 Welcome back to Ohio means business it can be a tough road to travel for entrepreneurs starting a new business full of detours and wrong way signs. That's why one central Ohio entrepreneur developed a unique roadmap to help steer people in the right direction. Joining us to go inside the research. Now is Kevin Gad founder of Venture Highway and Dr. Sharon Alvarez academic director for the Center for Entrepreneurship at Ohio State's Fisher College of Business Sharon. Welcome back and Kevin welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. I love the the name Venture Highway sounds very similar to the song. Tell us what it is. Is it really a road map as I just described it. Absolutely it's meant to be a road map so we we map where folks come in with their business from beginning the business and coming up with innovative ideas all the way through testing the viability of that idea. Is it a good idea or is it a bad idea. Through planning through operations of the business and then eventually exiting the business so you can wherever you are on the highway you can come in learn more about that particular piece life cycle of your business and then move it to to where you want to go. It's fair to say you're kind of the architect of this highway so to speak. What a using past experiences were the things that that you learned through your college career and your business career that you said I got to put this in here because kids need to know this. Yeah I had spent a number of years at Tech Columbus here in Columbus as an incubator and helped a lot of people raise money start business grow their business did a lot of coaching and there were a lot of things that I thought we needed at that point as well as a way to sit back and manage all those companies in your portfolio. That's kind of where we started the business. We connected with Dr. Alvarez at Ohio State and realized that that same kind of methodology would work in the classroom and she was looking for a way to have a better experience in the classroom to help the students better and venture highway made made sense for the platform for that. Sharon it's funny I call them kids and they are I guess 18, 19, 20 year olds you've made a career of teaching entrepreneurship is this the new and improved way to do it? Yeah I think I think so we're making a bet that it is the new and improved way of doing it so what we're doing is we're using venture highway now in place of the textbook okay so that students will buy the system it's interactive I'm developing material as we speak that will be textbook-like materials so they don't totally get away from having to read materials but then they read the material and they're able to enter into the system their businesses their plans their thoughts and what's really cool we teach a foundations of entrepreneurship course to the undergrads and so they're able to take the system put in a bunch of ideas kind of soul search a little bit using the system and and at the end of the day work on something that they want to develop and this will change right so the average entrepreneur changes their business three times before they finally decide get it right and the students are no different from that but but they're able to do that with venture highway yeah and the venture highway we should mention it's not a one-time deal it's not a semester thing it they take it with them right yeah we think that that's something new that they can still go into the system even after the quarter is over because entrepreneurship is if you're really going to go into it it's a life it's a life thing so they'll continue to go in they'll move to our non-university model the traditional model I mentioned earlier so they can begin to try out things and test the viability and come up with new ideas and innovate for new things eventually they'll run it through and hopefully come back through you've heard the term that people are born to do certain things well maybe some people are born to be entrepreneurs and maybe others claim well that's just not in my blood you guys disagree with that anybody can be taught right anybody can be taught right and some people are more successful than other people you know just like accountants right we teach accountants no one likes to think about people being born to be accountants right you teach people to be accountants and it's the same thing with entrepreneurship and some will be more successful and others will be less but we can teach everybody yeah we we both believe a lot in this and we we we both have been examining some studies recent studies on this it's been both of the studies found that that even taking one entrepreneurship class even if you're not going to be an entrepreneur if you're going to be a business person and work in a big company even taking that one class makes you more successful in that environment and taking two classes in entrepreneurship there's a higher rate of success for those businesses once the students graduate move on so it's it's definitely a growing market and one that was we both felt was very ripe for change the students don't want to have the textbooks they don't want to carry around a textbook they want to learn they want to feel they want to touch they want to ask people they want to record their ideas and then change them and pivot as they go along so we think we think we're on to something very cool here yeah the other thing that's worth noting is as we change so when they buy this particular system the venture highway system and they have it in their undergrad program but as we update information they also will have the updates available to them even if it's five years down the road so as long as they have the system it isn't like now you have a textbook that you have the fourth edition and your first edition that you bought is outdated this will always be up to date I hate selling those textbooks back to the bookstore and no back to me let's talk about entrepreneurship we've talked so much on Ohio means business about taking an idea and the challenges to seeing it come to fruition right you could say but what are the biggest challenges it might be capital but maybe beyond capital the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs today so I don't know we've never talked about this I think it's management I think you know at the end of the day being an entrepreneur means doing things different than the flow and that's one of the challenges we have in business schools right I mean what do we want to teach people we want to teach them you know accounting and finance and you know HR and all the things that are traditional and then we want them to break out of the mold because that's what entrepreneurs do and do something different and so it's having to understand that challenge having to be the kind of manager the kind of leader that can lead an entrepreneurial firm idea and money doesn't always translate to the success no I mean I think just to follow along that I think and that's what we do in the in the foundations class and even the more advanced classes is we just try to give the students that that base level to get started and I think the hardest part of any entrepreneur is to get started and get that first dollar and really we're focusing on you know you may have to concentrate more on the marketing of your new product or the product and the you know development of your new product or sales or whatever but knowing the basics of those various attributes is really key so that you can get that first dollar and that you can continue to grow because you can always go back and take more classes on accounting or hire an accountant or whatever but it's that passion and ability and the flexibility to make it through and get the plane up off the ground actually so there's marketing and then there's marketing when you have no money there different skill sets and that's what we hope to teach the students are these different skill sets or at least to expect that the skill sets going to be different so that when it happens to them or when they're having to chase that first customer they're like okay we're not weird this is the way it is very cool stuff going on over there now I have the song venture a highway going through but it's venture highway and it is fascinating idea Kevin Gad the founder of it Dr. Sharon Alvarez thanks for joining me thank you very much I mean business thanks