Last Monday I did a write-up about my friend Chad's experiences as an investment banker in Los Angeles and why he chose the path of entrepreneurship instead of the more frequently traveled roads to Private Equity or, to a lesser extent, Hedge Funds. You can find that interview here.

This week we'll be focusing more on Chad's product - the PillowPocket - and what he has learned so far during his stint as his own boss. And for all you naysayers, since last Monday, I myself have received a PillowPocket and while the idea is simple, the product has already been useful to me in several meaningful ways.

Let's get right to it!

If you aren't someone who keeps track of all the National and International Days that are commemorated in the US and around the World, you'd probably be aware of just a few major ones such as the World Science day, World Immunization day, Labor Day and Day of Peace.

If you did diligently follow them, you'd have quite a few laughs over the Global Handwashing Day (No, I am not making this up), Talk Like a Pirate Day (Aren’t we all dying to say 'Ahoy, Cap’n!'), Boss’ day (You bet! They don’t like to be left alone) and the best one of all - the International Day Day!

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of getting to know Carlos Solorio, a former investment banker who came out of the Lehman Brothers meltdown in 2008 unscathed, was an Analyst in the Latin American coverage group at Barclay's, and is now an entrepreneur who co-founded the custom business attire company Arden Reed.

Check out my interview with Carlos to learn more about his experiences at Lehman and Barclay's and why he decided to pursue entrepreneurship instead of the more "typical" post-IBD paths that all you monkeys seem to be so obsessed with.

My little precious startup idea is hungry and I want to feed it in the hopes that in a gazillion months it will pay for itself and for my therapy sessions and all the anxiety medicine I am now dependent on, so naturally, I think: Hey, VCs are going to eat this up, baby. Oh yeah show me the money.

I put my best shoes on, armed with my solid business plan I knock on the door, an analyst asks me a few questions, an associate giggles, and a partner hands me my butt and shows me the door. Well that was fast, what happened? They didn’t even get to the business plan part! How outrageous and WTF!

The giggling probably started when big bird was brought to the table. The Money. How much money do you need? A 100k? 200? A million?

Moderator Note (Andy): Patrick is a member of the YEC, an invite-only nonprofit membership organization that provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth. Each month they send out entrepreneurial-related questions to its members for publication on their site and are also made available to the media. Here is Part 2 of Patrick's answers (see part 1 here):

What's one piece of advice you have for a business owner who wants to sell an existing website?

Moderator Note (Andy): Patrick is a member of the YEC, an invite-only nonprofit membership organization that provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth. Each month they send out entrepreneurial-related questions to its members for publication on their site and are also made available to the media. Here are Patrick's recent answers:

What motivates you day-to-day as an entrepreneur?
Waking up every day knowing that we have built something that is reaching millions of people motivates me. Knowing that we have an incredible opportunity to both educate and entertain students looking to learn more about a confusing and opaque industry also gets me excited to wake up for work every day.

Overall, our mission of becoming the most useful and entertaining finance community motivates me. I know when I was on Wall Street and even as an undergraduate, I could have used the support network that Wall Street Oasis now provides for thousands of active members each year. Recruiting is especially tough nowadays with a weak economy...if we can help motivated students gain an edge while trying to make critical career decisions, then we've accomplished our mission.

What is the best way to analyse the most viable business idea before moving forward?

Did any of you guys get a hug from these hotties a few weeks ago? Former model and Goldman Sachs employee (I'm thinking sales) Olga Vidisheva, 27, has launched Shoptiques.com after her stint at Harvard Business School. The site is a worldwide boutique aggregator, and it's a pretty cool idea. You can shop the boutiques in any number of cities without leaving your couch. Great for those of you who are looking for one-of-a-kind stuff. Can you believe she worked at Goldman? More to the point, can you believe she didn't come back for an associate stint?

How does a poor kid from Brooklyn end up buying Yankee Stadium? "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat." would be the answer you'd get from Brandon Steiner, whose new book You Gotta Have Balls: How a Kid from Brooklyn Started From Scratch, Bought Yankee Stadium, and Created a Sports Empire is released today. It's a great story of the American dream at a time when many folks believe the American dream is dead. Steiner started his sports marketing company with $8,000 he managed to scrape together, and he took the company to over $5 million in sales in just six years. From there it grew until he was selling the actual dirt from Yankee Stadium for over $20 million. His advice? Work longer and harder than anyone else, and master your soft skills:

This is for the entrepreneurs among us. It was announced almost a year ago that Steve Blank would be teaching his famous Stanford Lean Launchpad course online for free, but then the whole thing went radio silent. I just got an email this morning from Udacity that the course is starting on September 14 and enrollment is open now at the following link:

http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/ep245/Cours...

This is an opportunity to learn from one of the masters of Silicon Valley. Chuck Eesley (also of Stanford) did something similar a few months ago where he taught a start-up class for free online, and it has since produced three companies that are raising VC rounds as we speak. I have to believe that Steve Blank is going to produce similar results.

Typically, the longer a company has been in operations, the more rigid it becomes in its corporate structure. In other words, the company culture is more established and there is less room for innovation or creativity. This makes sense since if companies have done things in a certain way and it has worked out for them, there is less incentive for change. As a result, executives at these established companies do not need to get creative but rather devote most of their time to maintaining and protecting the company’s current form of business.

However, according to Professor James Price at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, thinking like an entrepreneur and applying the wisdom used by entrepreneurs to large organizations can actually help the organization's business run more smoothly and effectively. Below are 7 principles used by entrepreneurs in which large company execs should incorporate into their own line of work:

How do we fix unemployment? Adjusting taxes, interest rates, student loans? Who really knows, but entrepreneurship can be one of the answer to our economic woes, and it starts in the classroom. In this article by Times Business explains why entrepreneurship is so important, especially in this ailing economy:

Ah venture capital – the end all be all for some, a ticket to celebrity for others, and a chance to “invest in the future.” Recent fund returns aside, VC seems like the place to be – you enjoy a better work/life balance than banking, you get to work with exciting technology (often shiny new toys as well if your fund has a hardware focus), and there’s always that 1 in 1000 chance that you could source the next Facebook!

With all these perks, why isn’t everyone clamoring to jump to venture capital as opposed to the hedge fund or buyout shop route? For all its positives, venture capital may not be all that it’s cracked up to be.

By this point, we've all read some, ahem, *interesting*, things about our friend Peter Thiel. I think if you look up the words "pompous" and "eccentric" in the dictionary, the definitions absolutely must say see Peter Thiel.

This morning I came across an article in BusinessInsider that discusses something slightly interesting: Thiel's class at Stanford - CS183: Startup. Usually I don't pay these things much mind, but the article opened my eyes to the fact that Peter used chess comparisons to illustrate a lot of points in his class. As a chess player, I found this to be slightly interesting, so proceeding with cautious optimism, I read the article. This guy is nuts.

Aside from the shitty hours in some division, careers in IB seem to provide the perfect conditions for enterprise to flourish. You're wealthier than most other people your age, you’re young so you’re still a bit of a dreamer and, if you’ve made it in, chances are you’re pretty fuckin’ smart too.

While I do have an appetite for finance and IB seems well suited to my interests and aspirations, the idea of owning my own business has always attracted me.

Is it possible to successfully manage both? Do you know many people in IB who have side projects that they set time and money aside for?

For a little over a decade now, I've been crusading against the Accredited Investor Rule. It's not that it was a bad rule when it was instituted in 1934, and I'm sure it protected countless thousands of folks from being taken advantage of by hucksters over the years. But there's just no place for it in the Internet age. Today it serves only to isolate all but the very wealthy from private stock offerings - one of the most potentially lucrative sectors of the market.

The JOBS Bill, which passed the House by a landslide 407-18 vote, and the Democratizing Access to Capital Act (its sister legislation currently in the Senate) are set to change all of that by opening the private market (specifically start-ups) to crowdfunding.

Unfortunately, though the bill flew through the House, the Senate is dragging their feet a bit. Which is really ironic when you consider that each of them funds their reelection campaigns through crowdfunding and doesn't lose a moment's sleep over it. Be that as it may, if the bill eventually passes in its unadulterated form, here's what it will mean for investors, start-ups, and the economy on the whole: