Lester Center for Entrepreneurship

The offices are located in the Faculty Building of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

[1] The Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program was founded in 1991 through a gift from the late W. Howard Lester, chairman of Williams-Sonoma, Inc.[2] The Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program sponsors three speaker series, two of which are open to members of the community as well as students, faculty and staff:[3] John Hanke, MBA '96 – Hanke founded Keyhole, Inc., which eventually became Google Earth.

[4] Peter Vlastelica and Jack Kloster, both MBA '06- Vlastelica and Kloster founded Yardbarker, which aims to be the main social website for sports fans, players and others.

[4] Danae Ringelmann and Eric Schell, both MBA '08- The two, along with Slava Rubin, founded Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform for all creative, cause, and entrepreneurial projects.

[4] The company went public on the NASDAQ (TUBE)[7] in 2014 and was acquired by Adobe in 2017 for $540 million.