Entrepreneurs Find Their Voice at the Dingman Center

By Susan Kim, MANAGING EDITOR



Cherry Kwunyeun's friends once called her "the bag lady" because she carried multiple handbags at any given time. Then she won a national handbag design competition, became a Fulbright scholar in Thailand and created a handbag design company. Now Kwunyeun is living up to that nickname in an entrepreneurial sense.

Her most recent accomplishment: becoming a scholar at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

Founded in 1986, the Dingman Center is an entrepreneurial institute recognized around the world as a leader in enterprise creation. The center encourages a real-world business culture that bridges the theoretical with the practical.

For Kwunyeun, the Dingman center has helped take her company - called Blumpari, based on a Thai name meaning "eternal flower" - to a new level of visibility.

"What I appreciate most about my Dingman experience is the team of people behind Dingman who have helped me find my voice and make it heard," she said.

Since Kwunyeun became a Dingman scholar, Blumpari has been noted in The Wall Street Journal and on Maryland Public Television and other media programs and publications.

When Kwunyeun runs her ideas by her mentors at the Dingman Center, she always gets honest feedback - even if it's painful.

"Sometimes my voiced idea wins their vote, and sometimes it is torn to shreds, but they always challenge me to come back stronger," she said.

"I feel very fortunate and honored to be given the opportunity to incubate my business and translate my vision for Blumpari from a set of specific personal and professional life experiences into business terms that are scalable, relatable and inspiring to others."



Characteristics of Entrepreneurs

Dingman Center Managing Director Asher Epstein said working with entrepreneurs means being surrounded by contagious energy. "These are people going out with great ideas, creating the next new businesses. They are motivated to start something new. From the get-go, they think they can change the world," he said.

Entrepreneurs don't punch a time clock, he observed. Instead, they have deep internal drive. "You're working because you have internal discipline to get to the office," he said.

Entrepreneurs also tend to be comfortable with uncertainty. "You don't know if the customers are going to pay on time. You have to be comfortable working in an uncertain environment."

When entrepreneurs fail, it's most often because they have underestimated the competitive landscape, Epstein added. "Chances are, if you're working on an idea, there's someone someplace else working on the same idea."



Brainstorming With the Best

The Dingman Center offers undergraduate and graduate courses, mentoring programs, networking groups and many other programs. Most of all, said former and current Dingman participants, the center offers a place where entrepreneurs can bounce their ideas around an arena that hones creative thinking on a whole new level.

Mark Nebesky is chief marketing officer for Goozex, a video game trading site that has been featured in The Washington Post and other media outlets.

Goozex was the winner of the 2007 "Cupid's Cup," an annual business competition showcasing young entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland. The competition is made possible by one of University of Maryland's most successful entrepreneurs, Kevin Plank, CEO of Under Armour.

Nebesky said his first six months at the Dingman Center brought a rush of new opportunities.

"During many of our first meetings, we were bouncing ideas off of entrepreneurs and residents. They helped guide a lot of the decisions we made. They opened up a lot of local networking opportunities for us to raise capital and further business development."



Wits, Wagers - and $100,000

Former Dingman scholar Dominic Crapuchettes is now founder and co-manager of North Star Games, producer of "Wits and Wagers," an increasingly popular trivia game.

North Star Games was a winner at the 2006 Cupid's Cup competition, and Crapuchettes was invited to offer remarks at the 2007 contest. "We spoke for about 10 minutes," Crapuchettes recalled. "Because of that, we wowed one of the investors that was in the audience. He and another person put in $100,000."

Now "Wits and Wagers" has been picked up by Target as well as other major retailers, and the product has won more industry awards than any party game in history.

"An account agency from Hollywood called us, and they're interested in turning it into a TV game show," said Crapuchettes.

Looking back, his Dingman education helped him speak in a language that customers could understand, he said. "People who can produce really great products are geeks with regard to their product. What seems obvious to them is not obvious to other people. They don't understand the mainstream consumer."



Infusing Ideas Early

Oliver Schlake, a Tyser teaching fellow at the Smith School of Business who teaches undergraduate and graduate students about entrepreneurship, said many young people come into the program because their parents already have a business.

"They grow up with that entrepreneurship mentality. Students who have parents who are entrepreneurs are more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves."

It's not necessarily an indicator for success, he said - but it's an indicator that students are more likely to try.

The whole point is to infuse entrepreneurial ideas early in someone's life, Schlake added. "The older you become, the less likely you are to start a business. If you have family, kids, you are less likely to take the plunge. We try to infuse the idea of entrepreneurship very early on."

His graduate students tend to see entrepreneurship as an exit strategy out of corporate America, he said.

The most popular business ideas right now? "I see an increase in the 'green' businesses and in environmental services," he said.

Epstein often makes an appearance in Schlake's classes as part of a jury for student competitions. "The Dingman Center plays an important advisory role for our students," Schlake said. "It's often psychologically better for the students. It's a good setup."