Thursday, July 30, 2009

That Informal Support

I have written before about our little informal entrepreneurship club here in Ithaca. I wanted to share a few pictures of one of our sessions from the Spring. Greg Hubbell of Sound Reading was working on his venture capital presentation, and the group was there to provide support, insight, and opinion.


Have beer, will opine


The audience included CEO's and Founders from Simply Audiobooks, Novomer, Instinctiv, Orthogonal, Mezmeriz, plus a few aspiring entrepreneurs and Cornell business school students, including future members of BR Ventures.


One more time with passion


This last picture was taken slightly after Midnight when the rest of the was group long past their first beer. Greg got his presentation dialed in and was able to take his pitch on the road the next day, winning money in a venture capital competition, and attracting new professional investors to the company. He still has a ton of work to do with this promising startups, but I am glad we could help along the way.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Entrepreneurship & Innovation & Beer

I am often asked "How do people find these great technologies that become the cornerstone of a great business?". The answer is "At happy hour". Specifically, one that involves a lot of smart technical guys at a great engineering school. There's one coming up at Cornell, so if you are an entrepreneur in search of a technological spark, or a smart technologist who is looking for someone to help you start a business, you should attend this event:


This is where some great companies have started


And if you already have a great business idea, you can go to see one of my favorite entrepreneurs, Jason Springs of Geneweave Biosciences, speak. He's a great public speaker and always has something worthwhile to say.