The Small Business Association of Michigan wants Michigan to be more of a “gardener” than a “hunter” in economic development, and plans a campaign to alter the state’s strategy and a project to monitor legislators’ stances on small business. SBAM announced the plan, “Propelling a New Economic Direction for Michigan,” at its annual meeting late last month. It hopes to push legislators to draft specific “economic gardening” tools for second-stage companies.
The economic gardening programs will spearhead a culture change in the state to focus on innovative smaller companies, asserts SBAM.
Crain’s Detroit Business has announced Salute to Entrepreneurship initiative. Crain’s will publish these awards in its November 15 issue. These awards will recognize problem-solving innovation and business acumen among entrepreneurs and second-stage companies.
Entrepreneurs make up a growing portion of Michigan’s employment base and are of increasing interest to the local business community. Crain’s Detroit Business says that its goal is to highlight the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders who are helping to reinvent Southeast Michigan.
For more information on nomination and eligibility, please visit http://www.crainsdetroit.com/nominate link. The last date for nomination is July 26th. If you know any entrepreneur that you know deserves the encouragement, please contact Crain’s.
Cloud based applications and investments in cloud infrastructure are the latest attractions for Venture Capitalists. In a recent panel discussion on this subject, Lawrence Aragon (or PeHub) moderated a group of eminent VCs. This program is part of GigaOm’s Structure series.
If you want the inside scoop on what VCs are looking for in cloud deals today, check out the video below for this 40-minute discussion panel Aragon moderated with Satish Dharmaraj, a partner at Redpoint Ventures; Promod Haque, managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners; Ping Li, a partner with Accel Partners; Michael Skok, a general partner with North Bridge Venture Partners; and Glenn Solomon, a partner with GGV Capital. As a group, the firms that these VCs represent have raised nearly $4 billion worth of fresh capital over the past three years.
Entrepreneurs in Southeast Michigan has good news: Crain’s Detroit Business reports that NextWave, the new business accelerator based in Troy will open its doors in July 2010. NextWave will be headed by principal founder Amjad Hussain, who was the CIO of Troy based Handleman Company. Dick Blouse, former CEO of Detroit Regional Chamber will be the Chairman of NextWave.
NextWave is a business and technology accelerator. It will help new businesses to go from “idea to exit”.
NextWave is expected to have 50,00 square feet of built up space in the Dupont Automative building on Stepehenson Highway in Troy, which is now owned by Troy Venture Capital firm Indus Capital, Inc.
NextWave will support early stage as well as second stage companies in the building. It is expected that over 40 companies could be accommodated in the available space. The business areas supported would include Clean Energy, Media & Entertainment, Nanotech and Information Technology domains such as SaaS (Software as a Service), supply chain solutions and business intelligence.
Aria Equities LLC (www.ariaequities.com), an early-stage venture development firm owned and managed by Jeff Sloan (of StartupNation.com) will be located in the NextWave facility.
Tony Wright is a founder and front-end generalist at RescueTime, a venture-backed startup in Seattle. He blogs about conversion-centric design, SEO, PR, fundraising, viral marketing, and occasional other geeky topics. He has written a post about guiding principles for evaluating startups. While the suggestions fit technology startups perfectly, the same can be used for non-technology startups too with minor variations.
Here are the eight questions that you should ask to evaluate a startup, whether you are an entrepreneur or an investor.
How deeply do you think the startup will effect people’s lives?
Are the hypotheses that form the basis of the startup tractable?
How does the cost-of-acquisition, cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) and revenue-per-customer stack up?
How MANY lives could you imagine touching in 5 years?
Is it an invention or re-invention?
Is it worth talking about?
Are you passionate about the end-game?
Is the market moving in the right direction?
I took a stab at comparing my venture (at http://www.LeadPro247.com) with these guidelines and happy with the outcome! How do you rate your firm? Take a look at the guiding principles for evaluating startups and find out.
Here is one of the videos from Startup Lessons Learned conference. This keynote presentation was delivered by Steve Blank.
You may also checkout other case studies and presentations from other entrepreneurs while on this site. Better bookmark it or add to your Evernote notes. Why reinvent the wheel when we can learn from others?
Update: It seems that there is an issue with this video. Please take a look at the other lessons learned videos on the site.
Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, asserts that the saying “Better Product Does Not Always Win” is not always right. He reels out statistics from his own business and hardcore customer base and revenue growth. 20% of EverNote’s free subscribers convert to premium (paid) model in about 2 years. Here is his keynote presentation in TheFunded Founder Institute showcase event.
While I am a strong proponent of ‘product centric’ approach for startups and entrepreneurs, other related stuff (some may call it hype) cannot be avoided if you want to sell your company to the investors and product / service to the consumers.
On another note, Phil mentions the “dense statistics” in his presentation. I am not sure if a few critical data about a business is too much.
Om Malik from GigaOm Network interviewed Chris Dixon, founder partner of Founder Collective, New York and talks about Venture Capitalists’ role in Startups, the Lean Startup model and flipping by entrepreneurs. As usual Chris comes up clean with his unique thoughts on why VC model is broken. Chris founded and sold SiteAdvisor to McAfee and current serves as CEO of Hunch.
If we want to encourage entrepreneurship and retain educated youth in our region, it is essential to have a vibrant, collaborative environment and community for technology startups. Conferences and meetup events help bring like minded entrepreneurs and investors together and spread knowledge.
For the past two years, Jeff Slobotski has organized Big Omaha technology and startup conference in Omaha. In the recent concluded two weeks back, there were over 500 participants from all over the country. Also, he was able to bring in top professionals such as Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), Jason Fried (37 Signals), Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library), Dennis Crowley (FourSquare) and others to these events. These successful entrepreneurs motivated hundreds of budding entrepreneurs to come to the conference, learn and apply what they practice.
Take a listen to this interview with Jeff Slobotski by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.
If such a great event can be organized and run successfully, Detroit region can do much better. The region has infrastructure, resources and potential to turn into a great new economy.
Welcome to MIVentureNews.com. As the name suggests, the resources will be focused on Michigan and Midwest region. The following areas / topics will be covered in Michigan Venture News:
Startups
Angel financing
Venture capital financing
Lean startups vs Fat startups
Business incubators
Fund raising
Startup conferences and events
Entrepreneurship
Technology and knowledge economy
Emerging Industries
Mentorship
Online and offline resources
Michigan startup scenario
Job growth through entrepreneurship
Technology tools
News, views, interviews, and discussions will be part of the contents. Events and conferences related to the startup scenario will also be covered.
TieCon Midwest Detroit starts with Keynote by David O. Egner , Executive Director, New Economy Initiative of Michigan at 10 AM. #TiECon01:50:04 PM October 29, 2010from TweetDeck
Here are the eight questions that you should ask to evaluate a startup, whether you are an entrepreneur or an investor.
