Traveling across the globe to teach about entrepreneurship is nothing new to Michael Goldberg. In fact, he’s held entrepreneurship seminars and programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State in almost 30 countries.
“I love to travel and interact with people,” he says. “And when you get asked to hold these seminars, I find it humbling that someone else is interested in what we’re doing.”
Goldberg, the executive director of the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship and associate professor of design and innovation at Weatherhead School of Management, is an experienced venture capitalist and entrepreneur whose teachings focus on the fields of entrepreneurship and early stage finance.
His most recent trip in July 2023 was to Madagascar where he led a three-day workshop on entrepreneurship to 30 local entrepreneurs as part of the U.S. Department of State’s U.S. Speaker Program in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Madagascar and Ambassador Claire Pierangelo.
During the workshop, Goldberg covered topics relating to building the right team; women in business; choosing the right business model and financial approach; scaling your business; effective use of online resources; and more. He also gave an overview of his Case Western Reserve University massive open online course (MOOC) offered on Coursera—Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies.
Goldberg believes one of the biggest takeaways from the workshop was networking.
One week after the trip, Goldberg connected participants from the workshop with Michael Fisher (MGT '00; GRS '13), former CTO of Etsy, to learn more about posting their products on Etsy, a global online marketplace.
“They have products or services for a global marketplace and they don’t have a lot of experience using platforms like Etsy or Upwork,” Goldberg says, “so there’s a desire to learn more.”
Goldberg touts the value of Weatherhead and Case Western Reserve having a global outreach through programs, such as the U.S. Speaker Program.
“It’s important to the ethos of who we are at Weatherhead to take our work out across the world, especially to a country like Madagascar whose entrepreneurial ecosystem is still developing,” Goldberg says. “This is something the faculty at Weatherhead and Case Western Reserve are encouraged to do.”