May 20, 2013: Last week during Austin’s RISE week of entrepreneurial activities I had the privilege of participating in an “office hours” event hosted by Capital Factory. As you can see in the photo above this had a pretty sizable turnout, with a matching of some of the city’s technology leaders, both past and present, with what appeared to be a relatively fresh crop of startups.
May 15, 2013: This morning I had the pleasure of speaking at the UT Club to the Metropolitan Breakfast Club, a diverse weekly networking group with maybe 80+ people on hand on this particular day. Everyone in attendance introduced herself or himself with a very brief elevator pitch, and they were all crisp and upbeat. The members had even memorized some of their colleagues’ pitches and occasionally provided the punch lines in unison. I was impressed. There were several tech entrepreneurs in the crowd, but only one from the usual tech startup regulars here in Austin.
Once again the topic of the day arises from student questions in the Longhorn Startup Lab. Those of us who have accelerated down the startup runway many times have our own experiences and a cadre of trusted advisors to guide us in setting up the important details of a new enterprise. I’m reminded daily that this is not something taught in business and engineering curricula and that it’s generally brand new for even the brightest young scholars. I’m even seeing newbie angel investors in need of similar training.
Yesterday TechStars NYC announced its 2013 class, selected from 1700 applicants from 420 cities. That’s an impressive pipeline from which to recruit top-notch teams. There are no ideas in that group of eleven that I personally have not already seen multiple times in the past couple of years, at least from what I can tell with the limited information available. One is an app for pet lovers, and there were at least 50 of those that applied in 2011 to present at the SXSW Accelerator in 2012 and ap
March 27, 2013: Hall Martin’s Open Angel Network is a 501c3 that meets monthly for the purpose of educating potential angel investors. The format is two presentations, networking, and never any pitches. The attendees include some with plentiful experience as angels and some with none. It’s a good way for anyone considering angel investing to learn enough to be dangerous. (For those of you in Atlanta, it’s pretty similar to Charlie Paparelli’s Angel Lounge.)
February 24, 2013: I’m filing this report from the 2013 Daytona 500, or rather from my couch. This is one of the many sporting events where the living room experience for the casual fan can now be better than being there in person. I’ve done both in the case of the Daytona 500 and have some basis for comparison. The big news this year is Danica Patrick’s pole position. That was somewhat dampened by the spectator injuries at Saturday’s Nationwide race, but thankfully all those folks are apparently on the mend. Getting knocked out of your chair by a few hundred pound missile consisting
January 22, 2013.
January 10, 2013. Bob Metcalfe shared yesterday a syllabus from a Harvard undergraduate course called “Introduction to Innovation and Entrepreneurship” – similar to Longhorn Startup Lab at UT Austin, but with the project version of the course aimed either at starting a real company or preparing to enter a significant business plan competition. One requirement of the students stood out: “In addition to the course’s faculty, students MUST engage a ‘content expert’ to help focus the projects and to add real world context and expertise.
My daughter Audrey Dyer retweeted the accompanying photo from @buzzfeed, and how true it is! Most everyone spends some time in reflection around the Holidays and resolves to do things differently in the coming year.
As you who follow my Tweets know, I've spent a few days in Atlanta surrounding the semi-annual Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC) board meeting. GTRC administers all the contracts and licensing with respect to research conducted by both resident faculty and by the mighty Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) with its 1000+ full-time researchers. There is considerable cooperation among the teaching faculty and the researchers, and with other universities, on many projects.
