What is an entrepreneur?

Michael Panesis looked it up when he was tapped to run Hub101, a coworking space for tech founders in Westlake Village. The word is derived from a French word meaning “to undertake,” which at  the time referred to sailors who risked months  at sea to explore new worlds and find fortune.

By that definition, Hub101 has lived up to its goals – though not in the way it intended to. The center, which is part of California Lutheran University, was originally focused on fostering the startup community in the region. When the pandemic hit, everything changed.

The tech-fueled history 

Hub101 was built on a satellite campus of Cal Lutheran as part of the university’s Steven Dorfman Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, allowing founders of budding tech startups to work, take meetings, ideate on whiteboards and host events in a multipurpose lounge complete with a pool table, large television and kitchen.

Beyond Limits, a now-Glendale-based enterprise artificial intelligence company, got its start at Hub101. When it raised a $20 million series B round in 2017, the company grew beyond the hot desking limitations of the center and moved out. Market research technology company PureSpectrum started out at Hub101, even hiring some collaborators and students.

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship also hosts several events, competitions, incubators and a minor in entrepreneurship, “which makes for some really interesting classrooms, where you have a dance major sitting next to a communications major sitting next to a finance major sitting next to a physicist,” Panesis says.

Panesis had a long career in venture before he moved into academia – he was a founding member of the Santa Barbara Angel Alliance, chair at Tech Coast Angels and a board member for a slew of tech companies. When he was asked to run Hub101, it seemed like a good fit for the tech-focused center Cal Lutheran was building.

But things changed during the pandemic. Tech companies, particularly the venture-backed high-growth startups Hub101 was built for, quickly adapted to a work-from-home mindset, and fewer people dropped in to work. Events saw fewer attendees.

“We want the tech startup boom to come back, but we also want to make sure that we’re serving populations that feel like entrepreneurship is an outreach for them,” Panesis says.

New entrepreneurship models

That’s when the goal of the center began to evolve to make sure entrepreneurship was not out of reach for anyone.

Classes for the minor in entrepreneurship and incubator recipients spanned the gamut of entrepreneurship: some people were interested in creating tech platforms for venture funding, others wanted to start a small business. Many students were the first in their families to get a college education. Others had financial obligations to their own families. As a result, typical startup ethos found on X and LinkedIn didn’t apply to the students.

Ventura County was a quiet hub for innovation prior to the dot-com boom – pharmaceutical giant Amgen, hiking gear retailer Patagonia Inc. and long-gone printing service Kinko’s called the region home. Ventura County has long thought about harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit of the area, tech hub or no.

A 2018 report for the Economic Development Collaborative said, “too often, when economic development officials start talking about strategies to develop regional entrepreneurship, the discussion turns immediately to hackathons, accelerators, and the activities of university technology transfer offices. That is regrettable.”

The goal for students at the Dorfman Center isn’t to get venture funding, and Panesis often recommends against taking venture capital for certain ideas. Classes revolve around creating a business that will hold up in 20 or 30 years.

“A tech entrepreneur or venture capitalist will tell you to quit the job, mortgage the house, take every bit of your savings and put it all in the business. For a lot of people, that’s just not realistic,” Panesis says. “We talk like the only way to do this is to go all in, put your life behind you, and not concentrate on anything else.”

Hub101 case study

When Dawn Fosah came to the center, she had years of experience building out health care technology and developing electronic medical record systems. During the pandemic, she noticed it was difficult for families to get updates on loved ones in nursing homes since caretakers had to juggle many responsibilities at once and couldn’t provide continuous updates. Her budding company, Careagram, would allow families to tap into certain available data – like when a patient ate, how much they ate, how long they walked for, what their mood was – through an app.

Through Hub101, she began to do research on different nursing facilities, the laws around sharing medical information, and the technical process of embedding into existing EMR platforms.

“This would be the first company that I found. I’m relatively new,” Fosah says. “Just going out and trying to bootstrap an idea, it’s a green field for me. Lots to learn, but I’m excited about the opportunity.”

Though the makeup of students at the center has changed, the center itself hasn’t, says Panesis. He points to the French origins of “entrepreneur” as to why.

“They were comparing risk taking to explorers who were getting in a boat and sailing off to the horizon in search of wealth and glory – in other words, taking the biggest risks,” Panesis says. “When you look at what an entrepreneur is today…it’s still a big risk for a person who doesn’t have a lot of money to begin with. We think of anyone who is in business for themselves as an entrepreneur.”