tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69874358875209184752024-03-14T00:15:17.275-07:00GROWCaliforniaThe California Business Ascent initiative provides communities with a cost-effective, sustainable, turn-key solution to drive innovation-based entrepreneurship as an important economic development strategy.Axonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17957388784910092120noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-68395500560833670452010-02-09T15:28:00.001-08:002010-02-09T15:28:51.214-08:00GROWCalifornia: A Jobs Initiative That Will Work!<span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;color:#ffffff;" ><p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">Over the past 18 months we've heard numerous theories about how to fix the economy and create jobs:<span> </span>launch a public works infrastructure initiative, heal the investment banking and commercial banking world, bail out the American auto industry, give citizens small tax refunds so they'll spend a few hundred dollars more on consumer goods.<span> </span>Thus far, these options haven't generated much traction.</p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">Creating jobs is not complicated.<span> </span>Numerous studies over the past two decades have told us who creates the meaningful jobs in this country.<span> </span>It isn't the government, or big, multi-national corporations.<span> </span>It isn't the hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop shops that exist in every community across the country.<span> </span>Rather, it's a small number (3-4%) of entrepreneurial growth companies who create 70-100% of all net new jobs in the United States.<span> </span>Some are start-ups, others emerging growth companies, and still others existing market leaders.<span> </span>What is unique about entrepreneurial growth companies is their ability to innovate and to produce scalable products.<span> </span>Because they can tap large national or global markets, they bring new dollars into their community and state; increasing the overall economic pie rather than just redistributing it. <span> </span><span> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">At Golden Capital Network (GCN), we plan to fill a leadership void and launch a jobs initiative called GROWCalifornia.<span> </span>We are implementing it on a region-by-region basis throughout California as we confirm local and regional partners who share our vision that entrepreneurial growth companies will create jobs. The objective of GROWCalifornia is to find the growth companies, recognize their important economic contributions, and provide them with access to the resources -- whether financial capital, industry expertise, customers and strategic partners, talent, or government programs -- they need to help them grow.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">The GROWCalifornia process we have created enables us to quickly identify the companies in any community, and to capture important economic and job creation data from those companies. <span> </span>In January, a soft launch of GROWCalifornia tested 3 key hypotheses.<span> </span>First, could our system identify the growth companies.<span> </span>Second, would they provide us with jobs information and other relevant economic data.<span> </span>And, finally, would they tell us whether they have resource needs and would they like help in accessing the resources.<span> </span>The result was a success.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">Over 60 companies signed up to participate in GROWCalifornia and provided us with information about their companies and their job projections and requirements. <span> </span>We learned about intriguing, and under-recognized, growth companies such as <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.5sun.com&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Fifth Sun</a>, <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.auctiva.com%2F&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Auctiva</a>, <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mooneyfarms.com&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Mooney Farms</a> , <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.propacificfresh.com%2F&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">ProPacificFresh </a>and <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kleankanteen.com&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Klean Kanteen</a>.<span> </span>Companies that are each stamping an indelible economic signature on their community.</p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">A majority of the companies who participated in the soft launch indicated they would be hiring new employees in the next quarter, and expected revenues to increase.<span> </span>We also learned that every company had at least one resource need and would welcome a warm referral by GCN to a service provider or capital source who could help them address that need.<span> </span>In our initial sample, over 150 referral requests were made by the companies.<span> </span>We are now in the process of proactively referring these companies to the initial members and sponsors of GROWCalifornia.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">GCN is now ready to publicly launch GROWCalifornia to create jobs and wealth in the state by supporting the types of companies that have always been the economic "difference makers" - and the core of our mission.<span> </span>We will continue to do events, as bringing people together in a physical setting to network is always an important piece of the equation.<span> </span>But with GROWCalifornia we will assist growth companies, capital sources, service providers, and the public sector every single day of the year.<span> </span>A new model we are happy to bring forward.</p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">I urge you to join GROWCalifornia and help lead the state out of our economic funk and create sustainable, meaningful jobs.<span> </span>The process is simple, and the value proposition is clear for each GROWCalifornia participant.</p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">If you represent a growth company - small or large -- simply fill out our online survey twice a year.<span> </span>For your participation, we'll recognize your company as an elite contributor to the local and state economies, and help you get access to any key type of resource you are seeking.<span> </span>The data is kept strictly confidential and only presented in aggregate form.<span> <a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.goldencapital.net%2Fgo%2Fgrowth_company&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Click here to participate.</a> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">If you represent a capital resource, service provider or emerging growth company seeking to expand your visibility to other growth companies, contact me about being a Referral Network Member or GROWCalifornia sponsor.<span> </span>Every two weeks we'll pass on to you growth company referrals who are seeking services or capital in your area of expertise or particular sector of interest.<span> </span>If you become a sponsor, we'll provide heightened visibility for you to a target audience.<span> </span>We are limiting the number of participants per area of expertise to maximize the impact for participants.</p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">If you represent a job creation, workforce investment, or commerce-related organization or government agency, you should consider being a local, regional or statewide partner of GROWCalifornia.<span> </span>If your mission is to find jobs and put people to work, we have a turnkey solution for you.</p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt;">It is time for us to move beyond the rhetoric of 2009 and into action in 2010.<span> </span>I look forward to working with you to create jobs.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: left; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; color: black;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Century Gothic,ITC Avant Garde,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">Call 530-893-8828 for more information or e-mail us at growcal@goldencapital.net</span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Century Gothic,ITC Avant Garde,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Century Gothic,ITC Avant Garde,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.goldencapital.net%2Fgo%2Fgrowth_company&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Should your growth company be a part of GROWCalifornia? Click here</a></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Century Gothic,ITC Avant Garde,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Century Gothic,ITC Avant Garde,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;" track="on" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=wurhvidab.0.0.dgcqhubab.0&ts=S0450&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.goldencapital.net%2Fgo%2Fbutte50companies&id=preview" linktype="link" target="_blank">Click here to see a list of Butte County companies involved</a></span></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: Century Gothic,ITC Avant Garde,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: black; text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 11pt; line-height: normal;"><br /></p> <br /> <div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> <img name="ACCOUNT.IMAGE.299" alt="logo" src="http://origin.ih.constantcontact.com/fs003/1101264324803/img/299.png" align="" border="0" height="164" width="184" /></span></div></div></span>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-9715086888427048792009-12-01T14:38:00.000-08:002009-12-01T16:01:02.317-08:00<span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Invention is science. Innovation is economics. Entrepreneurship translates one into the other."</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />Golden Capital Network is thankful for the support during the past 10 years from the early stage angel and venture capital investment communities, and from the startup entrepreneurs we have had the pleasure to serve. As we enter 2010, we are pleased to present a new initiative that will elevate our ability to provide value and track metrics from innovation companies well beyond the startup phase.<br /><br />GROWCalifornia is a project by Golden Capital Network to provide solutions for innovative growth businesses that drive the economy, service providers that serve them, and the public sector that supports them.<br /><br />The purpose of GROWCalifornia is to identify, survey, report and make service referrals to 1000 high-performing, locally-based innovation companies in the state.<br /><br />GROWCalifornia provides a unique value proposition by reaching out to locally-based high-growth companies and collecting primary data about their performance, their innovations, their job creation, their business needs, and their opinions on matters of business climate, talent and capital.<br /><br />GROWCalifornia surveys and reports on businesses from various industry sectors and growth stages that meet unique criteria for potential expansion and positive economic impact. These data reports are valuable economic planning and rapid response tools for economic development, workforce training, elected officials and the business community at large.<br /><br />The results of the reports are released at networking and press conference events to discuss the findings, offer innovation-focused business content, and to benefit companies, service providers and officials through visibility and networking.<br /><br />Individual growth company referrals identified through the survey process go directly to the GROWCalifornia partner network, whose members pay an annual membership fee for the opportunity to offer operational value to the growth companies.<br /><br />The GROWCalifornia partner network delivers critical support to growth companies. Members of the network represent multiple disciplines and are screened for quality and integrity. Direct referrals are made via email with links to online profiles of the companies and the providers.<br /><br />The GROWCalifornia index divides the state into 20 different regions and tracks 1000 companies that represent high likelihood to generate new products, new revenue and new high wage job opportunities. Growth business criteria include:<br />• Growth focused management<br />• Locally owned or operated headquarters or base of operations<br />• Current or potential national and global markets<br />• Scaleable products or services<br />• Significant process or product innovations<br /><br />GROWCalifornia is the first project of its kind to recognize, quantify, report and support innovation, entrepreneurship, risk capital and regional affinity as key drivers for jobs and regional economic growth.<br /><br />If you are a growth company, a service provider or a workforce/economic development official interested in joining GROWCalifornia, find out more by calling 530-893-8828.</span></span>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-55773064693465624272009-08-03T12:42:00.000-07:002009-08-03T14:49:05.517-07:00Venture Island - North State: The Trading Post<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Venture Island - North State entrepreneur competition launched its second annual competition with a special event called "<a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/cal/BigCalendar?action=2&view=eventview&eventid=376">The Whole Pina Colada</a>" on June 23. The event showcased several successful innovative product companies in the North State. The Venture Island competition process includes a series of four challenges. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The first challenge, "<a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/cal/BigCalendar?action=2&view=eventview&eventid=374">The Trading Post</a>," took place July 23 at the N.T. Enloe Conference Center. In this challenge each entrepreneur was given two minutes to pitch his or her company to a panel of esteemed judges from the investor and professional business communities. At the conclusion of the event, companies were stack ranked based on their presentations and the top companies earned the night's prize and bonus points for the next round.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AxDlu76nt-E&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AxDlu76nt-E&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The top ranked pitch from "the Trading Post" was <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=499">Novasyte</a> followed by, <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=392">Save Our Skins</a>, <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=498">Telecom Lifters</a>, Cable Master, and <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=524">MyIndependentContractor.com</a>. Other contestants included <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=525">BAQ Enterprises</a>, <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=500">Bumblebee Transport</a>, Clean Traks, HFB Enterprises, <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=483">MendaComp</a>, Organic Chico Wash, SafeHealthInsurance.com, Sauer Energy, <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=527">You Gaming</a>, and <a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/Company/CompanyProfile/Company?action=2&view=view_company&company_id=17">Wiredcat</a>. All contestants will go on the the next challenge, "<a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/portal/chico/cal/BigCalendar?action=2&view=eventview&eventid=375">The Snake Pit</a>," taking place September 10 also at the N.T. Enloe Conference Center.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The “Snake Pit” program challenges contestants to justify their business opportunity, their solution, and their execution strategy. This will be a five-minute Powerpoint presentation detailing the problem to be solved, their proposed solution, market size and segmentation, customer acquisition, revenue model, and competitive advantage and defensibility. The judges will ask questions and give feedback on each presentation and, along with the audience, narrow the group of contestants down to 8 companies who move on to “<a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/go/makeorbreak">Make or Break Beach</a>”, which will focus on execution plan, financial projections, capitalization requirements, and exit strategy.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The final challenge, “<a href="http://www.ventureisland-northstate.com/go/kahuna">Climbing Kahuna Mountain</a>”, will pit the top three finalists presenting to an elite panel of investors at <a href="http://cepco.com/">CEPCO</a>’s annual awards banquet, October 29th at CSU-Chico’s Bell Memorial Union auditorium.</span></span><br /></div></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-57295303272819538552009-07-07T16:04:00.000-07:002009-07-07T16:13:48.553-07:00Pandora Won<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ShgHEfEojxI/AAAAAAAAAC0/eFNt_Wm7JAk/s400/Pandora+One.png" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 113px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339025131889528594" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Looks like there's finally an agreement in place to permit internet radio stations to operate profitably. The New York Times reported this morning that SoundExchange has agreed to a royalty plan. Under the new arrangement, webcasters with revenues in excess of $1.25 million will pay a per-song fee ranging over time from .08 to .14, or 25% of revenue, whichever is greater.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Our old friend Tim Westergren said "This is definitely the agreement we've been waiting for." </span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-13733427372413721572009-07-02T13:39:00.000-07:002009-07-02T14:59:10.464-07:00Venture Island Starts With A Splash At the Whole Pina Colada<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_COdMWYmPIg8/Sk0iTRTRxoI/AAAAAAAAADA/q0MX431m3vI/s1600-h/Pina+Colada.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 87px; height: 116px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_COdMWYmPIg8/Sk0iTRTRxoI/AAAAAAAAADA/q0MX431m3vI/s320/Pina+Colada.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353973246470506114" border="0" /></a><br />To kick off the <a href="http://ventureisland-northstate.com/">Venture Island Northstate</a> competition series this year, we hosted the Whole Pina Colada June 23 at Canyon Oaks Country Club in Chico, the home of many classic <a href="http://goldencapital.net/">Golden Capital Network</a> events over the years, (and also the site of a great many hacks on the golf course by GCN staffers).<br /><br /><br />It’s a pastoral canyon setting and perfect for this type of loose business networking affair. Unfortunately, the Canyon Oaks bar was out of <a href="http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink4300.html">Pina Colada</a> mix, so Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was the able fallback for those wishing to imbibe. (In truth, Mai Tais are really a better rum drink anyway -- 2 parts light Bacardi, 1 part pineapple juice, 1 part orange juice, a dose of Cointreau, and a dark Myers floater on top…mmmm).<br /><br />The evening began with intros from Stewart Knox, a great resource and advocate for Northstate business through his work with the esteemed Charlie Brown at <a href="http://nortec.org/cb/nortec.html">NorTEC</a>, our regional workforce investment board. Stewart and Charlie are two of the most innovative workforce guys in the business, which is interesting since they represent the most rural, underpopulated regions in the state. They are the local overseers of the Northstate <a href="http://www.doleta.gov/wired/">WIRED</a> program, an innovation catalyst initiative brainstormed by former U.S. Dept. of Labor assistant secretary Emily DeRocco, and apparently gaining some traction in the Obama administration.<br /><br />Our own President and CEO Jon Gregory was next up with the outline of how the Venture Island competition series will work this year: Three events with business challenges and eliminations each time until we get the final three showdown.<br /><ul><li><a href="http://ventureisland-northstate.com/go/tradingpost">July 23, Trading Post</a><br />All the companies from the last event, plus any others that make the cut before then, engage in a 2-minute pitch off. Top contenders move on.<br /></li><li><a href="http://ventureisland-northstate.com/go/snakepit">Sept. 10, Snake Pit</a><br />Role-play event to really get into the heads and hearts of the entrepreneurs and test not only their business savvy, but also their leadership, communication and decision-making skills<br /></li><li><a href="http://ventureisland-northstate.com/go/makeorbreak">Oct. 29, Make or Break Beach</a><br />Five minute business presentation with q&a<br /></li><li><a href="http://ventureisland-northstate.com/go/kahuna">Oct. 29, Climbing Kahuna Mountain</a><br />Secret challenge for the final three. This is the final showdown, and will take place at the <a href="http://www.cepco.com/">Chico Economic Planning Corp.</a> business awards dinner. We'll crown 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and all three will ascend to the <a href="http://www.businessascent.com/portal/default/cal/BigCalendar?action=2&view=eventview&eventid=321">California Business Ascent State Championships</a> Nov. 17-18 in San Diego.<br /></li></ul>Sandy Baruah, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), was on next. Sandy is the Honorary Co-Chair of the California Business Ascent Challenge, as well as a Senior Fellow with the <a href="http://www.compete.org/">U.S. Council on Competitiveness</a>. His remarks centered on recent conversations with colleagues at the Council, and it comes as no surprise here, but according to some of the smartest economists in the world, innovation and entrepreneurship are the keys to U.S. economic recovery and competitiveness into the future. How can we invent and produce more of the products and services the world needs and wants here on our own soil?<br /><br />In this vein, Sandy indicated that during a conversation with high-level officials in the Obama White House there was continued support by the new administration for the WIRED innovation initiative started by Dept. of Labor about four years ago. The WIRED initiative funds Venture Island and other GCN business catalyst activities, along with many other important innovation efforts across the country, so this was good news for us, as our current grant expires the end of this year.<br /><br />The first panel of the night was the one I was most looking forward to, and I wasn’t disappointed. Titled simply, “Business Success,” this panel featured five successful North State entrepreneurs telling their stories and imparting some gems of wisdom they’ve picked up along the way. The panelists included Rob Innes, from <a href="http://www.seabreacher.com/">Innespace Productions</a>, Matthew de Bord from <a href="http://www.origami-foods.com/">Origami Foods</a>, Kendall Bennett from <a href="http://www.amainhobbies.com/">A Main Hobbies</a>, Todd Radke from <a href="http://www.atchardwaresystems.com/">ATC Hardware Systems</a> and Andy Keller from <a href="http://www.chicobag.com/">Chico Bag</a>.<br /><br />Perseverance and passion are the words that come to mind when I try to generalize the session. Specific advice I recall included:<br /><ul><li>Protect your intellectual property (get the international patents, too)<br /></li><li>Maintain customer satisfaction (you'll have a problem someday. You'll be judged by how you handle it)</li><li>Be ready for challenges with manufacturing quality control (in China, esp. You'll have to take many trips to stay on top of it)</li><li>Focus on the right market (identify what you really do best and avoid the temptation of the latest bright, shiny object)</li><li>Find the right talent (there's a lot available cheap right now. Be cautious with stock incentives)<br /></li></ul>Each of these founders have experienced success and failure along the way and clearly love what they do. All of the company products were very cool. It was an inspiration, even if it did get a little long-winded.<br /><br />The final session of the night had by far the most energy, and rightly so. Thirteen early stage entrepreneurs standing before the world (or at least the 200 people or so in attendance) making their two minute pitches for capital, talent, advisors or whatever it is they think they need to get to the next level. The top five are granted automatic pass through the first elimination round of Venture Island: The Trading Post.<br />The five winners were:<br /><ul><li>Jim Philips, Inovius Software, Redding</li><li>Jim Crummett, Telecom Lifters, Browns Valley</li><li>Joe Andrew, Novasyte, Chico</li><li>Julie Atlas, Bumblebee Transport, Paradise</li><li>Steve Heumann, Cable Master, Paradise</li></ul>There were a couple crash and burns, but almost all the competitors in the field showed well. You could tell which had availed themselves and actually listened to the coaching advice Jon gave them the week prior. Julie Atlas from Bumblebee Transport was the standout from the winners. Not so much because of her on-call large item moving service business model (which isn’t bad) but more because of her sheer energy, perseverance and authentic passion.<br /><br />My two favorite picks from the also-rans were CleanTraks and the grill lid lifter – probably because I could use both of them yesterday.<br /><br />CleanTraks has a product that incorporates a doggie bag holder into a retractable leash. It includes waterless hand soap, and no, this is not for leftovers from the restaurant, but for what the dogs themselves leave behind. The company is pretty much pre-product and pre-revenue, so they’ve got a long road to travel, but CleanTraks was a neat, innovative, well presented concept, and with something like 75 million dogs in the U.S. and a corresponding $500 million annual addressable market in dog accessories, they could have something big on their hands with the right marketing.<br /><br />Grill lid lifter was yet another case of an intrepid inventor solving one of American’s most vexing problems: how do you keep a beverage in one hand, a basting brush in another, and get the grill open when you need to sauce the ribs? The answer, of course, is the grill lid lifter: Step on a button with your foot and the grill lid lifts. This one’s just on paper, but Jason Darrow from Yreka has some nice business chops and I wouldn’t bet against him to make a compelling case for this baby as the competition unfolds.<br /><br />Our next Venture Island event is July 23 at the Enloe Conference Center, when all the companies from the Pina Colada, plus whoever else comes on board between now and then, face-off in the Trading Post.<br /><br />As always, more information about our Business Ascent challenge events, our investor judges and panelists, and the company profiles and video of the elevator pitches are available for viewing on our web portal, in this case at <a href="http://ventureisland-northstate.com">VentureIsland-Northstate.Com</a>Jim Mikleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13727830590156415157noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-69757902867317309762009-06-22T11:16:00.000-07:002009-06-22T13:23:57.646-07:00Liquidity Launches<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/-wit-/2934781498/"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 204px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/Sj_Oddcu5yI/AAAAAAAAADE/0nF4ulW_ctk/s400/2934781498_84c8c0f936_m.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Credit: Bill Tyne, used by Creative Commons license" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350221887856109346" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">June has seen the start of three new liquidity markets for private equity assets. The IPO market dried up very quickly after the turn-of-the-century dotcom market bust, and most exits since then have been in the form of mergers and acquisitions.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Indeed, it has been one of the biggest challenges for companies raising capital. An absence of a public market for shares has diminished the flow of private capital into technology startups. If the economy is to recover robustly, it is entrepreneurial companies, fueled by angel and venture investment, that will lead the way.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now some of the leaders in the private equity industry are becoming</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> entrepreneurial themselves, creating new models for trading equity in privately-held concerns, as a mechanism for investors to take smaller positions in companies, and for employee shareholders to cash out some of their holdings.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="http://www.insideventure.com/"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/Sj_cz844e8I/AAAAAAAAADM/rhNfN0hx9Bo/s320/insideventure.png" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 241px; height: 41px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350237667415587778" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Launched on June 1st, InsideVenture offers what it calls a "hybrid public-private offering", or HPPO (pronounced "hippo", lamentably). It works very much like a conventional IPO, with investment bank underwriters making a market, with the exception that InsideVenture member investors enjoy privileged early access to <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the shares before the public at large</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="http://www.xchanged.com/"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/Sj_gcctVh_I/AAAAAAAAADc/1i6NiF1nLtU/s320/xchange.png" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 238px; height: 66px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350241661686745074" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Our old friend Tim Draper also soft-launched XChange in early June</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, "The Private Stock Market. Done Right." This new firm offers four distinct service categories. XOM - Open Market is a trading platform for both new issues and aftermarket sales of privately-held shares. XPO - XChange Provate Offering is a private auction where valuations are defined and shares are allocated. XIQ - InQuest matches buyers with sellers, and XBP - Business Platform offers social networking capabilities for </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">collaboration.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="http://www.sharespost.com/"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/Sj_gCPUQb8I/AAAAAAAAADU/2yMrHPAUR9U/s320/sharespost.jpg" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 172px; height: 63px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350241211415293890" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Rounding out the new private equity exchanges this month is Sharespost, "We make private equity liquid". This is a fairly straighforward trading post for buying and selling shares in private companies. It seems particularly targeting towards employees of companies that received stock in their companies as incentive compensation (and a "loyalty leash"), but that have no likely pending liquidity events. It lets founders and their early hires cash out some of their equity, and can enable a company to extend its runway before being acquired.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">All three trading posts are a welcome addition to the venture ecosystem. Investors can diversify their holdings, shareholders can harvest appreciation, and companies can raise operating capital for growth. </span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-85237572444022684972009-05-23T07:22:00.000-07:002009-05-23T09:31:16.032-07:00The Sound of Web 3.0<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ShgHEfEojxI/AAAAAAAAAC0/eFNt_Wm7JAk/s1600-h/Pandora+One.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 113px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ShgHEfEojxI/AAAAAAAAAC0/eFNt_Wm7JAk/s400/Pandora+One.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339025131889528594" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We've long been fans of Tim Westergren and the Music Genome Project. In 2003, at our East Bay Venture Capital Conference, Savage Beast Technologies (as his company was called then) was honored as the best presenting company at the event.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The business model was very different then. The inference engine SBT built around their proprietary musical attribute database was furnished to music retailers, to recommend music to their customers based on their previous purchases. It turned out that music retailers were going to need a lot more help than that.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So Westergren and his team repurposed the code to create the streaming internet service Pandora, which has become one of the most popular "personalized radio" sites on the web.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Meanwhile, there has been a lot of discussion about the next era of internet evolution, the so-called "Web 3.0", and what it will look like. Observers professing expertise in the matter say it will be "semantic" and "distributed" and "mobile". Indeed, it may be inaccurate to call it "web" anything. The term of art in play lately is "stream". The web is a network of sites using a shared protocol, whereas the stream is a constantly updated delivery of rich media content to a variety of user devices, not just the personal computer.<br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One indication of this evolution is the .tel top level domain. It's a directory where users store and publish via granted privileges their personal, professional, and social contact information. When this service was still in beta, we were informed that it was "beyond the browser". It is accessible by mobile devices directly, and can be utilized by location-aware services.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We submit that Pandora is an early example of this new network paradigm. It is semantic, inferring preferences from user behavior. It's distributed, and can be used via internet appliances such as the Vudu set-top box. And it's mobile, with clients available for the iPhone and other hand-held devices (although, lamentably, not for the Palm Treo, alas).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One other evolutionary dimension in the social media world is the "freemium" business model, and Pandora has been a pioneer in this, as well. Pandora is free to use. You just go to their site, start a station by citing a few artists or records, and it plays music that you will probably like -- and may never have heard before -- based on your selections. Because Pandora pays royalties on these plays, it stops once per hour to confirm that you are still listening. And, as with most free content services, it comes with display advertising on the site.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">But you can upgrade to a premium subscription, which eliminates the ads and the interruptions. We've had a premium subscription for awhile now, and at $36/year (less than a dime a day), it's one of the best deals you'll find.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ShgP5RS4KkI/AAAAAAAAAC8/UhG3h1FBQnc/s1600-h/p1screenshot.png"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 375px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ShgP5RS4KkI/AAAAAAAAAC8/UhG3h1FBQnc/s400/p1screenshot.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5339034834817264194" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Well, earlier this week, Pandora took it up a notch. The premium subscription is now branded Pandora|One, and offers several improvements, the most immediately noticeable being a higher bitrate, up to 192Kbps, which is audibly superior if you have the broadband to support it. But the coolest thing is the new desktop client, that runs on the Adobe AIR stack, a development platform that boasts that it is also "beyond the browser". </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It's an elegant looking utility, with an instantly comprehensible interface, especially if you're already quite familiar with the browser-based version. Like a number of other Adobe AIR-based products (Seesmic Desktop, e.g.), it combines graphic, multimedia, text, and controls in a very compact package. From the default view, you can play or pause, adjust volume, "like" or "unlike" a selection, or call a menu for more options, including help, bookmarking, station info, and the ability to email a station to someone, or purchase the content from iTunes or Amazon. You can also set preferences, including display, notification, and quality parameters.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It is released as version 1.0.0, bucking the trend with many services soft-launching as "Preview" or "Beta" versions, with the implication of "unexpected results". So far, we've been using it for several hours, and it appears to be quite stable and ready-to-ship. Kudos to Westergren and the Pandora team for this excellent new product/service bundle. They've weathered some rough times with the copyright and royalty battles, and like many companies had to reduce their workforce to remain viable. With this latest development, they've taken a major step in the direction of a fee-for-service revenue stream (pun intended) that is affordable and sustainable. Seriously, a dime a day. You just can't beat that.</span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-80178518206004877232009-04-21T10:37:00.000-07:002009-04-21T12:13:28.345-07:00Cliffhanger<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It's interesting how two different analysts can interpret the same data and come to very different conclusions. For example, TechCrunch, with a flair for the dramatic, concludes that venture capital is "falling off a cliff". Author Sarah Lacy rejects the conventional wisdom that: <br /></span></span><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Recessions are the best times to start companies! We always invest in downturns! There are fewer competitors, and you get a better caliber of entrepreneur! Dollars can stretch further because salaries and rents are lower! We’re not looking to take a company public for years, so why would we run our companies based on the public markets and macro economy?”</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Her thesis is that because VC performance is evaluated on ten-year cycles, they never really corrected after the public market bust in 2001-2002. With declining returns, VCs are reluctant to write checks without a resilient growth category defying the current conditions. Certainly she is not alone in this opinion.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">On the other hand, however, the respected ReadWriteWeb's COO Bernard Lunn takes the diametrically opposite view and declares in his headline "VC Investment in Internet Deals Did NOT Fall Off A Cliff".</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">How can that be? Writes Lunn: </span></span></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What interests us at ReadWriteWeb is the small subset that is (a) seed- and early-stage, and (b) Internet-specific. So we drilled into those numbers. Q1 2009 saw 34 deals, with a total of $138 million invested. Is that good or bad? Well, 34 companies getting their first investment round is one helluva celebration for 34 entrepreneurs, their teams, and their investors.<br /><br />How about 15 deals worth $76 million in Q2 2003? That was actually the lowest in the 53 quarters tracked by MoneyTree.<br /><br />If you want to be positive, then, our position now is twice as good as it was in Q2 2003. So here is an alternative headline:<br /><br />"VC investment in Internet startups is up 100% from last downturn".</span></span></blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So this is sophistry, but there is a point to it. This most recent boom cycle, at its peak in 4Q07, recorded $454 million investment in early-stage internet deals, as contrast to $4.5 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Billion </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">in 1Q00. Less than 10% is in play this time around, so, as Lunn puts it, "we don't have as far to fall".<br /><br />No one is denying that the trend is down, but we're inclined to the RWW view that while total number of deals and amount invested have both declined from the peak, there's far more reason to be optimistic than otherwise.</span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-87190064191537485872009-04-10T09:25:00.000-07:002009-04-10T14:06:34.682-07:00Monterey Bay Innovation Showcase Webcast<div><embed flashvars="autoplay=false" width="400" height="320" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/1363932" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" align="left" hspace="10"></embed></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51);">We had a great time in Watsonville last week with the launch of our live video webcast series showcasing great companies from communities throughout California. As part of the California Business Ascent business competition, we will be presenting more than 300 of the greatest companies you never heard of.</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51);">Each company will have the opportunity to present to a panel of investors in a casual cafe setting, get feedback and advice, and perhaps have follow-on meetings. The companies then go on to a regional final to determine who will be among more than 50 companies competing at the statewide final in San Diego November 17-18.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 0, 51);">The next showcase webcast is April 23, from the Davis City Council Chambers, featuring some exciting companies from the Yolo County area. Follow the excitement!</span></span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-9977292062493295732009-04-10T06:30:00.000-07:002009-04-14T14:05:01.268-07:00California Business Ascent: The Solution to Create Sustainable Jobs<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">News about the economy seems gloomier. Unemployment rates rising, small businesses and multi-national corporations failing, foreclosure numbers increasing, the banking industry in turmoil, and the stock market unstable. What is needed is sustainable job creation to stem the tide of this difficult economic cycle. Yet many economic think-tank leaders and policymakers talk at the 50,000-foot level about innovation and federal stimulus funding as the panacea for our woes but don’t provide much in terms of a practical solution to accelerate economic recovery at the grass roots level. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />It is important to point out that an economic recovery solution exists. The solution, as it always has been in this country, rests on the shoulders of innovative, locally owned businesses run by visionary entrepreneurs. They exist in every region and community in the United States, rural or urban, inland or coastal, northern or southern. Golden Capital Network has coined a term to describe these companies: GLOBIEs. GLOBIEs are businesses that provide products and services that create new industry categories, grow existing ones, or capture more of an industry’s market share, thereby growing their businesses, generating revenue, creating jobs and stimulating new tax revenue. GLOBIEs can be startup companies, emerging growth companies, or mature enterprises with existing international or global market presence. They all start small, but many of them grow big and become market leading companies in their industries.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some historic examples of GLOBIEs include companies like Hewlett Packard, Intel and Computer Science Corporation. Hewlett Packard was founded by Stanford classmates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in a Palo Alto garage. The first product they built was an audio oscillator. They sold eight their first year to Walt Disney, generating $5,369 in revenue. Many know the story of Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, who founded Intel after leaving Fairchild semi-conductors. They decided to write a business plan and asked Art Rock, who helped start Fairchild and became an early venture capitalist, for funding. In 2 days, they lined up $2.5M. Their first commercial product was a memory chip which was mildly successful. Soon after, Intel was approached by a Japanese calculator company, asking them to make 12 chips. Intel ended up making one chip, performing like 12, revolutionizing the computer industry forever. Computer Science Corporation was founded in 1959 by Roy Nutt and Fletcher Jones with $100. They wanted to make it easier to use computers. The company quickly became highly reputable amongst computer users, and in 1961, contracted with NASA, launching CSC in the space business. These three companies each had very humble beginnings that went on to become long-standing industry leaders, creating thousands of jobs in California and globally. It is the next wave of GLOBIEs who will bring California out of its current economic downturn.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Where do GLOBIEs belong in the discussion about economic recovery and growth? Very high! These are the companies that can transform the local economic landscape. But, there seems to be little or no talk about making these innovation-based entrepreneurial businesses the focal point of our economic development strategy at the local, state or national levels. That is disturbing, in that there are thousands of multi-billion dollar global markets these businesses penetrate every day with their goods and services. Every time a GLOBIE makes a sale in a national or global market, new revenue is brought back to the GLOBIE’s home community.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A recent survey of Golden Capital Network alumni GLOBIEs confirmed that they have had substsantial job creation impact in their communities over the past several years, and are still doing so today. Whether an economy is in an up or down cycle, there are four opportunities for GLOBIEs to emerge and excel, including:<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Tapping into a geography that has a growing need for a GLOBIEs product or service <br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Creating a new industry category, or capturing a larger share of an existing industry sector <br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Providing a compelling solution for governments, businesses or consumers that either saves money, increases value, or makes things more efficient <br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Creating a diversion from the day-to-day grind of life</span></span></li></ol></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For example, Santa Rosa-based Tri-Access Technologies demonstrates that GLOBIEs are tapping into new geographies when it recently opened an office in Opoh, Malaysia. This fabless semiconductor company is accelerating the rapid deployment of advanced digital video and high-speed data in CATV,Telco and Wireless networks. The company’s products enable economic and system design efficiencies through integration and higher performance. It opened its Malaysia office to facilitate its global operations and further strengthen its relationships with suppliers, packaging houses and customers located in the Asia-Pacific region. Many of the company’s supply partners and more than half of its customers are located in or have major operations in the Asia-Pacific. TriAccess' growth plans include key personnel additions at its headquarters in Santa Rosa, such as highly-specialized RF applications engineers, internal operations specialists, and customer-facing sales professionals.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Another company, Sentilla Corporation, a provider of demand-side energy management solutions for commercial and industrial facilities, recently announced that it has opened its first European office in London, UK. The move strengthens Sentilla’s global presence and gives enterprises in the UK and Europe direct access to the company’s innovative technology, which can dramatically cut carbon footprint and energy costs. Sentilla, backed by Wavepoint Ventures and others, recently secured $7.5 million in Series B financing, after launching its patent-pending energy management technology in May 2008. Its platform can be embedded into virtually any system to provide insight into real world conditions at the source of power consumption.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Brammo Motorsports of Oregon is part of a group of innovative GLOBIEs that are creating a whole new industry category: electric motorcycles. Brammo is gearing up to begin production on its Enertia electric motorcycle. The Enertia is a carbon fiber-intensive two-wheeler that stores its power in large format, lithium-phosphate battery packs from Valence. The company has doubled its workforce to 28 and will build up to 50 or more employees soon as its gets ready to begin assembly. Starting in May, five Best Buy stores near the west coast will begin stocking the Enertia.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In Anderson, California, a rural community located 2 and ½ hours north of Sacramento, a high tech start-up company called Shasta Crystals estimates it will create up to 80 jobs in the near future. The company has created a revolutionary approach to making crystals that are used to create “visible lasers”, used as light sources for miniature projectors in products like cell phones, laptops and game consoles, and saves its customers significant time and money on manufacturing crystals.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These alumni companies provide just a few examples of how GLOBIEs are positively impacting the economy by reaching new geographic markets; creating new industry categories; saving businesses, consumers or governments money; or by enhancing our quality of life. Now consider that at GCN we deal with just a small number of GLOBIE companies, almost exclusively in California. Imagine if there was a focus on adding value to these companies in communities, regions and states across the entire U.S.! The impact would be phenomenal. Local, state and federal job creation efforts should focus on GLOBIEs because they represent by far the greatest opportunity for accelerating economic recovery and growth and creating sustainable jobs.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">GLOBIEs have very clear needs: </span></span></div><div><ol><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">access to all forms of risk capital<br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">access to talent, from skilled technicians and labor workers, to executive management, to boards of directors and informal advisors with specialized industry or functional expertise<br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">access to professional services such as those associated with intellectual property, finance and accounting, risk management, marketing and sales, executive search, web development, and many others<br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">access to business development whether it be through channel partners, VARs and other strategic partners all the way up to customers themselves<br /></span></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">access to peers to share war stories, offer strategic advice, and form new alliances. <br /></span></span></li></ol></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The com</span>mon denominator is people. Businesses successfully start, and successfully grow, when the right combination of people with complimentary skill sets come together with a shared vision to capitalize on a market opportunity.<br />The challenge for GLOBIEs is four-fold. This is where economic development efforts can step in and add value. First, the GLOBIE “ecosystem” does not naturally self-align in a community or region. GLOBIEs frequently operate in isolation without access to the critical resources they need.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Second, GLOBIEs require access to very specific domain expertise and talent. The essential critical mass of expertise and resources does not exist within specific industry sectors in most communities.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Third, most of a GLOBIE’s customers exist outside of their community, as well as the strategic resources and investment capital necessary to get to the customers.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Finally, most GLOBIEs are hard to find. Press releases posted on their websites and issued to the media rarely reach their intended audience. GLOBIEs almost never appear in their own local media. In most cases, individuals, organizations and businesses who could add value to these companies don’t even know they exist, even though they are located right in their own back yard.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A mindset shift about economic development approaches and a repositioning of energy and resources to focus on this sector of the economy is required. A city, county, local economic development organization, chamber of commerce or other community-based organization can enable GLOBIEs to become more visible. Find your established GLOBIEs; create methods to draw out the new ones; segment GLOBIEs by industry sector; use events to bring GLOBIEs together with capital sources, professional services, and executive talent; create local media partnerships to generate visibility for them; establish a web portal through which GLOBIE profiles and information can easily be accessed; create a system to track the connections that emerge through your efforts along with basic economic data on the GLOBIEs so you can measure progress; and align with a broader statewide effort to provide critical non-local connections and visibility. You can have a major impact on your local economy by helping GLOBIEs in this manner.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Golden Capital Network has spent years serving as a virtual bridge between policymakers and private sector ingenuity. Through this unique relationship, GCN is able to deliver a solution for local policymakers, civic and business leaders: The California Business Ascent.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Golden Capital Network, in partnership with the California Business Transportation and Housing Agency and CALED, has launched the California Business Ascent initiative as an easy-to-implement, cost effective solution that enables community leaders to help GLOBIEs in their community. We strongly believe that a community’s path to economic recovery and sustainable job creation will accelerate through the Business Ascent initiative. To find out more about how to become a California Business Ascent community, visit www.goldencapital.net<br /></span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-79332406494717504152009-03-31T12:55:00.000-07:002009-03-31T13:12:20.060-07:00Lights, Camera, Action!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SdJ5GAPykII/AAAAAAAAACs/OWHT13M4Y40/s1600-h/Monterey+Bay+Innovation+Showcase+copy.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 270px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SdJ5GAPykII/AAAAAAAAACs/OWHT13M4Y40/s320/Monterey+Bay+Innovation+Showcase+copy.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319447253930381442" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We’re very happy to announce the public launch of the California Business Ascent video webcast series, showcasing the most exciting startups you’ve never heard of. For ten years we’ve introduced more than a thousand early stage ventures to our network of active investors at dozens of Golden Capital Venture Capital conferences throughout California and Nevada, and more than $1.6 Billion has been invested in our alumni.<br /><br />Now we're taking it to the web, live and direct. We are planning an ambitious program of 50 entrepreneur showcase webcasts in 2009 from locations throughout California, culminating in a final competition in San Diego this November with 50 regional finalists vying for cash awards, investor traction, and the title of the Most Innovative Startup in California.<br /><br />“We’ve been showing recorded elevator pitches on our Business Ascent social network, and some other sites have followed suit,” said Jim Mikles, Executive Producer of the webcast series, “but this is the first program that presents entrepreneurs pitching their companies in a real-time, competitive format to potentially hundreds of investors screening the deal flow online.”<br /><br />Our first live program is this Thursday, April 2, starting at 4PM PDT, from the Monterey Bay Innovation Showcase in Watsonville, in the heart of the Monterey Bay region. A panel of six leading angel and venture investors will discuss “Raising Capital in Challenging Times”, followed by ten-minute presentations by seven sensational startups.<br /><br />If you want a ringside seat to learn more about the next wave of entrepreneurs emerging from the nation’s most innovative state, join the webcast by visiting <a href="http://businessascent.com/go/webcast">http://businessascent.com/go/webcast</a></span></span>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-21316900886734287582009-03-21T08:41:00.001-07:002009-03-23T06:56:44.030-07:0088X ROI<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ScUSPblkA8I/AAAAAAAAACk/IOeyIMDro-I/s1600-h/VI-Table.png"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ScULDvRzSxI/AAAAAAAAACc/U43QAkQaBkc/s1600-h/VI-Importance.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 238px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ScULDvRzSxI/AAAAAAAAACc/U43QAkQaBkc/s400/VI-Importance.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315667094039382802" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We've been watching some talks from the recent TED conference. For those who may be unfamiliar with this program, it is an annual colloquium of the brightest and most imaginative thinkers, thought leaders, and overachievers from the worlds of Technology, Entertainment, and Design, discussing "Ideas worth spreading".</span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Juan Enriquez, Managing Director with Excel Medical Ventures and the CEO and Chairman of Biotechonomy, gave a fascinating presentation examining the economic meltdown, specifying strategies for recovery, and concluding with a look at some emerging innovations in life science technology presaging the emergence of "homo evolutis"; a humankind that takes an active role in its own evolution.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the course of his talk, about seven minutes in, he made a remarkable observation about the impact of venture investment in the economy. He said that investment in startups represented about .02% of GDP, whereas venture-backed companies produced 17% of GDP. He mentioned it in passing as he transitioned from a laundry list of necessary cuts to public expenditure to areas where spending must be increased, but it certainly caught our attention.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Then we saw a similar observation in the Economist special report on entrepreneurship we discussed last week, and we tracked down the source. As it happens, it comes from VentureImpact, a research paper commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association, and prepared by Global Insight with data provided by Content First. The actual proportion of GDP invested in early stage companies in 2006 was .2%, and the output was 17.6%, which translates to a staggering 88x return on investment.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The study also documents</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that these companies</span></span></span></div><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ScUSPblkA8I/AAAAAAAAACk/IOeyIMDro-I/s400/VI-Table.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315674991493383106" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 206px; " /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> produced more than</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 10 million jobs, and over 2 trillion dollars in revenue that year, and the trend over the previous 6 years was consistently increasing. Venture-backed firms also significantly outperformed the economy as a whole, producing more than three times the compound annual growth of jobs (3.6% vs. 1.4%) and nearly twice the growth in revenues (11.8% vs. 6.5%).</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We've been on the lookout for solid evidence of our central thesis -- that the most effective strategy for economic development is innovation and entrepreneurship -- and this research certainly provides meaningful support for it. The study was published in 2007, and analyzed more than 23,000 venture-backed companies. An update to the study is in process, and is expected this June. We look forward to it with eager anticipation.</span></span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-34377069302600646362009-03-18T10:53:00.000-07:002009-03-18T12:29:28.019-07:00Required Reading<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><blockquote>When I was in college, guys usually pretended they were in a band. Now they pretend they are in a start-up.</blockquote></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/ScE-YJIXkCI/AAAAAAAAACM/rEuHdHBVoAo/s320/sailboat.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 221px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314597619762696226" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the March 14th edition of The Economist, a special report on entrepreneurship offers a comprehensive analysis of our favorite subject. Authored by Washington bureau chief Adrian Wooldridge, the report is a collection of nine articles examining virtually every facet of innovation-driven new enterprise. Wooldridge cites our friends at the Kauffman Foundation in defining entrepreneurial companies as specifically innovative, as contrasted to replicative, businesses.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The leading article, Global Heroes, explodes the "five myths" about entrepreneurialism. These include:</span></span></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Entrepreneurs are "orphans and outcasts"; solitary, antisocial nerds making widgets in isolation</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></li></ul></div><div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Entrepreneurs may be more independent than the usual suits who merely follow the rules, but they almost always need business partners and social networks to succeed.</span></span></span></blockquote></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Entrepreneurs are young.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></li></ul></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Kauffman Foundation examined 652 American-born bosses of technology companies set up in 1995-2005 and found that the average boss was 39 when he or she started. The number of founders over 50 was twice as large as that under 25.</span></span></span></blockquote></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Entrepreneurship is driven by venture capital</span></span></span></span></li></ul></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Monitor, a management consultancy that has recently conducted an extensive survey of entrepreneurs, emphasises the importance of “angel” investors, who operate somewhere in the middle ground between venture capitalists and family and friends. They usually have some personal connection with their chosen entrepreneur and are more likely than venture capitalists to invest in a business when it is little more than a budding idea.</span></span></span></div></blockquote><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Entrepreneurs must create world-changing new technology</span></span></span></span></li></ul></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Sir Ronald Cohen, the founder of Apax Partners, one of Europe’s most successful venture-capital companies, points out that some of the most successful entrepreneurs concentrate on processes rather than products. Richard Branson made flying less tedious by providing his customers with entertainment. Fred Smith built a billion-dollar business by improving the delivery of packages. Oprah Winfrey has become America’s richest self-made woman through successful brand management.</span></span></span></blockquote></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Entrepreneurship cannot occur in large companies</span></span></span></span></li></ul></div><div></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Many big companies work hard to keep their people on their entrepreneurial toes. Johnson & Johnson operates like a holding company that provides financial muscle and marketing skills to internal entrepreneurs. Jack Welch tried to transform General Electric from a Goliath into a collection of entrepreneurial Davids. Jorma Ollila transformed Nokia, a long-established Finnish firm, from a maker of rubber boots and cables into a mobile-phone giant; his successor as boss of the company, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, is now talking about turning it into an internet company.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Just as importantly, big firms often provide start-ups with their bread and butter. In many industries, especially pharmaceuticals and telecoms, the giants contract out innovation to smaller companies. Procter & Gamble tries to get half of its innovations from outside its own labs. Microsoft works closely with a network of 750,000 small companies around the world. Some 3,500 companies have grown up in Nokia’s shadow.</span></span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As we've pointed out before, an economic downturn is a good time to start businesses. Wooldridge notes that it is also an opportune time for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">growing </span>entrepreneurial businesses. Citing a study from Endeavor, entrepreneurs surveyed forecast that "their businesses would grow by 31% and their workforces by 12% this year. Half of them thought they would be able to hire better people and 39% said there would be less competition."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In addition to this overview, additional articles in the report include:</span></span></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Managing entrepreneurship</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Time for entrepreneurship</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">The United States of Entrepreneurs</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Entrepreneurs in India and China</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Lands of opportunity</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">The formula for entrepreneurship</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">Entrepreneurs doing good</span><br /></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">The entrepreneurial society</span></li></ul></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anyone professing an interest in innovation and entrepreneurship will be significantly better informed after reading this authoritative analysis.</span></span></div></div></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-17931199677282617302009-02-26T09:20:00.000-08:002009-02-26T10:20:14.410-08:00Tom Hayes Stimulus Package<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Our old friend Tom Hayes is at it again. In an op-ed piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, he and Michael S. Malone critique the new administration's stimulus strategy, and offer suggestions for an innovation-based approach that certainly sounds more promising than propping up failed industries.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Readers of this page know that we have long argued that the best and most valuable jobs are created by entrepreneurs and the private investors who fund them. And we've certainly celebrated the occasions when the public sector has recognized and supported entrepreneurial efforts, even while noting our disappointment in how little of that is evident.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hayes and Malone rehearse the same catechism of entrepreneurship, innovation, private investment, and economic vitality, and go one to make some specific recommendations for policy makers to give serious attention. Some highlights:</span></span></div><div></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">- First, kill Sarbanes-Oxley or make it voluntary. Right now.<br /><br />- Allow entrepreneurs to more easily tap tax-free retirement accounts -- or better yet, let them create tax-free accounts specifically to fund themselves.<br /><br />- Eliminate payroll taxes, which unnecessarily burden young companies. <br /><br />- Make the tax system more forgiving for Angel investors -- or allow the creation of tax-free investment vehicles similar to what we now see with nonprofit foundations or 529 college savings funds.<br /><br />- Lower capital gains taxes on investments in early stage companies and higher taxes on later stage deals. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />- Help big business think small. <br /><br />- Convene a presidential summit on entrepreneurship and small business. The last president to do so was Ronald Reagan in 1982.</span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hayes and Malone elaborate on these points, and we highly recommend their article as "required reading". </span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-12135481327619337452009-02-24T13:18:00.000-08:002009-02-24T15:13:14.761-08:00In the "Q"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As long-time subscribers to McKinsey Quarterly's email newsletter, we enjoy the in-depth analyses featured on their website. We'll continue to alert readers to useful and relevant content we encounter through this channel (links back to the Quarterly site require free registration for access to the entire article.) We cited a report from the "Q" earlier this month, and now we are delighted that today's inbox brings credible third-party validation of one of our central theses: invention is science, innovation is economics. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Excerpted from his recent book, Amar Bhidé makes a compelling case that despite falling behind rapidly emerging BRIC economies in secondary and higher education in STEM competencies and pure research generally, the United States enjoys a competitive advantage in applying discoveries from the laboratory to real-world uses.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Technological innovations, especially high-level ones, usually have limited economic or commercial importance unless complemented by lower-level innovations. Breakthroughs in solid-state physics, for example, have value for the semiconductor industry only if accompanied by new microprocessor designs, which themselves may be largely useless without plant-level tweaks that make it possible to produce these components in large quantities. A new microprocessor’s value may be impossible to realize without new motherboards and computers, as well.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />New know-how and products also require interconnected, nontechnological innovations on a number of levels. A new diskless (thin-client) computer, for instance, generates revenue for its producer and value for its users only if it is marketed effectively and deployed properly. Marketing and organizational innovations are usually needed; for example, such a computer may force its manufacturer to develop a new sales pitch and materials and its users to reorganize their IT departments.</span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;font-size:13px;">Bhidé makes these observations in the context of anxieties in the policy and media communities about America losing it's "edge", and his concerns about resorting to protectionism or diverting scarce resources to pure research activities, or "what the economists Sylvia Ostry and Richard Nelson call techno-nationalism and techno-fetishism".</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><blockquote>Techno-nationalists and techno-fetishists oversimplify innovation by equating it with discoveries announced in scientific journals and with patents for cutting-edge technologies developed in university or commercial research labs. Since they rarely distinguish between the different levels and kinds of know-how, they ignore the contributions of the other players—contributions that don’t generate publications or patents.<br /><br />They oversimplify globalization as well—for example, by assuming that high-level ideas and know-how rarely if ever cross national borders and that only the final products made with it are traded. Actually, ideas and technologies move from country to country quite easily, but much final output, especially in the service sector, does not. The findings of science are available—for the price of learned books and journals—to any country that can use them. Advanced technology, by contrast, does have commercial value because it can be patented, but patent owners generally don’t charge higher fees to foreigners. In the early 1950s, what was then a tiny Japanese company called Sony was among the first licensors of Bell Labs’ transistor patent, for $50,000.</blockquote></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the current economic climate, it is critical that resources and regulations be more closely aligned with the successful commercialization of new science, rather than deep, long-range investments in adding to the store of human knowledge. As we have seen, the economies that benefit most from commercial application of new technology are not necessarily the ones in which it was patented. License revenue and royalties create few new jobs.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><blockquote>Since innovation is not a zero-sum game among nations, and high-level science and engineering are no more important than the ability to use them in mid- and ground-level innovations, the United States should reverse policies that favor the one over the other, and it should cease to worry that the forward march of the rest of the human race will reduce it to ruin.<br /><br />Immigration policies that favor high-level research by preferring highly trained engineers and scientists to people who hold only bachelor’s degrees are misguided too. By working in, say, the IT departments of retailers and banks, immigrants who don’t have advanced degrees probably make as great a contribution to the US economy as those who do. Likewise, the US patent system is excessively attuned to the needs of R&D labs and not enough to those of innovators developing mid- and ground-level products, which often don’t generate patentable intellectual property under current rules and are often threatened by easily obtained high-level patents.</blockquote></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Even factoring in outsourced manufacturing and back-office services, the most (and best) net new jobs are created by innovators who find a crying need and fill it with creative solutions fashioned from new discoveries and existing technologies alike. As we've pointed out elsewhere, an innovative company isn't necessarily introducing widgets, but is also applying novel thinking and imagination to improving established business processes for greater effectiveness or efficiency. Cloud computing, for example, offers familiar software capabilities, but in a new form factor and delivery model. That's not the sort of thing you invent in a lab.</span></span>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-88525530773305312682009-02-23T07:00:00.000-08:002009-02-23T07:00:00.323-08:00Silver Lining Dept.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We wrote last week about the ComputerWorld item discussing big corporations acquiring smaller companies. Cesar Rojas with ANTs Software commented on that item, pointing out that smaller companies aren't always looking to get bought out.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><blockquote>I think there are exceptions to the rule when it comes to small tech companies. In this down economy there are real needed innovations that are very critical to significantly reduce IT costs. That empowers smaller companies to negotiate with the big guys because the technologies they develop can really jeopardize critical revenue streams of these firms while providing huge OPEX reductions for customers.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">We thought this was an interesting perspective, and when we inquired with Mr. Rojas, we got a call back from Ken Ruotolo, ANTs' CFO, who explained a little more about why ANTs is sanguine about remaining independent.</span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For one thing, the company is publicly traded (OTC:ANTS), and has gone through several episodes of repurposing. They sold their high-performance database line of business in 2005, and are now delivering a middleware solution for migrating databases to new platforms without having to modify applications.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Having some experience in data migration (we worked on the team at SynOptics that migrated from Oracle Financials to SAP R3 in 9 months, and led the team at Bay Networks that implemented a Scopus-based call center database on top of Informix in 11 weeks), we were particularly interested in this solution. As Mr. Rojas continued in his comment:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><blockquote>We recently moved a 3,000 user call center app for Wyndham Hotels from Sybase to Oracle where the customer didn’t need to change a single line of application code. The whole migration lasted one week compared to the multi-month/multi-year application migration process that Wyhdham might have embarked without deploying our product.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Very cool stuff, indeed. So why wouldn't ANTs want to be acquired by a giant like Oracle, say? Because they have the potential to become a big player in their own right. Mr. Rojas again:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><blockquote>I truly believe that smaller/innovative companies that can significantly reduce IT costs in this economy are the exception to the rule and we will be in the driver seat when negotiating alliances with big IT vendors.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">As Mr. Ruotolo explained to me, ANTs Compatibility Server product enables a company to migrate large enterprise-wide databases from costly proprietary platforms such as Oracle or Sybase to an open source platform like MySQL, reducing cost of ownership to a fraction of current operating expense.</span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As data center managers increasingly try to squeeze more efficiencies from operations through consolidation of hardware and software solutions, ANTs Compatibility Server bids fair to be enormously disruptive. By employing platform companies as channel partners, they have every reason to expect that the potential for growth to be substantial.</span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-19206075279625179372009-02-18T14:57:00.000-08:002009-02-18T15:42:21.467-08:00California Business Ascent Announced<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0pt;"><b style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">MEDIA CONTACTS:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Josh Morgan for Golden Capital</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(916) 941-0901</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0pt;"><span><a href="mailto:josh@morgandorado.com"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">josh@morgandorado.com</span></span></span></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Golden Capital Network, California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, California’s Small Business Advocate, and California Association for Local Economic Development Announce Statewide Initiative to Help Growth Oriented Businesses Climb Out of Economic Doldrums</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Private and State Groups Coming Together for </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Business Ascent Statewide Business Mentoring and Competition</span></span><b style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sacramento and Chico, California</span></span></b><b style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> - Feb. 18, 2009—</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Golden Capital Network (www.goldencapital.net), along with the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, California’s Small Business Advocate, and the California Association for Local Economic Development today announced the California Business Ascent (www.businessascent.com), a statewide competition and mentoring program to identify, assist and encourage innovation-based, locally-owned companies throughout California.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Local-businesses focused on growth are the key for </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to lead the way out of this economic downturn,” said </span></span><st1:personname st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dave Sanders</span></span></st1:personname><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, chairman of Golden Capital Network and managing partner of WorldBridge Partners.</span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“The Business Ascent is all about identifying the companies with the best chance of success and giving them as much help as we can, to try and make them successful, for the benefit of the companies, the employees and the people of </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.”</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0.5in;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The California Business Ascent will include regional competitions in up to 25 communities throughout </span></span><st1:state st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, culminating with the top two companies from each community competing in the California Business Ascent Finals to be held in </span></span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">San Diego</span></span></st1:place></st1:city><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> at the Catamaran Resort on November 17-18, 2009.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"</span></span><st1:state st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> has a long history of innovative entrepreneurs creating jobs and unparalleled prosperity driving new industries to global leadership, with entrepreneurs working in collaboration with government," said Secretary Dale E. Bonner, of </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">'s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.</span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"It's going to take the collective effort of everyone in the state to rise out of our current economic situation and we can do it together by proactively supporting our next wave of innovative entrepreneurs."</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The initiative is a unique new type of public/private partnership that includes both State government and local government leaders, and new types of private sector partners including entrepreneurs, angel investors, and venture capitalists.</span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></b><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Through this process contestants will make important connections with investors, bankers, professional services providers, executives, policymakers and other entrepreneurs on a statewide basis.</span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In-kind professional expertise and a substantial cash prize (amount TBD) will be provided to the winner of the competition.</span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“The California Business Ascent provides a new economic development tool for cities, counties and local economic development corporations to add value to their locally-owned growth companies,” said Wayne Schell, president and CEO of the California Association for Local Economic Development, ”These companies represent a critical and growing part of California’s local and regional economies, and until now have been difficult to assist with more traditional types of economic development activities.”</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wavepoint Ventures (www.wavepointventures.com) </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is participating in the California Business Ascent by helping to engage </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">'s venture capital and angel investment community in the effort to accelerate economic recovery.</span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cities and regions throughout the state including the Yolo region, Greater Stockton and </span></span><st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">San Joaquin</span></span></st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><st1:placetype st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">County</span></span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> region, Greater Chico and surrounding counties, and Greater Redding and surrounding counties, have already begun scheduling events as part of the California Business Ascent.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Other cities and regions interested in participating should contact the California Business Ascent initiative organizers at Golden Capital Network, 530-893-8828.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For more information about the California Business Ascent, please visit www.businessscent.com.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ABOUT GOLDEN CAPITAL NETWORK </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Golden Capital Network is a non-profit networking, training and consulting group that fosters growth entrepreneurship and early-stage investing as an engine for economic growth. </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Since 1999, GCN has coached and showcased more than 1,000 companies to more than 500 active angel and venture capital investors. GCN’s venture capital showcases are the largest and most robust events of their type. The GCN event formula has resulted in more than $1.3 billion raised by presenting companies.</span></span><span style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">More information on Golden Capital is available at </span></span></span><span style=";color:black;"><a href="http://www.goldencapital.net/"><span style=";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.goldencapital.net</span></span></span></a></span><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ABOUT THE BUSINESS, TRANSPORTATION AND HOUSING AGENCY</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Led by Secretary Dale E. Bonner, the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency includes 13 departments and several economic development programs and commissions consisting of more than 44,000 employees and a budget of $20 billion, a budget larger than that of almost half the states in the nation. The Agency's portfolio is one of the largest and most diverse in the State of </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">California</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Its operations address myriad issues that directly impact the state's economic vitality and quality of life including transportation, public safety, affordable housing, international trade, financial services, tourism, and managed health care.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-78956701813683130872009-02-18T14:16:00.000-08:002009-02-18T14:30:54.502-08:00Corporate Liquidity Pools<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The conventional wisdom since the dot com meltdown at the turn of the century is that the IPO is effectively a nonstarter as an exit strategy, and that M&A is the most probable means for an early stage company convert equity into yield. While this is not news, there are some new wrinkles in the current economic climate.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Eric Lundquist, on his ComputerWorld blog, examines the emergence of the large technology companies as an important source of liquidity during the current economic distress. The most dominant companies in this space are laden with cash, and quietly going on a buying spree as other sources of cash dry up and valuations decline.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><blockquote>When I look at some of the investment areas including digital medical records, energy management, transportation and infrastructure, the big four (Oracle, Cisco,Microsoft, IBM -- MICO), okay big five if you include Hewlett-Packard, are not strong across all those areas and do not have enough time to build that expertise in-house. </blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; ">This is exciting not only because of the potential for exits in a tough climate, but also becuase these acquisitions are strategic, strenthening the parent company, and creating new opportunities for innovative firms to emerge.</span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">While the returns to investors may be less than hoped for, it does free up capital for investment in other promising companies, and frees up the founders to start new enterprises.</span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-45807975391472426322009-02-16T10:47:00.000-08:002009-02-16T11:17:07.191-08:00All Your Face Are Belong To Us<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SZm4C-BB7iI/AAAAAAAAAB8/rHIBsFaw5qM/s1600-h/facebook-logo-spaced.png"><img style="float:left; border:0; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 146px; height: 48px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SZm4C-BB7iI/AAAAAAAAAB8/rHIBsFaw5qM/s400/facebook-logo-spaced.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303472397352037922" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lots of churn on the interwebs about Facebook's new Terms of Service (TOS). The new user agreement asserts an irrevocable, non-exclusive license for any content users add to the service.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The key change is that there used to be a clause about the user's right to remove content, and that's been removed.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It's probably not as sinister as many bloggers infer. Because of Facebook Connect, content is being stored outside Facebook's span of control. This new language absolves the service of liability if a user's content is misused elsewhere. It's increasingly common on other social networking and search sites, including Google.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As ever, the prime directive of the net -- never post anything (including in email) that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow -- applies. Discretion isn't just the better part of valor, it's a requirement in the neworked economy.</span></span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-45619671760092107142009-02-11T11:12:00.000-08:002009-02-11T11:40:57.377-08:00State of The Venture Capital Industry<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Excellent analysis of the Venture Capital business on the NY Times site. Alan Patricof of Greycroft Partners makes a compelling case that VCs need to innovate to compete in a dramatically changed investment landscape. With angels increasingly sitting on the sideline, funds need to invest earlier, in smaller tranches, and with realistic expectations for smaller exits. The good news is that they can exit sooner.</span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><blockquote>I believe that most of the companies that venture capitalists are funding today will find an exit through merger or acquisition. And if we expect to achieve a return in a reasonable time frame of three to five years, we are probably looking at a sale price of $20 million to $100 million. This is the valuation range where most young companies are being acquired.<br /><br />To compensate for these lower gross return expectations, we must establish initial valuations, usually in the single digits, that can provide an adequate multiple return and internal rate of return. Inevitably, this suggests that a true venture capital firm should be reverting to smaller-scale funds and restricting individual investments in early-stage companies to accommodate the realities of the exit opportunity.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This strategy aligns well with both LP expectations and entrepreneurs' best-case scenarios.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><blockquote>Entrepreneurs themselves seem to be catching onto the new risk/reward equation and seem far more willing, at an early stage, to opt for a sale at a lower valuation and lock in their gains, figuring that they are young and can repeat the process later with another start-up.<br /><br />If the scenario I have described strikes a chord of reality, then until someone solves the cost of going public and increases the liquidity in aftermarket trading, we as an industry have to downsize our expectation for exits as well as downsize the size of our funds.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Patricof's viewpoint is refreshing, even optimistic, in these uncertain economic conditions. It's certainly a breath of fresh air, and we can only hope that VCs pay attention to his sage counsel.</span></span></div></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-4226969456124975702009-02-10T14:40:00.001-08:002009-02-10T14:44:26.148-08:00That Vision Thing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SZIC8clRyGI/AAAAAAAAAB0/34OUiMlMOGw/s1600-h/dilbert-17-04-2004.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 138px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SZIC8clRyGI/AAAAAAAAAB0/34OUiMlMOGw/s400/dilbert-17-04-2004.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301302948856449122" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It's five years old, but some things are timeless.</div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-16744588825165699442009-02-09T14:30:00.001-08:002009-02-10T11:48:02.599-08:00Nowsourcing<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The practice of outsourcing is evolving, according to Tom Abate's column in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. Large corporations have long moved entire departments and functions to locations where labor costs were more affordable, especially assembly and customer service processes. While offshoring has been controversial, wage rate differentials in emerging economies have been irresistible to multinational companies competing for customers, capital, and components on a world-wide scale.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What's changing is that smaller companies are now taking advantage of the global market for talent, by utilizing web-based labor exchanges such as eLance, oDesk, crowdSPRING, and Guru.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This is especially relevant to entrepreneurs, who typically must outsource everything except core business functions, as much to remain focused on strategic imperatives as to manage their burn rate. And as more Americans are turning to freelance work to cope with the recession, a lot of this casual employment is remaining onshore.</span></span></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Natasha Levitan, a San Jose filmmaker, is part of what work-site operators say is a new wave of U.S. freelancers who are going online to bid for contract work. Levitan, 31, has worked as a freelancer for most of the past several years, using local contacts and word of mouth to get jobs.<br /><br />She joined eLance in April to help her build her client base and has gotten a few assignments through the site. She said it isn't easy to continually hustle for work, but at this point in her life, while she is single and can travel between jobs, "the positives outweigh the negatives."</span></span></blockquote></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">According to Fabio Rosati, eLance's CEO, more than 60% of the service providers in his network are US residents.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This trend is also having an impact on large corporate IT departments, as well, as noted in a recent report in McKinsey Quarterly. While cost considerations will continue to make contractors in BRIC countries appealing, the expansion of the contract talent pool here in the US will be an attractive alternative for some businesses already feeling competitive pressure in distant labor markets.</span></span></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A shake-up in the vendor landscape will likely follow the huge capacity increases of recent years, the current downward pressure on aggregate demand, and massive uncertainty in currency markets. Adding to the pressures are the strategic, government-sponsored initiatives launched by China and other nations to grab market share. Major mergers are more likely than not. New entrants will grow rapidly and some players could experience significant reverses. Successful CIOs will manage their vendor relationships as a portfolio so they will be well positioned as new winners evolve.</span></span></blockquote></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It's encouraging that American ingenuity and resourcefulness offer a competitive advantage in the evolving market for technology professionals, and for the promising startups who employ them.</span></span><br /></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-80248234366154550112009-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:002009-02-06T14:03:04.360-08:00Where Angels Fear To Tread<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In an article published yesterday in the New York Times, Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone provide a pretty good snapshot of the state of angel investing in the current economic climate. Although the headline writer claimed that angels are "fleeing" from tech startups, the article explains that angels are indeed still investing, if less, and more selectively. </span></span><div></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some angels who are still investing have become pickier, making demands of start-ups that they would not have a year ago. When David Levine started Wireless Environment, which makes motion-sensor light-emitting diode bulbs, in November 2006, he quickly raised $135,000 from family members and business school friends, with few questions asked.<br /><br />The angel investors he met with this fall, though, were far more demanding. “I could not believe the complexity,” he said. “For small investments compared to their net worth, they brought in financial advisers and a whole list of questions.”</span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">They are also investing more of their time and acumen, getting directly involved in the operation of their portfolio companies.</span></span></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some angels are considering only low-cost companies that could become profitable without venture financing. Others are acting less like angels and more like venture capitalists, spending much more time than is typical advising companies, including taking seats on boards.<br /><br />Aydin Senkut, a former Google employee who has invested in 40 companies, is serving on the board of one of his investments, ImageShack, a media hosting site, and spends two hours a week working at the start-up. “Where I can really help is building the next growth stage,” he said.</span></span></blockquote></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Angels are also heeding the wisdom of the adage "safety in numbers", syndicating with other angels to reduce their individual exposure, while still getting the deal done. While the caution about "too many cooks" has some relevance here, the entrepreneur undoubtedly benefits from the advice and counsel of many partners, and can leverage the "wisdom of crowds".</span></span></div><div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some angel investors are putting less of their own money on the line by finding other people to invest with them. Co-investments increased in 2008, according to the Center for Venture Research, and half of those surveyed by the Angel Capital Association said they would increase co-investing with other angels this year.</span></span></blockquote></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">While some of this restraint and prudence has the benefit of weeding out the knuckleheads and marginal deals, giving the stronger startups a quieter marketplace for seed money, the reduced pipeline is likely to result in fewer Series A opportunities for venture funds to consider.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Angel investors are a critical element to a healthy innovation economy. It's not for nothing that their money is called "seed capital"; they water the economic garden when it first sprouts. But they're also a vital source of expertise and experience many early stage entrepreneurs lack, giving their companies more of a chance of survival to the next round. Indeed, the counsel of angel investors may be more valuable, in the final analysis, than their operational funding. Fortunately, angels are organized into networks, so that they can not only spread the risk, but alert each other to opportunities they uncover. In a down market like this, the benefit of having multiple eyes on the horizon is an intelligence asset.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">The angels, and angel groups, that have been involved with Golden Capital Network over the past decade have been critical early support for the alumni from our programs that have gone on to lucrative exits. While many angels are banking their fires and exercising more caution, they're still risk-tolerant by nature. Why do they go out on a limb? Because that's where the fruit is.</span></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-63963651093393595772009-02-05T07:00:00.000-08:002009-02-05T09:51:29.261-08:00Industry Cluster Engineering<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Interesting take today by Sacramento Bee opinion writer Daniel Weintraub about industry clusters leading the charge to bring California back from the brink of total economic meltdown.<br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></span></div><blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As California's economy struggles to rebound from the collapse of the housing bubble, it is difficult to imagine what will lead us out of this hole. We had the dot-com boom and bust, and then a housing-led recovery that turned out to be a mirage. Is there some industry, some idea that can reignite sustainable growth in this once-golden state?<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Maybe not. And maybe that's the wrong way to think about the problem.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It could be that there are six or eight or 10 major industries that together will form the foundation for the new California economy.</span></span></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;font-size:13px;">He is speaking about regional industry clusters, and he uses the example of Akron, OH, which led an economic revival by rallying around innovation within its faltering rubber industry, and the Central Valley, CA, which is positioning itself to be a leader in clean technologies like solar, wind and water.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><blockquote>Peter Weber, a retired corporate executive and civic activist from Fresno, has studied what makes economies tick and is promoting a regional approach as a long-term strategy for California. He thinks local governments and the state should make the development of regional economic clusters their top priority.</blockquote></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We completely agree that cluster development within regional economies is at the core of regional economic development. We would add the cautionary note, however, that industry clusters are formed by innovative, entrepreneurial people identifying a competitive advantage and capitalizing on it.<br /><br />You cannot wish one into place, nor invent one by merely by declaring it as such. Networks of people are the backbone of any industry cluster. If you don’t have the right people with the right knowledge and right access to a strategic business network, you won’t have a cluster form anytime soon. Innovation will sit on the shelf until someone with the knowledge and access identifies the opportunity and brings it forth. Take any notable example, including Silicon Valley, San Diego, Austin, TX, Research Triangle, NC, and you will find that human networks were at the core of the phenomenon.<br /><br />This precisely why we say that any region wishing to develop any type of industry cluster should focus as much effort on cultivating general networks of innovation and entrepreneurship as deciding which cluster they want to be. Yesterday was biotech. Before that was nanotech. Today it’s clean tech, but yesterday was hydrogen and today is water, wind and solar. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />This is an exaggeration, of course. All of these industries are still vibrant and active and provide expansive opportunity for companies and regions to capitalize on. The point is, private industry responds primarily to private market demands and technology flux, and it moves too fast and changes too quickly for government to easily influence it.<br /><br />Policymakers should be aware of clusters, but understand to build one requires that economic policies help your entrepreneurial people with an affinity for the region find what works best there. Be aggressive to provide them access to things they need most: capital, talent, market intel and strategic relationships. Then let them be entrepreneurial. Let them find the industry that works best for what is available in the region in terms of people, technology, markets, innovation and opportunity.<br /><br />On Feb. 26 leading technology cluster expert Doug Henton, from Collaborative Economics in Silicon Valley, will present a report on Solano County’s Life Science Cluster, anchored by biomedical giant Genentech. Another story about some smart people with an idea, the right knowledge and the right connections who decided this was a good place to build a company. Is that a cluster? It is now.<br /></span></span><br /></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6987435887520918475.post-21193272621728036212009-02-04T07:09:00.000-08:002009-02-04T10:45:37.294-08:00New Rules for Policymakers<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Rule #1: Don’t Get Bogged Down in the Minutiae - Take Action Now!</span></span><br />By Golden Capital Network CEO Jon Gregory<br /><br /></span></span><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_d0KP18P9u7g/SXZl3KoevTI/AAAAAAAAABI/iT45zEXTlfg/s320/IMG_0204.JPG" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5293530410441948466" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In President Obama’s inauguration speech, he made a statement that will resonate with many local policymakers and civic leaders in cities and counties across the country seeking to make proactive change in their own communities: “The time for standing pat has passed.”</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />When it comes to economic development, which is a highly compelling current issue, it is clear the time for standing pat has also passed. Numerous studies and reports issued by credible organizations in the U.S. and abroad point to business innovation as the leading contributor to jobs and wealth creation, community prosperity, and economic competitiveness. Based on these reports, policymakers and civic leaders across the country, in metropolitan areas and small towns alike, are anxious to implement innovation-driven economic development initiatives to accelerate local economic recovery and growth.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />The innovation-driven model represents a new approach for many communities and economic development practitioners that have historically focused on industrial attraction campaigns as the stimulus for economic development. While the industrial attraction approach -- and others like tourism development, downtown revitalization and micro-enterprise development -- are important components of an overall strategy, they should not represent the “end all” solution in today’s dynamic global economy where new industries rapidly emerge and grow (and other industries conversely decline). Because of this modern-day reality community efforts to support and add value to promising entrepreneurial companies similarly need to be high on the action agenda for economic development.<br /><br />You’ve by now read all the compelling reports about innovation. And are enthusiastic and ready to move forward with your strategy to improve the local economy, today!!! Whoa bubba. Wait a minute. Sit down, relax and take a deep breath. I know I don’t have to tell you this, but bureaucracies can be resistant to change and slow to act. Fortunately, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to play by the old rules. Local policymakers and civic leaders have within the realm of possibility a means to start fostering an innovation-focused economic agenda that doesn’t require a lot of financial resources or council approvals.<br /><br />Three statements you may hear at the beginning of your efforts to make change should serve as red flags. The first statement is: “Let’s schedule a meeting with all of the nonprofit partner organizations in the community who deal with economic development.” The goal of such a meeting – to the start the process of creating collaboration – is, of course, good. But are the “usual suspects” the right partners to have involved in the collaboration? What resources do they bring to the table? What is their current agenda and is it in alignment with the objective of this effort, or will it really serve as an impediment or roadblock? And, perhaps most importantly, how long will it take them to obtain the necessary approvals from their board to participate? After all, your goal is to move quickly!<br /><br />The second red flag is: “This sounds like a good idea, let’s hire a consultant and do a feasibility study.” As I’ve already stated, numerous reports, studies and articles have concluded innovation is an integral part of the process for any community or region seeking to enhance its economic condition and competitiveness. If you go down the traditional feasibility study route, the process is likely to take a minimum of 6 months, at best, to cycle through. Can you afford to wait that long?<br /><br />Venture capitalist and angel investor Roger Akers of Akers Capital suggests a different approach: “To begin this process, I would first call on successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, and all of the regional lawyers, investment professionals, senior University leadership, venture capital companies, angel group leaders, appropriate non-profits and economic development leaders to attend a two-day workshop to be educated in the current and needed capabilities of the region relative to new business formation and development and why it is so important.” A single focus group with 8-12 private sector leaders in the innovation sector can get you the information you need to move forward in 2 weeks (at most). There are many projects requiring extensive feasibility studies. This isn’t one of them. You don’t have the luxury of time on your side.<br /><br />The third red flag is: “Let’s include your project during the next cycle of potential funding applications the city (or county) could consider submitting for a grant later this year or next year.” Leverage state, federal and foundation grant resources to fund high-impact projects in your community. But putting important community projects put on hold while waiting for the big-ticket funding source is wrong.<br /><br />An excellent example of a proactive civic leader is Charlie Brown, executive director of NoRTEC, a consortium of workforce investment organizations in rural Northern California. Charlie has been very successful accessing state and federal resources over the past couple of decades. He didn’t wait for significant grant funding to get started; he has been building a coalition of leaders around the notion of innovation as a regional economic differentiator, and supporting incremental, smaller activities along the way. When his organization was able to access State and Federal dollars through the federal WIRED initiative a couple of years ago, he was in a much stronger position to maximize the impact of that effort.<br /><br />Getting started on an innovation-based economic development initiative doesn’t require a lot of money. Don’t underestimate the ability of local sponsorships, contributions and volunteer services to get great things done! Move forward with the grant proposals that your staff or community organization partners want to prepare. But view that as your lever, rather than as deciding factor of whether to proceed or not.<br /><br />Below are ten activities you can act on tomorrow that can start fostering innovation-based economic development in your community:<br /><br />1. Recruit a blue-ribbon committee of innovation leaders to immediately give your effort credibility, generate fresh ideas and identify a private sector champion<br />2. Secure sponsorships from private sector leaders<br />3. Engage local media in your efforts to generate visibility<br />4. Re-direct staff time and energy from lower value activities to your new high priority strategy<br />5. Use your influence to recruit community-based organizations to go to work in support of your initiative<br />6. Educate your elected colleagues and other civic leaders about the idea of innovation as an economic driver<br />7. Launch a series of informal network events that occur onsite at your successful innovation-based businesses or other venues in the community<br />8. Begin a speaker circuit, making presentations about innovation economic development at service club and civic group meetings and local schools<br />9. Initiate a brown bag lunch outreach campaign: visit with the CEOs of as many innovation-based businesses in your community as possible and find out how you can help these companies<br />10. Create a Mentor’s Roundtable from your most successful CEOs<br /><br />Peter Gardner, a partner in the Venture Capital fund Wavepoint Ventures, offers a few suggestions: (1) identify a low-cost office space in the City to provide incubation and shared services for local early-stage companies; (2) organize a local angel investment group that can provide capital and mentoring to local entrepreneurs; (3) initiate a monthly breakfast meeting with local entrepreneurs, business leaders, select City employees and professional service providers to discuss challenges to growth, and potential solutions, and then incorporate this market feedback directly into City policymaking.<br /><br />Bill Reichert, Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures says: “I would initiate the ‘Ourtown Innovation Challenge’ calling on all businesses, organizations, and citizens to contribute their ideas and recommendations regarding ways to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship, ranging from ways to streamline government to ways to attract more resources to the community.”<br /><br />He continued, “I would start the planning for an Innovation and Entrepreneurship event to be held in one year to celebrate the individuals and the organizations that have done the most to help innovation and entrepreneurship in the area, and to provide a showcase for entrepreneurs seeking to launch their own innovative companies or non-profit organizations.” Reichert concluded with a statement about the impact these efforts can have. “In combination, these initial efforts will create a string of PR opportunities for the ongoing initiative. By enhancing the visibility of the initiative locally (and getting visibility statewide), I would hope to bring a combination of public and private resources into the community to participate in some way – at a minimum, sponsoring the annual event.”<br /><br />There’s no time like the present to get things moving. Worst case, you will have dramatically elevated awareness of innovation as the true economic driver in your community that sets the stage for many good things to emerge. Best case you will have a fully functioning, sustainable innovation program in place that fosters business formation and growth from your entrepreneurs that doesn’t require a lot of public money. In either case, don’t let yourself get bogged down in the minutiae!<br /></span></span><br /></div>GCN Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02813508282153976876noreply@blogger.com2