Cristian’s own path to entrepreneur-
ship has balanced ventures of his
own with stints at Chilean construc-
tion firm Melón and software giant
Salesforce. He describes these roles
as “pivotal” in making him see the
pros of entrepreneurship versus the
traditional workplace. One of his
greatest takeaways, however, was
the importance of team.
Seeing an opportunity, Cristian
approached the alumni relations
team to gauge interest in forming a
network for entrepreneurs and con-
ducted a study among alumni to
determine the ingredients for a
thriving community. One year on,
Hult Entrepreneurs Network has
50+ members around the world,
who share their learnings, advice,
and opportunities through an online
portal and connect over a series of
webinars and events. Business is
conducted on nine founding princi-
ples and works to create the sound-
ing board of accountability that first
brought Cristian to the idea.
Entrepreneurs:
Your Network
Needs YOU
Cristian Fournies
CEO & Co-founder
MBA
Class of 2014
San Francisco, US
tiny.cc/hult-hen
68
Ways of Learning
1 Be respectful: of each other and ideas
2 Hold each other to account
3 Open your mind
4 Decide
1. What you want
2. What is true
5 Care not for what others think
6 Pain + reflection = progress
7 Put sales anxiety in its place
8 You came to learn, not to sell
9 Promote these values
Be a part of it
Entrepreneurship for many means independ-
ence: pioneer an idea, work as and when needed,
and answer to your own rules. But can these
game changers ever feel a little … lonely? Enter
Cristian Fournies, founder of the Hult Entrepre-
neurs Network (HEN), who’s on a mission to bring
entrepreneurial alumni together.
“Accountability. That’s the thing,” says Cristian Fournies
from his home office in California. A serial entrepre-
neur himself, Cristian was prompted to create a group
for like-minded alumni after realizing the common
ground among an increasing number of Hult founders.
He uses the adage of a frog in boiling water to illustrate
his point: “When you’re working alone, on a new ser-
vice or product, how do you know what good looks
like? What do you do when the unexpected happens?
We’d like to think we know when something’s wrong,
when to stop, and when to get out. But when you’re do-
ing something yourself, the stakes are always high—you
can’t always recognize the point when things become
truly uncomfortable.”
HEN Principles
Do you have entrepreneurial experience to share, or
questions to ask? Connect with fellow alumni through the
Hult Entrepreneurs Network. Visit tiny.cc/hult-hen for
more information.
Reading List
Originals
Adam Grant What They Don’t Teach You
at Harvard Business School
Mark H. McCormack
The Hard Thing About
Hard Things
Ben Horowitz Business Model Generation
Alexander Osterwalder
and Yves Pigneur
Ways of Learning
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