Founders Day At Babson College

There aren't many who can say they have built a multimillion dollar business while in school, so it comes as no surprise that Tatto Media won Babson's Student Business of the Year award. It is Babson's first ever student-run business to reach seven digits in profits over a brief span of two and half years. Tatto Media is an online marketing firm dedicated to revenue optimization for advertisers. They focus on "leveraging the underlying truths of the internet to unlock unprecedented efficiency in the buying and selling of contextual and online display advertising. Their deep understanding and proprietary technology has certainly propelled this business to establish itself in an aggressively competitive and saturated market. They have so far reached unprecedented success, supplying over 25% of Facebook ads and serving over 20 billion impressions a month. I have been fortunate to meet its founder, Lin Miao, who we hope to be interviewing soon.

Undergraduate Competition Winners,

1st Place: Before the Stores LLC

Before the Stores is a hybrid, e-commerce website and market research firm that sells and collects data on brand new "As Seen on TV" products from their initial TV release until their retail store launch.

2nd Place: Chaska Hotel and Spa

Chaska Hotel and Spa is a full-service, four-star, eco-friendly hotel committed to improving the quality of lodging in Peru's Sacred Valley of the Incas while allowing visitors to fully embrace Incan culture and the area's beautiful natural surroundings.

3rd Place: Treating Eating Inc.

Victims of eating disorders, and their families and friends, are embraced with support from the closely knit, anonymous online community, Treating Eating.

Advice

There is often a question and balance between speed and quality when starting a business. It's rare to have both as one is usually compromised for the other's improvement. Ernesto Bertarelli, an extraordinary business man who brought his families pharmaceutical company to a $13.3 billion acquisition believes that "those teams that are most successful, are those able to reach a balance." Although this is true, depending on the industry, one may be more important than the other. Sunil Bharti Mittal, the founder and CEO of India's leading telecom company, Bharti Enterprises, explains that in India that there are so many opportunities and competition that one cannot focus on perfecting a product if they aim to achieve high market share. In this case, speed overcomes the importance of quality. Expanding on this notion, he gave some words of advice that helped lead him to success: "Instead of being 100% better than your competition, be 1% better in a 100 different ways." Him and the rest of the panel also agreed that there is no substitute for hard work and that employees should be motivated beyond monetary incentives.

To end the panel discussion, Ernesto suggested that student entrepreneurs should focus on bringing value to society, and that the ones who are able to do this effectively, usually have the businesses that are most successful and last the longest. I'm we're all learning the truth in his statement "choose something you like and your time will come." Lee Man Tat, a chairman of Lee Kum Kee Group, followed by emphasizing that in order to succeed as entrepreneurs, we will probably have to do more for other first and not focus on making fast money.