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To: RR who wrote (55521)	10/11/2002 2:51:31 PM
From: Cactus Jack	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 65232

RR, Good to see you back in cyber-land. Hope all is OK. We're heading to the mountains (Lake Tahoe) this weekend for a couple of days of R & R. Gonna walk a portion of the Tahoe Marathon. Take care, jpg

To: RR who wrote (55521)	10/11/2002 3:48:01 PM
From: elpolvo	Respond to of 65232

I bought SPX puts today... good choice <eom>

To: RR who wrote (55521)	10/15/2002 2:43:16 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

Teaching The School Of Hard Knocks forbes.com Teaching The School Of Hard Knocks By Lisa DiCarlo Forbes 10.15.02, 12:00 PM ET NEW YORK - Michael Horvath, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, knows he can't "teach" his students to be entrepreneurs. The seven-page syllabus for his Advanced Entrepreneurship class even says so. Yet his is one of almost 100 programs at colleges across the country that aim to prepare tomorrow's business leaders to be just that. At the very least, Horvath's class and others like it are successful because they don't sugarcoat how hard a life entrepreneurship is. As a consequence, many students go in a different direction. "They need to hear certain things like 'I mortgaged my house for a second time to make payroll' or 'I can't face my family because I'm putting them at risk too,' " Horvath says. "Following the entrepreneur path becomes self-selecting at that point." Entrepreneur programs are usually a subset of an overall M.B.A. degree, but they differ in important ways. Entrepreneur classes "create a student who understands risk and how to get things done without resources," says Kathryn Simon, director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It's assessing the marketplace, getting financing, learning to do things fast and gather competitive intelligence. You don't get that in an M.B.A. program." Of course some of America's most successful entrepreneurs made their way without an M.B.A., or higher education of any kind. Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) co-founder Bill Gates is a college dropout, as is Dell Computer (nasdaq: DELL - news - people ) mastermind Michael Dell. Horvath's curriculum focuses heavily on pitching ideas and business plans to founders of successful companies and venture capitalists. He believes there is value in exposing students to successful as well as unsuccessful entrepreneurs so they can learn from the real-world mistakes of others. Horvath knows what he's talking about. The married 35-year old, who has a Ph.D. in economics, co-founded Kana Communications (nasdaq: KANA - news - people ) in the late '90s. Kana, a software company, rode the crest of the Internet wave to absurd heights. Its shares hit a peak of $284 in February 2000 despite the fact that it was losing huge sums of money and had sales that year of only $119 million. The company made headlines when, in early 2000, it paid $4 billion in stock for SkillNet. Horvath left the company in the summer of 2000, and Kana's shares currently trade under $1. "I bring a lot of my Kana [experiences] into the class," Horvath says. "You don't convey a whole lot when you're reading from a book." Things have changed in the classroom since the Internet bubble burst. "The e-commerce classes have gone downhill," says Bob Brockhaus, director of the Smurfit Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of St. Louis. "But we've got many more students because they want to take control of their lives. Anytime unemployment goes up, so does the startup of new businesses." Horvath says enrollment in his class is down 10% this year, after a 25% drop last year. The objects of students' fancy have changed too. "We used to have a lot of dot-com ideas, but not anymore," says Horvath. "In fact, we have none this year, which is a welcome change." At the same time, some programs are broadening beyond entrepreneurship for traditional business. The University of Colorado, which hasn't seen any falloff in enrollment, has a program geared to musicians who want to start their own bands. "We teach them how to build a brand and find an audience," says Simon, who adds that the class is taught by two professors, one from the performing arts and one from business. "We talk to them in their language." The approach is the same for Colorado's law and engineering programs. "It has extended beyond the traditional base of business school," Simon says. All the educators agree that entrepreneur classes are just as useful in helping students decide that it's not for them. For every Bill Gates, there are hundreds of, well, people who aren't Bill Gates. It's impossible to teach a mind-set, but the programs may improve the probability of success. "We can't guarantee we'll turn out a Rembrandt or Van Gogh," says Brockhaus, "but we'll improve the quality of the painting."