Entrepreneurship@ThrillMill
Recently, I started teaching an intensive entrepreneurship class to the new cohort of 13 startups that were invited to participate in the Thrill Mill year-long program. Thrill Mill is an incubator/accelerator. Lots of people use...
Innovation @ U Pitt
The University of Pittsburgh has a lot of exciting things starting around innovation and entrepreneurship. 2014 promises to be a ramp-up year for new entrepreneurial initiatives, starting with the campus-wide Innovation...
The seedy side of entrepreneurship
Everybody loves entrepreneurship: the geek in the garage making stuff that will change the world, the excitement, the freedom, the lure. Entrepreneurship is sexy as a career choice. Entrepreneurs surmount the odds and create...
Thoughts on Turkey and entrepreneurship
Turkey has realized that, as a country, they need to integrate innovation and entrepreneurship into the fabric of their economy. This is not a uniquely Turkish initiative – this is occurring all over the world as I have seen in...
Investment the VentureWell/Village Capital way
Last weekend was the close of the NCIIA/Village Capital VentureWell program where the teams chose which two companies would receive $50K investment each. This is a follow-on post to Crowd sourced investment. How do you teach...
The EB-5 program demystified
It would be an understatement to say that America’s economy is not doing well. While the amount of debt incurred is not increasing exponentially—as it once was—it is making a very slow recovery. As a result, many entrepreneurs...
Once more unto the breach… muses on presenting
One of the most important things that entrepreneurs need to learn is how to present. Some do this naturally – they are natural-born story-tellers, who can present a compelling case for their new venture through words, body...
Crowd sourced investment
A brand new investment model is peer-reviewed investment. This is where the patients get to be the doctor, the inmates get to run the prison, the entrepreneurs get to pick who gets the investment. It’s unique – and it’s powerful....
Muses on value proposition
As I witnessing 12 university teams from around the nation converge on Amherst Mass for the NCIIA’s VentureLab three-day workshop which just ended, I am reminded of the importance of value proposition. Sometimes that term gets...
The computer science behind beauty
Given the recent successes of start-ups that turned into multi-billion dollar companies and gave the tech industry its magnates and super-stars (names like Zuckerberg and Dorsey come into mind), a lot of attention has been given...