Entrepreneurs of UCLA: David Mangold
After graduating UCLA with a BA in Business Economics, David Mangold went on to try his hand at a corporate career initially, before founding Cliqqit, an event-based social platform, and Koala T, a boba café in the heart of Westwood Village. David is originally from Berkeley, CA and is passionate about helping others discover their own passions. During his time at UCLA, David created Bruin Entrepreneurs along with two other co-founders.
S: What made you create Bruin Entrepreneurs?
D: There were a lot of good resources at UCLA for starting your own company, but they were spread out. You really didn’t know where anything was until you dug around, asked people and figured everything out. We really wanted a place to provide all the resources and if you could have someone there to say “This is what you need”, “This is who to talk to”, because none of us had that when we were starting our companies.
S: Over the past 7 years, has the entrepreneurship community at UCLA evolved?
D: The entrepreneurship community has changed immensely since 2009. When I first came to UCLA, there were hardly any programs, most of them very graduate and technology focused. It was mainly grad students producing biotechnology and licencing it out to firms. By the time I left, a lot had changed. You had Bruin Entrepreneurs, Sigma Eta Pi, Bruincubate, and now the Entrepreneurship minor. This all came about only in the last 2–3 years. Now it’s exploded, and people want to come to UCLA to hire students and fund students’ companies.
S: Did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur when you came into UCLA?
D: When I was in high school, I knew there was more to life than to have a good job, make a lot of money, have a family, retire happy and complain that my kids don’t visit me. I had somewhat of an idea that I wanted to do something that mattered. When I came to UCLA, I wanted to be an investment banker. When I went to career fairs, I found out that a lot of these people didn’t really like their jobs. The culture was really aggressive and uncollaborative. I then decided to go into accounting since my mom was a Professor of Accounting and she thought it was a good thing to do. When I ended up working at Deloitte as an accounting intern, I interviewed with a lot of consulting professionals and realized they didn’t like their jobs either. One thing about entrepreneurs that’s been pretty consistent throughout my experience is that even though they work late hours and the compensation is crappy, they all like their jobs. I think that’s really important.
S: Was Cliqqit the first start up you had?
D: The first startup I had was Orgami, which I started during my senior year here. This was essentially to replace Orgsync which is the software UCLA used to manage its on-campus organizations.
S: Did this lead you into entrepreneurship or did you want to be an entrepreneur prior to this?
D: At the time, I really wanted to get into startups and I was really interested in tech. When I started I wanted to make a valuable impact on the world but I didn’t know what. Orgami was basically the first idea that we had, that I thought we could make some money with, but it ended up not working out. After six months, we found a lot of problems with it and ended up changing into Cliqqit.
S: What is entrepreneurship to you?
D: At the end of the day, what entrepreneurship is about is using your creativity and natural ability to make the world a better place. I believe that’s the natural state of man.
Too many people are in an office cubicle, having to do the same thing ten thousand times a year, asking “What do I do with my life?”. People want to do something more than that even if it’s harder for them, even if it means they have to work late hours and not earn enough money. But the fact is they’re doing something they care about and they’re making somebody else’s life better through it.
An entrepreneur is someone who is willing to sacrifice for the betterment of mankind and specifically in a sense that’s financially sustainable.
S: What is the difference between running a tech startup and a restaurant startup?
D: Starting a restaurant has humbled me a lot. I have a lot of respect for restaurant owners and operators because it’s very capital and labor intensive. It requires a lot of management ability, being on the ground, being closer to customers. One thing that’s interesting about tech is that you’re not always close to your customers. In a restaurant, customers can complain to you right to your face. That’s an interesting part about being in restaurant entrepreneurship that you wouldn’t get in other kinds of entrepreneurialism. You have to manage a lot of money and a lot of people. The cool thing about tech is that you get to make a larger impact for a lower cost, and get to make a lot of mistakes at a lower cost. With restaurants, it’s different. You need to do a lot of research up front to see how things are going to go.
G: What was your biggest regret at UCLA?
D: I don’t really regret anything. But if you asked “What would you tell yourself as a freshman?” my answer to that would be (1) try new things, and (2) don’t be afraid to quit.
S: What’s your vision for entrepreneurship at UCLA?
D: Looking at at entrepreneurship community at Stanford, where it’s really funded, there’s a lot of resources….
S: Even Luke said Stanford last week, this is interesting.
D: I actually talked to one of the previous chancellors of UCLA and he said we didn’t have the funding these private schools have. We have talent to rival them and we have enough people who want to get involved, so given resources and guidance there’s no reason that UCLA can’t be a center for entrepreneurship in the nation.
To connect with David, find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mangold-507b3b13
