Introduction to Entrepreneurship
William F. Walker, Ph.D.
Mattson Family Director of Entrepreneurship, Duke University Pratt School of Engineering
Sponsored by MEDx, Duke Engineering Entrepreneurship, and Duke Innovation and Entrepreneurship
11 a.m. - 3 p.m. (lunch provided)
Saturday, November 16, 2019
The Bullpen, 3rd Floor, 215 Morris Street, Durham, NC
Registration is required: https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aflT68BmLxDKKHj
Attendance is limited to 50
This workshop is designed for inventors and aspiring inventors.
If you have any questions or after registering you find that you will be unable to attend, contact Donna Crenshaw at donna.crenshaw@duke.edu.
Please be considerate and attend if you register.
This workshop will present the entrepreneurial process from the perspective of someone who has done it all. I have been a student founder, a faculty founder, a CEO, a CTO, a Board Member, a mentor, and a Board Chairman. I will share the unique insights these varied experiences have taught me. I will tell the founding stories of each of the three medical device companies I founded and tell you what worked well and what worked terribly. I will present pitches from these companies so that you can see how we told our stories to attract investment. I will describe the Founders’ Framework, a process for intentional entrepreneurship. I will teach you the triage process I use in coaching dozens of startups, including a process for quickly assessing market size and determining which “ideas” are worth pursuing and which should be quickly discarded. I will share a process for deep customer engagement. This will be an interactive workshop with opportunities to ask probing questions and explore your own startup ideas.
Bill Walker received B.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. He spent 13 years on the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia; rising from Assistant to Full Professor. At UVA he designed and led the undergraduate major in Biomedical Engineering; a program that rose to 13th in the nation only three years after its inception. In 2010 he left UVA, giving up tenure, to lead HemoSonics, a company based on technology he invented. He served HemoSonics as both CEO and CTO. HemoSonics was acquired in 2018 and currently markets its unique blood diagnostic in the US and Europe. In 2016 Bill returned to Duke as Pratt’s First Mattson Family Director of Engineering Entrepreneurship. He leads Duke’s Clark Scholars Program, coaches entrepreneurs at all career stages, architects new entrepreneurial programs, and actively performs research in ultrasound imaging. He has published over forty journal articles, he holds more than thirty patents, and has founded three medical device companies; two of which successfully exited and brought products to markets. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of CoapTech in Baltimore MD.
If you need assistance with the cost of dependent care, please email Sharlini Sankaran at sharlini.sankaran@duke.edu.
To receive information about future Entrepreneurship Workshops sign up at entrpreneursworkshop@duke.edu