Miles Lasater Blog

CT Innovation RFP Delayed

Miles — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:10:09 +0000

Looks like the state innovation system RFP is being pushed back to a later date. I would guess that respondents wanted more time and the state purchasing process is probably presenting some challenges. I applaud the efforts to pursue a flexible and collaborative process. I can only imagine the challenges of fitting that into the state’s purchasing process which is likely filled with rules meant to prevent fraud and waste by inserting competition and removing personal judgement. (Reminds me of Philip K Howard’s theory of how to improve government by re-introducing judgement – what do you think?)

Here is the notice that was emailed out from the state today.

Notice to Potential Innovation Ecosystem Applicants – 2-3-12

CI’s TechStarts (not Techstars)

Miles — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:38:21 +0000

While one part of the state is encouraging private creation of accelerator programs (and providing some matching funds for the first few years), another part of the state is doing it now. In the last week or so, Connecticut Innovations has announced the TechStart Fund for student or early stage technology companies. I’m excited we’re going to be neighbors in Science Park.

I talked to Luke Weinstein (one of the mentors) and got the scoop. I love the speed with which this is coming together!

It’s a 10 week accelerator program with $25,000 in non-recourse loan to the company (CI does not get any ownership in the company or require any personal guarantee for paying the loan back). At least half the team is expected to participate in New Haven fulltime during the program which starts in early March.

If you’re interested, act fast as the deadline to apply is Feb 22.

Let me know if you’ve heard any more details.

Computer as Teacher. Teacher as Coach.

Miles — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:27:33 +0000

I’m facisnated by the possibilites in embracing technology in education. We’ve only scratched the surface. There appears to be so much oppertunity here.

About a year ago, I wrote a post about my view of the school of the future. I was excited to read another vision today in Techcrunch. Vinod Khosla posted an article on called “Will We Need Teachers Or Algorithms?”

He does a great job articulating something I’ve been trying to describe to my friends for some time.

There are new key trends that I see emerging in education enabled by advancing technology: namely decentralization and gamification. By understanding these trends, it is much easier to imagine why we won’t need teachers or why we can free up today’s teachers to be mentors and coaches. Software can free teachers to have more human relationships by giving them the time to be guidance counselors and friends to young kids instead of being lecturers who talk at them. This last possibility is very important—in addition to learning, schools enable critical social development for children through teacher student relationships and interacting with other children—classrooms of peers and teachers provide much more than math lessons. And by freeing up teachers’ time, technology can lead to increased social development rather than less as many assume.

Do you buy it? If not, why won’t it work?

And how long will it take for us to get there? My bet: by the time the first iPhone baby enters high school, we’ll be seeing a lot more adoption. By then, the parents will have grown up with computers and the students will have grown up with smartphones. Let’s hope the teachers and administrators are ready.

Draft of CT Innovation Ecosystem RFQ

Miles — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:57:36 +0000

Still digging through this myself but wanted to share the draft RFQ from the State of Connecticut. What do you think?

“The State of Connecticut is working with entrepreneurs, economic development organizations and institutions to build a world-class system of support for innovation and entrepreneurship. Over the last six months members of Connecticut’s innovation community collaborated to design a framework for this system, which will involve a matrix of organizations and both public and private investment. Before releasing the official Request for Qualifications (RFQ), the State would like input on this Draft RFQ. Please review this document and send all comments and critique to innovationct@gmail.com by 5pm, January 13.”

CT Innovation Ecosystem RFQ – Draft for Comment – 1-5-12

Update on CT Innovation Ecosystem

Miles — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:21:55 +0000

Wondering what was happening with the $5mil/yr funding for the State of Connecitcut (via DECD and CI) to fund building the startup ecosystem? Matt Nemerson, Kip Bergstrom held a couple of update meetings building on the earlier meetings. The deck is below for those that weren’t able to make the meeting.

I did not notice any major changes to the plan – except the timeline is pushed later to fully operational in Q3 2012. The level of detail has increased in particular, the specifics of the goals and the budget are included. Interesting to see the goals include companies growing revenue in addition to jobs. Nice to hear the expressed desire is to be more agile than the typical government program with continuous information and collaboration along the way. (Along these lines, I suggested publishing a draft of the RFP for input before formal release.)

CT Innovation Ecosystem Update Dec 22 2011

Biggest question on my mind is if it is the right timing to start an accelerator or incubator if that is what is on TV and popular right now.

David Fischer continues to offer ideas for different approaches that might attract a lot more national attention. Admittedly, this may be more difficult to get through a political process, but could have a real impact. For example, what if New Haven or the state offered a home buyers program? If you are an entrepreneur that has raised x money (or if we could identify/verify success in the past and desire to start another company – not easy I’m sure), then you get matching funds to buy a house. It can be forgivable loan over 5 years if you make it your primary residence or similar. No way to build the ecosystem like stocking more of the type you want. Definitely interesting.

What do you think of the plan? Any suggestions for improvement?

Call it MakeHaven

Miles — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:44:57 +0000

Since I got excited and joined the effort to create a maker or hackerspace in New Haven, there has been a lot of activity. Here’s a quick breakdown in case you are just tuning in:

Lost of Discussion. We’re up to 34 members on the listserv. (Hope you’ll join, too.) I think there have been 3 or 4 meetings and a growing number of people getting involved. There is definitely excitement about moving forward.
Various Visions. With the excitement comes various different visions for what this maker/hackerspace should be and do. From “for the members by the members” vision of basically putting our garage projects into one clubhouse to a TechShop 10,000+ sq ft with heavy equipment. And lots of debate if the goal should be to drive economic development directly (by say providing a place for startups to make prototypes) or indirectly by increasingly the cool factor of town, attracting interesting people and building a creative community. More specifically Kam laid out a phased approach (start now and start small at 15 people paying $50/month each). Alan put together a whitepaper with his BIG vision which includes shop, lap, conference room, classes and yes the kitchen sink. Rob put together a budget for something that looks to be in between.
Survey. John has taken the approach of asking the community for input on what the vision should be. Here’s a survey that asks what do you want and what would you actually use? Preliminary results are posted online. (If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please don’t read the results yet.)
Locations. We’ve been taking about the right location. Should it be downtown? Large? Small to start? Some of us took a tour of potential locations and and JR took a bunch of photos along the way. That was fun!
Picking a Name. Once we have a name, it is easier to get the legal stuff squared away and start further promotion. Incorporation or even accepting money or other donations will be easier with a name. So, I’ve been promoting the idea of picking a name sooner rather than later. There has been much brainstorming on the topic. It has been argued that “hacker” is still a misunderstood term with only a negative connotation. Others don’t like “make” as they feel it is limiting. I personally like things that people know how to spell, can search for on the web and that explains something about the subject without unnecessarily limiting you. (Read up on tips on naming startups if you’re interested in the subject.) Therefore, I favor MakeHaven. It’s clear you make things here, it is a safe place and related to New Haven. Hits a lot of the checkboxes.

Please share your thoughts below or on the listserv. And share your tools here.

(Photos by JR Logan.)

Subscribe to New Haven Hacker Space

Email:

Visit this group

New Haven Startup Community, There’s More

Miles — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:51:53 +0000

Hartford Courant columnist Rick Green emailed me a few days ago to talk about YEI and entrepreneurship in New Haven. I wanted to share my thoughts here since I didn’t get a chance to talk to him before he ran his article this weekend.

Here are some of the other items of note in the local startup ecosystem. I’m sure I’m not mentioning them all as I put this together quickly, so feel free to add in the comments section.

New Haven Founders: We’re making strides in building the community. The quote from the article is: “But Casey, Rotholtz and Harrison also talk of the importance of creating a local culture of entrepreneurs and the importance of bringing young people with ideas together.” We have 70+ founders in our informal New Haven founders group. Bob and Kate have attended and building good community. Zach, you’re welcome, too.
Plenty of Startups. There are quite a few startups in the area and growing. If you know of more, please add them to my list of New Have startups. And if you think the list should be longer, let’s starup another company
Startup Weekend New Haven. Great energy and attendance at the Startup Weekend last weekend two weeks ago. Check out my recap if you’re interested in more.
Tech Fun. An increasing amount of tech fun including Hackathon @ Yale, HackHaven, HackYale, and the Ruby Meeup. I hear from people everywhere that good engineers are hard to find. Not sure that is different here or else where?
Work Space: If you’re looking for flexible lease terms for startups at an early stage, check out the Grove, CTech and The Bourse. CTech has been quite full and the vibe at the Grove is amazing. The Bourse is beautiful and tons of space although haven’t been in a while.
Universities: Like the activity on-campuses like YES (including the recent pitch competition), YEI as mentioned in the article and the Quinnipiac Entrepreneurial Institute. I hear University of New Haven is working on relater matres although I’m less familiar.
Local VCs and Angels. Over the past few years, we’ve seen more active local VCs. Examples include Elm Street Ventures and Launch. Angels, organized and not as much are around include Top Floor to Angel Investor Forum.
Good Support. And there is great support for entrepreneurs. From startup legal pros like Frank Marco and Paul Hughes to EDC’s CEO Anne Haynes and many others.

Let’s keep building the ecosystem!

Think Act New Haven

Miles — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:54:52 +0000

What can we do to benefit New Haven with $1000 and 1000 hours of volunteer time? New Haven Public Allies wants your suggestions. Looks like an interesting project. But why only $1000? Any how about we brainstorm at hashtag #ThinkActNewHaven as I’m sure not everyone will make the event or fill out the lengthy application form. I’d be all for a public art project like Inside Out to bring the community together and show many that they can be involved in doing something positive and be a subject of art. I’m sure you can think of a lot of other good ideas.

The New Haven Public Allies invite you to the launch of our community project, Think.Act.New Haven. We have $1000 and 1000 hours to devote to a project that will benefit the city of New Haven and we want the inspiration for the project to come from community members like you! Our launch event is a community conversation, which will be happening on Tuesday, November 29th at 5:30pm at the main branch of the New Haven Public Library (133 Elm Street). Refreshments will be available, and all are welcome!

To inspire us to action, we want your ideas! If you have an idea for a project that will better the city of New Haven, please fill out the attached Proposal Application, or simply fill it out online on our website here. The form consists of a few questions asking you to describe your idea for a community project.

As Public Allies, we are committed to strengthening New Haven by completing an innovative team service project that will span five months. We are proud to present Think.Act.New Haven, which will kick-off on November 29, 2011 with a request for project proposals from the community. We hope to gather ideas from the people who know New Haven best—you! We have developed criteria to select a proposal that will meet a demonstrated need in the community. The finalist(s) will work with us to further develop an action plan that satisfies our shared vision. We want you to inspire us and work alongside us, although we, the Public Allies, will have the final say in the design of the project

Sketchbook from Kauffman Foundation

Miles — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:26:27 +0000

Two great videos from Kaufmann Foundation. A few minutes each and worth it so you can easily explain the power of entrepreneurs and startups. (Even talks about finding your true self and being more authentic! Wow!)

3 Things Entrepreneurs Do:

Birth the new (innovation)
Create jobs (young firms create all the new net jobs in US)
Create new net wealth (they claim all new net wealth and founders take only fraction of wealth generated)

What is the magic sauce to have more entrepreneurs in the US? And how to make them more successful?

Services to Products

Miles — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:03:22 +0000

A fellow member of the New Haven Founder group posed an interesting question: how do you transition from being a services company to a product company? If you have an existing customer base that expects you to be building software for them and continuing to support previous projects, how do you make room to build a product and transform the company?

The larger your services company, the harder it is to make this transition. For example, I’ve heard of a case where the management assigned a great team with plenty of resources to build a product – yet they still failed. Why? Because the rest of the company was so used to judging success by short-term revenue, billable hours, that the product was seen as a failure before it even had a chance. It takes time to figure it out and if the opportunity cost is so clear and in everyone’s face constantly, then even despite senior management support, the social pressure can be intense.

While I have not faced this challenge myself directly, I think there are two successful strategies I’ve seen employed:

For a smaller company, you may not face the pressure from other employees, but rather from customers. So, raise prices a lot. You’ll solve your problem quick. Customers will either stop calling on your and you’ll have more time or they will pay more. You may be able to work less and make enough money while you focus on your product development.

For a larger company, you can purchase a product company and hope to keep them separate. Or eventually integrate enough that the product revenue generates services revenue, as well.

What are your thoughts?