UCLA Group Offers Tips to Business Tyros

At 19, Larry Vein is an entrepreneur.

A business major at UCLA, he teamed up with a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, last year to form a company that sells discount clothing on college campuses.

Craig Sholder, 22, also is a partner in his own business, a window-washing company that he started when he was a senior in high school. He is a UCLA senior majoring in political science.

Vein and Sholder are among 10 young men and women who are organizing the UCLA Entrepreneurs Assn. to help undergraduate students develop business management skills and experience.

It is never too soon to start learning how to be an entrepreneur, the students said. Although the UCLA Graduate School of Management has a well-established extracurricular program in entrepreneurship, this is the first such program for undergraduates, they said. About 50 students have joined and about 100 are expected to attend the group’s first meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in UCLA’s North Campus Center, Room 22.

The group is designed to appeal not only to business majors, but to students in other fields who have entrepreneurial ideas, said Jeffrey L. Wohlwend, who is serving as an adviser.

A 1980 graduate of UCLA, he founded his own computerized commercial real estate company in Brentwood.

Wohlwend said that when he was a student, there was no organized program for undergraduate students who had ideas for starting their own businesses.

The new association will provide students with advice and moral support, he said.

“It is difficult for young people to walk into a major corporation and present information on their company when the person they are talking to is 50 years old and they are 19 or 20,” said Wohlwend, who is 27. “We will teach them ways to present themselves, ways to give their company credibility.”

The association will draw on the expertise of the administration and faculty at UCLA and on the experience of alumni and business executives who will be mentors, Wohlwend said.

Some businessmen already have expressed an interest as potential employers because they believe students who are active in the group are likely to be motivated and innovative, he said.

Vein and Sholder said they would like to share with other students the entrepreneurial knowledge they have gained the hard way, and to learn more themselves.

Sholder said he got the idea for his company from the window-washing chores he did at home when he was in high school.

Let the Sun Shine In Co., based in the San Fernando Valley, started a window-washing service for neighbors’ homes.

It has expanded to include clean-up of newly constructed homes and office buildings, Sholder said. “I’d love to do the Arco tower next,” he said, referring to the oil company’s skyscraper headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

The UCLA Entrepreneurs Assn. is affiliated with the California Assn. of Entrepreneurs.

The state association has chapters at UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine and members hope to establish chapters at all of the UC campuses, said Geoffrey D. Chin, 22, an English major who plans to go law school after graduating this year. He is among the organizers of the entrepreneurs’ group at UCLA, he said, and eventually hopes to establish a firm specializing in law and real estate.

Association members are assigned jobs to help them learn business management skills, said Maureen Lennon, 21, a political science major.

“Within the organization itself, she said, “students will learn things about starting a company or an enterprise so that by the time they graduate, they won’t have to look for established corporations for job opportunities.”