In a year of highlights, let's add another one to the list. My beloved cohort B - aka the Killer Bees - won the Cohort Cup. You might recall my earlier entry on Cohort Cup:
http://letter-of-marque.blogspot.com/2010/09/cohort-cup-dodgeball.html
Cohort B has been a stellar cohort all year long. We sealed the deal in the last event of the competition - cohort relays. This event consisted of a free throw contest (basketball), a speed eating contest, several running relays, and finally, a tug-of-war contest. Going into the day, Cohort B was 5 points ahead of Cohort I. At the end of the day, B and I tied for first in the day's events. Thus, Cohort B won the Cohort Cup by 5 points over Cohort I. We did this with almost no support from the second years, unfortunately.
That night, we took the cup to Atlantic City to party.
Winning Cohort Cup has given our cohort immense pride and is likely to keep us close in our 2nd year. Next year, I think a lot of 2nd year Bs will take part in the events with the first years.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Quantico
The second
After the training on the base - which was more grueling and tiring than I expected, we had a reception at the Marine Museum in Virginia. This was an awe-inspiring museum. Below you can see some of the most famous quotes uttered by marines.
I came away fr
Monday, May 30, 2011
Think Big
Thi
s year, my team participated in and won second place in the Wharton Business Plan Competition, winning $15,000 cash and $10,000 of in-kind services. This was one of the highlights of my first year in business school.
I worked with Marc Montserrat (my learning teammate) and Pitou Devgon (a physician and recent grad) to develop a business plan for a medical device known as PhlebCath. PhlebCath is designed to revolutionize the process of drawing blood from patients by eliminating painful needle sticks. By going through an already-inserted IV, the device will also drive efficiency gains by eliminating wasted time in finding veins for blood drawing. We named our company Next Generation Phlebotomy (phlebotomy is the process of drawing blood).
Over 300 teams submitting business plans in the first round. 25 teams were selected to proceed to the semifinals. 8 teams were then selected for the finals - roughly 4 health care and 4 non-health care teams. This was the first year in the history of the competition that the industry make-up of the final needed to match the industry make-up of the semifinals.
After submitting a 45-page business plan, giving a 20 minute presentation to the judges, and giving a 2-minute elevator pitch to the audience (something I did), we were thrilled to win 2nd place in the competition. We celebrated at Tiffin and ate wonderful Indian food.
See here for the award winners from the competition:
http://bpc.wharton.upenn.edu/

I worked with Marc Montserrat (my learning teammate) and Pitou Devgon (a physician and recent grad) to develop a business plan for a medical device known as PhlebCath. PhlebCath is designed to revolutionize the process of drawing blood from patients by eliminating painful needle sticks. By going through an already-inserted IV, the device will also drive efficiency gains by eliminating wasted time in finding veins for blood drawing. We named our company Next Generation Phlebotomy (phlebotomy is the process of drawing blood).
Over 300 teams submitting business plans in the first round. 25 teams were selected to proceed to the semifinals. 8 teams were then selected for the finals - roughly 4 health care and 4 non-health care teams. This was the first year in the history of the competition that the industry make-up of the final needed to match the industry make-up of the semifinals.
After submitting a 45-page business plan, giving a 20 minute presentation to the judges, and giving a 2-minute elevator pitch to the audience (something I did), we were thrilled to win 2nd place in the competition. We celebrated at Tiffin and ate wonderful Indian food.
See here for the award winners from the competition:
http://bpc.wharton.upenn.edu/
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Patagonia Days 5-6: Las Torres
Day 5 was an easy 4 hour hike to Refugio Cuernos with good weather. But on Day 6, I got up at 4:30am to hike to the Base of the Towers to see sunrise on the three towers, the 3rd and final attraction of the W trail.
Un
This was a mistake.
Though we re
After a while, the next group of hikers joined us in the wait, and our peaceful silence was broken.
On the way down, I saw m
Friday, April 8, 2011
Patagonia Day 4: The French Valley
The plan for Day 4 was to travel from Paine Grande to Refugio Chileno, making a detour to visit the French Valley along the way. Day 4 would be our longest hiking day of about 10 hours of hiking. Doing this hike at a moderate pace would and getting to Chileno by dinner would require leaving Paine Grande around 8:30am. Because my group got delayed in leaving, I decided to do the hike alone.
To m
After a few more hou
I then descended to Campo Italiano and continued onto Refugio Chileno. I arrived about 1.5 hours after my friends who started towards Britanico but turned back with an hour to go. My clothes were soaked and I was in need of some hot food. Unfortunately, Chileno was our least comfortable Refugio with 8 people to a room and little heat.
At times the hike was lonely, but for the most part it was enjoyable and allowed me to reflect on Patagonia's grandeur in solitude.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Patagonia Days 2-3: Refugio Grey
The next day, w
Refugio Grey w
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Patagonia Day 1: Endless Travel
From there, things were fairly smooth for 4 out of the 6 of us. We traveled from Newark to Lima to Santiago to Punta Arenas. Then we took a bus 3 hours north to Puerto Natales. Unfortunately, 2 of our trip mates were on a slightly different flight path and got bumped off their flight from Miami to Santiago. Thus, they did not make it to Punta Arenas at the same time as us. They did eventually make it, but one arrived in Puerto Natales with duct tape on her shoes - wasn't going to work for a 70km hike. More on that later.
All told, we traveled over 30 hours to get to Puerto Natales, where we spent the night before leaving for Torres Del Paine the next day. The folks in the picture are a group of Swedes waiting at the Punta Arenas airport for the bus to Puerto Natales. They eventually became friends (and friendly rivals) on the W trail.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Wharton 54

Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Patagonia
Patagonia is a large region in Southern Chile and Argentina, comprised of diverse landscape that includes deserts, mountains, lakes, rivers, and the like. There was a Wharton Leadership Venture to Tierra del Fuego (in Southern Patagonia) that I was interested in doing; however, I and the rest of my travel companions were wait-listed on this trip. Given the difficulty of getting off the wait-list, we decided to plan our own trip to Patagonia - just a different part of it. Torres del Paine is the most famous part of Patagonia and highly doable without a guide; so we decided to go there.
When I think of P

Over the next several blog entries I'll describe details of our adventure as we spent 2 days getting to Torres Del Paine, 5 days hiking the W trail, and 2 days getting back to the US. Looking back at my pictures, I shudder at the raw beauty of Patagonia.
In Praise of Angry Birds

I love this game.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Q4 Begins (where did Q3 go)?
I certainly won't miss Q3, which was the busiest quarter I've had at Wharton. I hit the recruiting circuit hard, going through roughly 16 first round interviews and 6 2nd round interviews (all for health care companies). During one particularly rough week, I had interviews in NYC, San Jose, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. Unfortunately, academics (probably) suffered as a result of the recruiting onslaught. Fortunately though, I have a job that I think I'm going to enjoy for the summer.
Q4 has begun and I think it will be much better than Q3. However, academics will probably take the front seat again unless it is displaced by something. My courses for this quarter are:
Global Strategic Management
Marketing
Operations & Information Management: Supply and Demand
Health Care Entrepreneurship (we are in the semi-finals of the competition)
Health Care Field Application Project (we are consulting for NuPathe)
Not a light load by any means. But, besides academics, Q4 will be about fun. Spring is here and Philly is limping back to life. It's hard to believe that the 1st year is almost over, so it's time to get back on the social scene and party it's pre-term!
Q4 has begun and I think it will be much better than Q3. However, academics will probably take the front seat again unless it is displaced by something. My courses for this quarter are:
Global Strategic Management
Marketing
Operations & Information Management: Supply and Demand
Health Care Entrepreneurship (we are in the semi-finals of the competition)
Health Care Field Application Project (we are consulting for NuPathe)
Not a light load by any means. But, besides academics, Q4 will be about fun. Spring is here and Philly is limping back to life. It's hard to believe that the 1st year is almost over, so it's time to get back on the social scene and party it's pre-term!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Avid Radiopharmaceuticals


Dan, who did not have any business training, founded Avid in 2004 and sold the company a few months ago to Lilly for $800M. Avid's acquisition by Lilly was one of the biggest successes in life sciences this year.
One of the most heart warming aspects of this fairy tale of entrepreneurship was the way in which the clinical trials were conducted. Avid recruited elderly patients near the end of their lives (these patients faced end-stage renal disease, cancer, etc.) for their initial testing. These patients knew they were dying and wanted to do something to help patients of Alzheimmers. They therefore agreed to donate their brains to Avid so that Avid's imaging agent could be tested on them. Avid used the brains of 1,000 patients for compound development and tested their compound on about 250 live patients in Phase III clinical trials. Avid later received the obituaries from the families of the patients who had donated their brains for the development trial.
There were two quotes that stuck out from this talk that I'll leave you with:
"Vision without execution is hallucination" - Thomas Edison
"Great companies position themselves to be bought, not to be sold" - Dan Skovronsky
Read below for the press release on the acquisition:
http://www.avidrp.com/press_releases/Avid%20Closing%20Press%20Release.pdf
Semester 2 Begins

I spent the first week of my winter break at home, writing cover letters for job applications. I spent the second week of break at school, taking an abbreviated Managerial Accounting class. This class was much more manageable than Financial Accounting.
Since then, it has been all about recruiting. I had 15 interviews during DIP (dedicated interview period) and am waiting to hear if I move forward in the process or if I'm one-and-done. Surprisingly, I'm not too worried because I know that something, somewhere, will work out.
I used to wonder why MBA bloggers went quiet from January - March in the first year. Now I know. Recruiting is a huge time suck. If Q1 was about academics and Q2 about Employer Information Sessions, then Q3 is definitely about recruiting. Maybe Q4 will be about fun?
Meanwhile, the most fun I'm having right now is submitting a business plan for the Wharton Business Plan competition. Get ready for a heart warming tale of entrepreneurship (not mine) in my next post...
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