moved dorms from Callahan to Weatherford during the second week of school. While visiting the Resident Director of Weatherford to finalize my move, I just happened to run into a College of Business staff member who asked me if I was there for the Austin Entrepreneurship Program meeting. I had no idea what that was but it sounded interesting. I’d never envisioned myself becoming an entrepreneur, but I thought it sounded like fun so I said yes and went into the meeting. I was lucky and got to join an amazing team and over the course of the year I had the opportunity to watch a company form from an idea. My team ultimately went on form a company, Rowan Greenhouse Technologies, and won first place in the Austin Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition. It was an amazing experience and it happened because I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and I decided to try something new. If you’re a new student, go check out some clubs and find something you like whether it be a business club or something else. The more involved you get, the more fulfilling your college experience will be.”

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Entrepreneurship students putting winning social business plan into action

star_sports
Volunteer students from Oregon State work with kids at STAR Sports at the Corvallis Sports Park.

In October 2012 a group of Oregon State students won the first-ever Oregon Social Business Challenge, beating out 16 teams from around the state.

Their plan was to start a youth sports program for children with disabilities. While the win received the headlines, over the past year the group has put the plan into action and quietly improved the lives of dozens of children in the Corvallis area.

“The progress has been gradual, but the small changes, the excitement of the kids when they’re making goals or seeing their friends, those little things are just as great,” said OSU College of Business student Alli Stangel, a project lead.

The idea was conceived by the OSU Enactus entrepreneurship club, of which Stangel is a co-president. Called STAR Sports, the program meets once a week at the Corvallis Sports Park, which donates space and equipment for the program.

Activities focus on team building as well as how to play sports such as soccer and basketball.

“The ultimate goal is to have them be able to participate with their peers at school, so they know what the sports are, the rules and what behaviors are expected,” Stangel said. “We just want to make it a real low-pressure environment and encourage everyone to participate.”

Around 15-20 children take part each week, with a nearly one-on-one volunteer ratio. That involvement was part of what made the plan a success at the social business challenge. The Oregon State team saw the supply of active, engaged students in a college town as a resource the venture could use to its benefit.

“Sometimes it’s overwhelming the number of people who want to come. Sometimes people just have to come and watch or support,” Stangel said.

There have been challenges, though.

With the space and equipment being donated, sometimes times and location change, which can be difficult for families. While college students are great volunteers, occasionally classes can interfere with activities.

“It’s hard explaining what midterms are to a 5 year old,” Stangel jokes.

Still, the program has been a success. This year a STAR Sports session fell on Halloween. One mother told Stangel that she gave her three kids the choice of Trick or Treating or going to STAR Sports.

“They chose STAR Sports,” Stangel said with a smile. “Just to hear that was incredible, and makes all the hard work so worth it.”

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Three student ideas selected for Oregon State Venture Accelerator

Lyndsay Toll (right) explains her website BuyBott at the 2013 Oregon State CEO Summit.
Lyndsay Toll (right) explains her website BuyBott at the 2013 Oregon State CEO Summit.

The life of an entrepreneur isn’t always easy, but it never lacks for excitement.

Lyndsay Toll was reminded of that recently as she waited to hear whether her startup, BuyBott, would be one of the first picked to join the Oregon State University Venture Accelerator.

Toll graduated from the College of Business in June. She and co-founder Darren Marshall started BuyBott, a website that simplifies online shopping and enhances social interaction, while the pair were students at Oregon State.

They applied to the Venture Accelerator hoping to take the business to the next level.

“Thoughts were running through my head,” Toll remembered about the wait. “If we don’t get in, how are we going to carry this forward? Will we still have the same momentum? What are our next steps without the Venture Accelerator?”

The Venture Accelerator announced the first business to join August 6. BuyBott was one of three ideas developed by College of Business students to be accepted.

“I remember being able to finally breath deep again,” Toll said. “It was a moment of giddy excitement and relief. I remember spamming friends, family and fans. It was a great moment and definitely a high point in our history.”

Joining BuyBott from the College of Business are Multicopter Northwest and PlayPulse.

Multicopter Northwest, started by incoming Oregon State junior Michael Williams, builds small helicopters capable of producing aerial photography up to 400 feet in the air.

OSU students Ryan Connolly, Andy Miller, Zack Anderson and Hannah Vincent developed PlayPulse. The startup measures engagement of video game players by using biometric sensors. Both Connolly and Vincent are from the College of Business, with Connolly also an intern with the Venture Accelerator before graduating from OSU this June.

It’s the type of student buy-in John Turner, an instructor at the College of Business and co-director of the Venture Accelerator, loves to see.

Launched earlier this year, the Venture Accelerator — part of the Oregon State Advantage initiative — is designed to provide support and guidance to businesses and technologies at Oregon State. The program brings together the resources and talents gathered across campus, with partners in the business community and Oregon State’s alumni network.

Ideas were solicited from four student-based entrepreneurship programs at Oregon State — the Austin Entrepreneurship Program’s Weatherford Garage, Startup Weekend, UPTIC and the Entrepreneurship Academy at the College of Pharmacy.

Turner said he was excited about the potential all the three projects, and is already encouraged by their development.

“They span a broad range of ideas and reflect the creativity, initiative and commitment of COB students,” Turner said. “Less than two months into the program we have seen good progress already in the development of their businesses.”

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Entrepreneurship student’s high-flying innovation taking off

A strange object appeared this year at the first day of the Oregon State University spring football practice. Or more accurately, it appeared above it.

For the first time, the Beavers used an aerial camera to document its practices. The person responsible for the copter was Oregon State sophomore Michael Williams, part of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program in the College of Business.

Williams said he’d always been interested in creating his own flying machines, starting with radio-controlled airplanes.

“Throughout middle school and high school I kept building bigger stuff,” said Williams. “Right around when I came to college I got involved with multicopters.”

Multicopters, so named for the multiple blades configured around the copter body, have become popular over the past few years as a way to do aerial photography.

When Williams started, the technology he had access to wasn’t advanced enough to lift a high quality camera, but advances in both photography and flight since then have made it possible.

Last year he started tests with a small camera, and immediately got a huge reaction from friends.

“It was an instant success,” he said. “Eventually my friends would say, ‘Oh, you’re the multicopter kid.’”

Michael Williams explains his Multicopter NW business at the Oregon CEO Summit.
Michael Williams (right) explains his Multicopter Northwest business at the Oregon CEO Summit May 7 in Portland.

Williams started Multicopter Northwest, selling kits so others could build their own copters. But a chance meeting sent the project in another direction.

Originally an engineering major, this fall Williams transferred to business on a friend’s recommendation and got involved with the Austin Entrepreneurship Program. From there he also joined the Weatherford Garage, which provides resources to help students start their own businesses.

“This past fall I fell into the hands of Sandy Neubaum, [Weatherford GTA] Dale McCauley and Bob Mayes,” Williams said. “It transformed from selling a couple of kits to friends to something bigger.”

During the fall Oregon State head football coach Mike Riley spoke at an entrepreneurship class and Mayes, a former Oregon State quarterback, pushed Williams to approach and share his business plan.

It turned out the Riley was looking for a better way to get photos and videos of offensive lineman, often packed too close together to see well from the sidelines.

“I got the opportunity to do a mini pitch and he was instantly interested,” Williams said. “He invited me to come to spring practices and do some demos.”

Williams showed up on day one and went to work. The system records video but also sends it to a video unit on the ground, so coaches can watch in real-time.

The next step for Williams is getting funding for better equipment while continuing to develop the business.

No matter where the idea takes him, so far he’s happy with the decision to jump into his own business.

“I walked into Weatherford [Hall] not knowing what to expect,” Williams said. “Now I spend hours on hours in that building.

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Weatherford Award ceremony shows entrepreneurs come from all walks of life

Thursday night Oregon State University MBA candidate Dale McCauley told the crowd at the 2013 Weatherford Awards in Portland how he got started as an innovator.

“When I was 4 years old my parents gave me a tool box. With real tools,” McCauley said. “Nothing with bolts was safe.”

It was a fitting start to an evening honoring entrepreneurs and innovators, those who saw the tools they had at their disposal and found a way to change the world, or in the case of 4-year-old McCauley, his mother’s Cuisinart.

McCauley is also a key part of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program, which sponsored the awards and is housed in Weatherford Hall. The program, supported by a gift from Ken and Joan Austin, helps expose current Oregon State students to the ideas and practice of entrepreneurship and teach the next generations of business visionaries.

One of the first students to come out of the program was Alex Polvi, who was honored with fellow OSU alumni Dan Di Spaltro and Logan Welliver for the their startup, Cloudkick.

“We had no clue what we were doing,” Di Spaltro said.

“We had some clue,” Polvi interjected.

“No clue.”

Di Spaltro spoke of the trio’s defining ideas of humor, trust, determination and keeping the operation lean.

“We had a team in it for the dream, not the paycheck,” Polvi said.

Also honored was Dr. Albert Starr, who helped develop the first artificial heart valve while working at what is now Oregon Health and Science University in 1958.

He said one of the keys to innovation is confidence, having the strength to push ahead even when the outcome is uncertain.

Starr remembered the first time OHSU approached him about cardiac surgery, something he hadn’t trained for specifically.

“He said Starr, can you do this type of surgery?” Starr said. “Of course.”

While Experian CEO Don Robert is confident in his business life, he was less so when he received the letter informing him he was a 2013 Weatherford Award honoree.

He called College of Business Dean Ilene Kleinsorge to let her know she had the wrong guy. He was the CEO of the world’s largest credit services company, not an entrepreneur.

“She told me maybe we have the wrong guy, but we’ve got the right company,” Robert said.

That he agreed with. Experian thrives on institutional innovation, Robert said, with much of the company’s business coming from products that didn’t exist five years ago.

“The job of our management team is to not screw that up and get in the way of good ideas. I will take the credit humbly for not screwing it up.”

The final honoree of the evening was Oregon’s first and still only woman governor, Barbara Roberts.

“Some of you are wincing to think about innovation in government,” Roberts said. “But in Oregon it does and has happened.”

Roberts mentioned Oregon’s vote by mail system, the Death With Dignity Act and a number of other legislative firsts which show Oregon’s pioneering character.

“I am a descendent of Oregon Trail pioneers,” she said. “You don’t stop. You don’t turn back.”

Roberts left the stage with a line from her inaugural address (“Not everyone gets to say that,” she added with a laugh).

“Each generation has but one chance to be judged by future generations,” Roberts said. “Now is out time. Let us be worthy of their judgment. ”

 

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Leadership Workshop Series gets students into minds of executives

Claudia Sieb talks to the final meeting of the Leadership Workshop Series
Claudia Sieb talks to the final meeting of the Leadership Workshop Series.

Every day executives are faced with difficult choices, situations that can define the path of a business or a career.

This term a select group of College of Business students got the chance to think through real-life scenarios with the executives who faced those tough decisions as part of an experimental leadership seminar.

“What I’m showing them is that their first response may not be correct,” said Executive in Residence in Innovation and Entrepreneurship Bob Mayes. “It’s like an onion, you have to peel the layers back.”

Led by Mayes, the class allowed students to interact closely with business leaders and examine their decision-making process.

The weekly class brought executives from diverse industries and backgrounds to discuss actual cases from their own careers and challenged students to think what they would have done in the same situation.

Before each class students received a situation provided by that week’s speaker. They were given details on the information available before the decision was made, but not what the speaker did or what happened after.

Students responded with what they would have done under the circumstances, and then analyzed the situation with the executive in class before finally discussing the actual outcome.

“All I’m trying to do is bring experience into the classroom in a setting that is safe,” Mayes said. “They’re graded on preparation and participation.”

Speakers included Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks, Phillip Swan, CEO of EZ Grill/P&M Products, Inc. and former Microsoft VP of Sales, and Claudia Sieb, who spoke at the final session Friday Nov. 30.

Sieb is the owner and co-founder of Sieb International, a global marketing and consulting firm that specializes in developing revenue strategies for companies targeting affluent U.S. markets and consumer segments.

During her talk Sieb showed the actual pitch she gave a luxury resort, providing a real-life example of key business concepts and discussed the choices with students in the class. As a business owner herself, she also laid out some of her key lessons as an entrepreneur.

The class will continue in winter term with a new slate of five executives, starting Jan. 18.

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Weatherford Garage student starting Kickstarter push for Goldfish Garden

Goldfish Garden set up on a desk
Photo courtesy thegoldfishgarden.com

Ryan Coghlan knew he had something when he started to get oohs and aahs from family and friends when he showed them the Goldfish Garden.

The invention — a combined fish tank/plant container which uses the science of aquaponics to fertilize the plant with waste from the bowl — has become Coghlan’s fulltime endeavor. Coghlan was recently accepted to become part of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program‘s Weatherford Garage, and is trying to make the invention into a thriving small business, starting a Kickstarter campaign to fund the initial phase of the operation.

“I have been interested in entrepreneurship for a while and was looking for the right idea to convert into a successful business, and I think what I have has real potential to become something big,” Coghlan said.

Coghlan completed an M.S. in Applied Biotechnology from Oregon State University in 2011, and wrote his thesis on aquaponic technology and its relation to small sustainable business. He interned on an aquaponics company in Wisconsin, giving him the experience he needed to develop his own product.

The first decision was how to scale an aquaponics venture. Coghlan saw three main possibilite; a large commercial operation, a medium backyard system or something small enough for individual consumers.

“I figured that aquaponic technology had a great opportunity in the Northwest,” he said. “After talking to quite a few people about this range of sizes I found that most people were more interested in a small home product and there was mush less start-up costs involved with developing a system like this.”

The Goldfish Garden combines a standard fishbowl with a small planting space attached above. A pump attached to the bowl pulls water up into the plant, which absorbs the nutrients and delivers filtered water back into the bowl. In tests, Coghlan has come bowl that can go up to four months without cleaning.

Bowls are small enough to fit in kitchens or desks, and have successfully grown herbs such as Oregano and basil and small house plants. One package even includes a grow light for areas without natural light.

Coghlan has worked on the Goldfish Garden for more than a year, purchasing the materials for the initial prototype in July of 2011. Over that tim ehe consulted with a number of small-business advisors, including College of Business Entrepreneur in Residence Michael Curry.

Curry provided assistance on the business and helped get Coghlan connected with the Weatherford Garage, a select community of students who get a yearlong immersion in entrepreneurship, from developing an idea to starting a business and creating products.

For now Coghlan is trying to promote the Kickstarter campaign and get investors for the Goldfish Garden.

“The biggest thing I have taken from this process is that no matter how ready you think you are, there are always going to be things that you missed and things you don’t know how to do when launching a business,” he said. “I have also realized that trying to start a business is not a full time job but more of a full life job, especially trying to do it by yourself.  It has been hard to break away from the constant thoughts that I could be doing something to advance my business and make it successful.”

 

 

 

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Homemade photo booth highlights College of Business student’s ingenuity

Oregon State College of Business student Dale McCauley is a technological monster, in the very best sense.

McCauley is a key member of the OSU SIFE team and the community at Weatherford Hall and the Austin Entrepreneurship program. He’s well known for creating a number of remarkable machines, including a line of mobile photo booths.

McCauley talks about his creation and shows it off in this video from the 2012 COB Graduation Celebration June 15.

UPDATE 9/27/12

If you’d like to rent the photo booth for your next party or event, you can now go to CorvallisPhotoBooth.com and secure it for yourself.

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