Blazing a path
Marketplace offers students, aspiring entrepreneurs insight
The 17th annual Marketplace for Entrepreneurs kicked off Tuesday at the Fargodome.
Students, entrepreneurs and business leaders from around the region gathered to hear new ideas and to participate in learning workshops.
Sen. Kent Conrad and Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson were present to kick off the conference’s events and to award the 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year Award to two Fargo-area business leaders, Barry Batcheller and Thomas Kenville.
“ Both Barry and Tom are true entrepreneurial leaders. They have vision, imagination and ambition that, with years of hard work, have resulted in great business success,” Conrad and Johnson said. “They serve as true inspirations for today’s budding entrepreneurs and are both deserving of the Marketplace award.”
Johnson also said Marketplace has a lot to offer students who visit the event.
“ College students can expect to take away hope, opportunity (and) I think maybe some new ideas on how they could create their own business,” Johnson said. “We really focus on our internal resources and what we can do to take advantage of those resources. That’s what we want college students to do too. We want them to believe in themselves and believe that education is not just about training yourself to get a job, it may be training yourself to create jobs, create businesses and create new opportunities for others.”
Justin Swanson, a senior at NDSU and a volunteer at Marketplace, said the event’s showcases are what brought him to Marketplace this year.
“ We were here earlier to volunteer for Bison Ambassadors,” Swanson said. “We think it’s a great place to showcase North Dakota products and North Dakota people, and I think all of us from the Midwest thought it’d be interesting to see what different rural entrepreneurs are coming up with.”
Featured at this year’s Marketplace was keynote speaker Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.
Bezos spoke about the business practices and decisions that have helped make his company one of the most successful businesses in the world.
“ Real entrepreneurship is not about overnight success,” Bezos said. “It takes a lot of persistence to get everything done.”
Bezos was eager to offer advice to students looking to enter the worke force or possibly start up their own businesses.
“ I always tell outgoing students, even those who want to start their own company someday, I always suggest that they go and work at a best-practices company somewhere,” Bezos said. “You learn so much in those early working years, so that should be your first priority.”
Bezos said that learning is the key objective that students should focus on while searching for their first job.
“ I think the best advice you can give somebody is pick your job based first and foremost on whether you think you’re going to learn a lot doing that job,” Bezos said. “I think it’s even more important than your initial salary and some of the other factors you’re going to be weighing when you decide on where you are going to go and what you’re going to do. The learning, that’s really the most important thing.”