A Franco-American Platform on Entrepreneurship
The Young Entrepreneurs Initiative (YIE) is a non-profit network managed by the Office for Science and Technology of the French Embassy in the United States.
It’s mission is to promote the French environment for innovation and entrepreneurship, help US-based entrepreneurs leverage resources and partners to start a technology venture in France, and foster collaboration in both directions between French and American entrepreneurship ecosystems.
East Bay Innovation Group (www.eBig.org)
Startups/VCs – Berkeley SIG: How to Bake User Experience Strategy Into Your Startup
Monday, March 16th, from 6:30-9PM
University of California Berkeley Extension, Golden Bear Building
UC Extension Classroom, Second Floor, Room 211
1995 University Avenue
Berkeley, California
(Two blocks from Downtown Berkeley BART)
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Angel Capital Expo
Thursday, April 30, 2009; 7:30am-1:30pm
PG&E Auditorium
77 Beale St., San Francisco, CA
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TAPPING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
Dear E-Conference Friends,
Once again the Stanford Graduate School of Business is holding its annual Entrepreneurship Conference – one of the most successful events of its kind at Stanford University.
The annual GSB Entrepreneurship Conference is taking place on Wednesday, February 25. This year’s conference features keynote speaker Paul Orfalea, Founder of Kinko’s. The conference program consists of a series of interactive panels and seminars featuring prominent figures in the entrepreneurial and investor community. These events will bring together veteran entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, academics, students, and industry experts in an insightful and active engagement.
Registration is open!! Get your ticket for the E-Conference early before they sell out. This year’s GSB E-Conference is the culmination of Stanford University’s third annual Entrepreneurship Week, February 18-25 (http://eweek.stanford.edu). Events will take place every day and many are free and open to everyone. For more information on the E-Conference, please visit www.econference.org.
Sincerely,
Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Stanford University
The UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education has three upcoming programs that might be of interest to you:
Pricing for Profitability in the Information Age
Pricing for Profitability in the Information Age will enable you to take your products and services to new levels of profitability — even now. The program is led by the top experts and researchers in the field of pricing. The lead professor is Teck Ho, who has won the highest teaching award three years in a row at the Haas School of Business (2004 to 2006) and consults on Pricing with many of the Fortune 500. He is joined by three other star faculty members. Upon completion of the program, you will be provided a UC Berkeley certificate and be invited to join our alumni group.
Program Details: http://executive.berkeley.edu/programs/pricing/
Program Dates: February 24-27, 2009
Program Price: $5,445
Negotiations: the Art of Working with People to Get Things Done
At the Negotiations Program you will learn key negotiation skills and put them into practice through in-class exercises. You will receive feedback on your negotiated outcomes in debrief sessions—enabling you to improve your skills throughout the two-day program. Additionally, you will be provided with two self-assessment tools that we will complete in class. The program is led by Holly Schroth, a well-known negotiations expert, who is an award winning lecturer at UC Berkeley and consultant to numerous Silicon Valley companies. She is one of the leading authors of negotiation exercise materials which are used worldwide by educators and trainers.
Program Details: http://executive.berkeley.edu/programs/negotiations/
Program Dates: January 12-13, 2009 (in San Francisco)
Program Price: $1,895
Product Management: Translating Market Opportunities into Profitability
Designed for Product Management professionals, this intensive 5-day program will teach you to build profitable products your customers will love. The program is taught by top faculty at the Haas School of Business, who have won awards for excellence in teaching, do cutting edge research, and consult regularly for high tech companies. At the end of the program, participants will be awarded a certificate of completion by the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education and become part of a large and active alumni network.
Program Details: http://executive.berkeley.edu/programs/pm
Program Dates: April 27 – May 1, 2009
Program Price: $5,995
The October eBig.org Venture Capital/Startup forum will feature top Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists speaking about the impacts of the Wall Street meltdown on Venture Capital.
The Alliance for Community Development and the Bay Area Council announce:
Deal Presentation Opportunities for Asian and Minority-Owned/Led Companies who Seek Equity Investments
The Alliance for Community Development and the Bay Area Council are seeking Asian and other minority-owned or led companies that have innovative scalable business models and wish to make a fundraising pitch to investors at Bay Area Capital Connections III: Investment and Business Resources for Companies in Urban Markets. This conference and networking event seeks to facilitate equity capital access for companies interested in “double bottom line” performance goals-i.e both market rate financial returns and the creation of jobs for low/moderate income residents of the Greater Bay Area.The conference and presentations will take place on Friday, October 24, 2008, at the Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA.This 1-day conference includes high profile keynote speakers, 6 workshops offering practical advice on raising equity, developing fundable management teams and marketing plans, understanding valuations and exits, and accessing alternative sources of capital. Continential breakfast, lunch, and a networking reception are included. This is our third annual conference after two successful events in 2006 and 2007.
Nominate Your Company
Ten companies will be selected to make a presentation to a panel of venture capital/angel investors and a larger audience of conference attendees including other investors, bankers, and entrepreneurs.
To nominate your company for consideration, see Call for Companies section at www.allianceforcommunitydevelopment.org/news.html and follow the instructions on how to register and submit your nomination. Finalists will be selected in accordance with the listed criteria and on a competitive basis.Final presenters will have an opportunity to receive professional coaching on how to improve their investor presentations at 2 group sessions scheduled prior to the conference.
Deadline to submit your nomination: August 31, 2008
In conjunction with MindCommerce.com, Consultiq partner David Howard has published a market intelligence report on paid blogging.
Paid blogging has been flying “under the radar,” lost among all of the other word-of-mouth marketing techniques. There is, of course, a lot of chatter about paid blogging on blogs themselves, but this report pulls together from various sources the most pressing issues and considerations into one concise report and provides key insights and specific recommendations that bloggers, advertisers and ad networks can put to use immediately.
Key Findings
· Sponsored blogging is a nascent, but growing, advertising vehicle with the potential to represent a substantial share of Internet advertising spending. It has the potential to be a $2 billion market 5% of online ad spending by 2011.
· Sponsored blog posts are a unique online advertising vehicle in that they provide for more text and context than pay-per-click ads or banner ads.
· Typical payments for sponsored blog posts are less than $10. But there are many things that bloggers and paid-blogging ad networks could do to increase that figure.
· As bloggers invest more time and emotion in their blogs, they start to look ways to make money from blogging.
· Bloggers walk a fine line between adhering to truth in advertising laws and maintaining a strong, trusting, readership base.
“Bloggers who reported spending 20 or more hours per week on blogging tend to be making money from their blog (75%) and tend to be getting paid for blog posts (75%).”
Target Audience
· Advertising agencies: sponsored blogging is a creative new medium are you fully briefed so that you can brief your clients?
· Advertisers: gain an understanding of the mechanics and considerations behind sponsored blogging, and what to look for when you are ready to spend.
· Paid Bloggers: learn what steps you can take to increase the value of your blog and the amount you get paid for each post.
· Sponsored blog ad networks: there are specific steps you can take to increase the average payment per blog post and provide better value to advertisers.
· Online advertising networks: sponsored blogging threatens to encroach on pay-per-click and banner advertising spending. Are you positioned to defend or capture territory?
· Traditional print publishers: understand the threat that sponsored blogging represents to your advertising revenue. Do you have a counter-strategy?
· Readership, circulation and traffic auditors: what new products could you introduce that tap this growing advertising segment?
The East Bay Innovation Group has expanded its Venture Capital/Startups SIG to Berkeley, and Consultiq partner David Howard will be chairing the meetings at the Berkeley location.
Over sixty people last Thursday crowded into the International conference center at SRI International in Palo Alto for a luncheon sponsored by the Province of Alberta, Canada, entitled Investing in Innovation Systems – Technology Commercialization and Cross Border Partnerships. The speakers included politicians, venture capitalists and business CEOs interested in investing and partnering across the Canadian – U.S. border.
The luncheon comes on the heels of a new CDN $178 million dollar program by the Alberta Advanced Education and Technology Ministry that includes initiatives to attract and strengthen venture capital investments in Alberta, a science and research tax credit to boost research and development in Alberta, and innovation vouchers for young companies that can be redeemed for access to labs and design and fabrication centers.
$100 million will be set aside to create the Alberta Enterprise Corporation, which will be a venture capital fund of funds for co-investment in early stage venture capital funds focused on advanced technology sectors. The investment funds in turn will make individual investments targeting life sciences, environmental technologies, information and communications technology and nanotech. It’s a clear example of the province of Alberta using tar-sand oil windfalls to diversify and broaden the provinces economic base.
The 10% tax credit for Alberta companies provides a refund for up to $400,000 against eligible expenses for science, research and experimental development. It is intended to encourage companies to do more R&D in Alberta and draw more R&D intensive knowledge based companies to the province.
More details are on the website for the province of Alberta’s Advanced Education and Technology Ministry.
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