Making Lemonade

In today’s economy, businesses are failing—that’s a fact. But as you can see from the Wall Street Journal article written by Timothy Aeppel, As Manufacturers Buckle, Winners Emerge from Havoc, there are ways to take the lemons that the marketplace is throwing you, and create lemonade. The article is a long one, but it’s a good read and certainly worth your time as you think about your business and how it will need to change in order to grow and prosper.

Brand-Yourself.com Wins Award at Kairos Summit

I’m delighted to post this information on a group of very talented students from Syracuse University and members of the Couri Hatchery which is located inside the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship. It comes from the Brand-Yourself.com blog.

Brand-Yourself.com won the marketing award at the first annual Kairos summit this past weekend in New York city. We were selected as one of only three companies to receive an honor at the summit, which brought together the top 100 most innovative student startup companies in the country at the Intrepid Air, Sea, and Space Museum in New York City. We were presented with the award by Admiral Owens and the president of Adaptive Marketing, Jay Sung.

The Kairos summit was a groundbreaking event which brought together the most passionate, professionally minded students and world leaders from across the globe in the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Congratulations to RJ, Pete, Trace and Evan.

Women Entrepreneurs' Rock!

Yesterday was a spectacular day here in Syracuse. Yes, the weather was cold but the conversation on entrepreneurship was red hot as we hosted the seventh annual WISE (Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship) Symposium. Over 1,000 women entrepreneurs attend this wonderful event. The group heard from a wide range of speakers which include three inspiring keynotes from Cindy Solomon, Linda Dulye and Melissa Aronson (Emme). What was particularly interesting was to watch those in attendance use the day to learn from our speakers, learn from each other, and enhance their personal networks. The business expo, which was added to the program for this year, sold out and will be a permanent addition to the event. This program also was a great opportunity for those in attendance to hear more about our WISE Center, which is a permanent location to help women entrepreneurs take their thoughts and dreams of a business, and turn them into an entrepreneurial reality. As one of my staff is so fond of saying: women entrepreneurs’ rock!

Angel Investors Recap 2008

From Jeff Cornwall of Belmont University and his excellent blog on all things entrepreneurship.

Angel investors were just as active in 2008 when measured in terms of deal flow, but the money they pumped into these deals was down from the previous year according to the annual summary conducted by The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.
Some additional findings from this report:

§ 55,480 firms received angel investments in 2008, a 2.9% increase over 2007 -- as I have been telling folks, there is still money out there
§ Dollar flow into these deals was down 24% from the previous year -- an indication of a more cautious stance by investors
§ Healthcare and software led the way in deals -- no surprise here
§ Exits in 2008 were mostly through mergers and acquisitions (70%). 26% of exits were through bankruptcy. Only 4% of exits happened via an IPO -- thank you Sarbanes-Oxley for killing this as an option.
§ Most of the angel deals were still seed stage or early start-up
§ Yield rates for these angels were down to 10%. Just as comparison the yield rate in 2005 was 23%.

Thanks to Jeffrey Sohl at UNH for putting this report together each year.

The Real Credit (Card) Crunch

On Wall Street and in the popular press, the words “Credit Crunch” have taken on a life almost of their own. And while it means one thing to the investment banks, the car companies and other large Fortune 500 businesses, to the entrepreneur it can mean something entirely different, something entirely more focused on the day to day aspect of running a business. Take a look at the article that ran in the Saturday Wall Street Journal by Jane J. Kim, Credit Woes Hit Home.

We're Cool!

Oh, it’s good to be cool. But are you cool when the Economist magazine say’s you’re cool or does that automatically make you, well, less than so. In any event, a friend from the left coast sent this to me and made me promise that I would post it on the blog.

But here it is, in a subheading to the piece that is a special report on entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurialism has become cool. The lead of the article begins with:

VICTOR HUGO once remarked: “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” Today entrepreneurship is such an idea.
The triumph of entrepreneurship is driven by profound technological change. A trio of inventions—the personal computer, the mobile phone and the internet—is democratising entrepreneurship at a cracking pace. Today even cash-strapped innovators can reach markets that were once the prerogative of giant organisations.

The piece brings an interesting international flare to a subject that is all too often US-focused.

Twitter

I’m trying to get Twitter…I really am.

For me, as someone in the halls of academia, I use Twitter as a source for interesting articles, posts, video’s etc that will help me in my classes, my discussions with students and my conversations with entrepreneurs. I also get the value if I’m a political candidate or someone working in the Beltway. But if I was back in my hard-driving days of running a business, I’m not sure if I would see it the same way, which is the reason that I’m trying to understand the value of Twitter.

After reading the recent blog from Josh Bernoff, perhaps I’m a bit closer to getting the value of Twitter. Take a look at see what you think.