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Entrepreneur Leaps From Autos to Art Online

by David Howard, June 25, 2009 | Comments (2)

	Lyn Williams Finds Inexpensive Labor to Support Her Startup In 2003, Lyn Williams was working in the auto industry in the mid-west, but even then she saw the writing on the wall. So, she enrolled in an MBA program at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University and earlier this year took a severance package from her former employer about a week after she received ...
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Energy Empowered on Clean Tech Open

by David Howard, December 1, 2008 | Comments

Runners-up In the Recent Clean Tech Open Business Plan Competition

I conducted a virtual interview with Saumya Garg, co-founder of Energy Empowered, a recent runner-up in the Smart Power Prize category in the 2008 California Cleantech Open business plan competition. The Clean Tech Open is an organization of businesses, entrepreneurs, academics and investors working to foster the development of clean technology startups. Their marquee event each year is the business ...

More Common I.P. Startup Mistakes

by David Howard, August 14, 2008 | Comments

Dana Shultz highlights more potential pitfalls

In the second part of our interview, attorney Dana Shultz cautions entrepreneurs using open-source to fully understand the implications of the open-source license they use - "open-source" doesn't mean no rules whatsoever. And depending on the terms of the open-source license, startups may find that by incorporating open-source technology with their proprietary software, they've inadvertently turned their proprietary development into ...

Common startup IP mistakes

by David Howard, August 14, 2008 | Comments

Dana Shultz suggests how to avoid them, and ensure that you own your product

Dana Shultz is an attorney in Piedmont, California who sees startups fall into the same intellectual property traps time and time again. For example, one of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make is contracting out development work without first ensuring the proper agreements are in place to grant ownership of the final product to the startup company. The entrepreneur may be unpleasantly surprised ...

eBig.org Extends Startup SIG to Berkeley

by David Howard, July 28, 2008 | Comments

The Venture Capital/Startup SIG meets on the 3rd Monday of the month in Berkeley

Full disclosure: Your correspondent is the co-chair of the East Bay Innovation Group's Berkeley Venture Capital/Startup SIG. On Monday evening, July 21st, the conference room at Siemens Technology-to-Business' office in Berkeley was packed to capacity for the first monthly meeting of eBig's Berkeley Venture Capital/Startup SIG. The eBig VC/Startup SIG has met in Pleasanton for years, and will continue ...

Startup Talent Match

by David Howard, July 28, 2008 | Comments

Matching team members in a social setting

We caught up with Rose Riskind, organizer of Startup Talent Match, at her health club, where a very competitive game of racquetball provided an auditory metaphor for the challenge that young tech companies face in finding, recruiting and retaining top-quality talent. Riskind, a former executive recruiter and now founder of her own venture startup was uniquely placed to see ...

Alberta - California Partnerships

by David Howard, June 20, 2008 | Comments

Over sixty people on 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 ...

Mike Paunovich on triple bottom line reporting

by David Howard, June 3, 2008 | Comments

People. Planet. Profits. We all understand the last item. But socially-conscious entrepreneurs, like Mike Paunovich of LocalBizBlogs.com, give equal consideration to the environmental and human impact of their enterprises. This is triple bottom line (TBL) reporting. The term Triple Bottom Line reporting was coined in 1994 by John Elkington of SustainAbility, a strategic consulting firm. In 1995, SustainAbility developed the "3P" phrase - people, planet, profits. Industrial giant Dow Chemical first adopted sustainability reporting in 1999, and their Global Public Report 2003 including ...

Drawing strength from your Board of Directors

by David Howard, May 16, 2008 | Comments

A Board of Directors, says organizational psychologist Dr. Peter Newton, must have a clearly defined purpose and mission and clear leadership, just like the company which it oversees. A key task of the board is the oversight of the performance of the CEO, and when the relationship between the CEO and the Chairman of the Board is strong, it can be a source of strength for the CEO. But when it's not, it can set the two groups, management and the ...

Startups need to talk about authority

by David Howard, May 5, 2008 | Comments

Organizational psychologist Dr. Peter Newton says that one of the hardest things for the founders of startups to do is to talk openly about assigning authority within the organization. But it's also one of the most important. Once the organization has determined who will hold authority, those leaders must then understand when and how to delegate authority and activities to subordinates. Dr. Newton has published five books, the latest of which is "Law Firm Psychology - A Quick Guide" which ...

Regulatory environment hampers nanotechnology

by David Howard, April 28, 2008 | Comments

We spoke to Kayte Fischer, President of the UC Berkeley Nanotechnology Club, at the 2008 Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum. Kayte says that widespread commercialization of nanotechnology is hampered by a maze of regulations - as many as twenty-four regulatory agencies may govern various nanotechs. Further, nanotechnologists are moving cautiously, for fear of generating the same kind of consumer backlash that the genetically modified organism (GMO) industry faced. http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~nano/

Selling clean tech into Alberta

by David Howard, April 10, 2008 | Comments

Step number one in getting your cleantech innovation adopted by producers in the booming Alberta, Canada oil and natural gas industry: Introduce it to one of the many Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) firms supplying Alberta producers. Step two: Go to Edmonton. So says Amanda Babichuk, Investment Attraction Manager for the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Babichuk spoke at the Canadian Consulate office in San Francisco at an "Insider's Breakfast - Opportunities in Canada." Alberta's economy ...

Canadian opportunities for tech companies, workers

by David Howard, April 2, 2008 | Comments

Crude oil futures and gas prices at the pump seem to have everyone grumbling. Everyone, that is, except the Canadians. Specifically, Canadians in the oil-rich province of Alberta. With oil trading over $100 per barrel, it's profitable to extract crude oil from the tar sands in northern Alberta. And once again, the province is enjoying an oil boom. Alberta claims to be number two in oil reserves, behind only Saudi Arabia, with 177 billion barrels versus the Saudi's 259.3 billion ...

Tips for U.S. startups looking to break into markets in China

by David Howard, March 28, 2008 | Comments

Young tech companies have frequently used the "Road Warrior" approach to sell into China, by flying a U.S.-based Asia-Pacific sales rep back and forth across the Pacific. Popping up in Shanghai one day and Shenzen the next, these Mad Maxes are subject to burnout and not nearly as effective as having an in-country presence.Others startups have tried setting up in Hong Kong. Still, costs there are rising along with inflation, and as the Chinese market has grown, many customers are ...

Guest contributor David Howard: before choosing a name, Scrabble it

by David Howard, March 5, 2008 | Comments

I just completed another naming exercise for a client, and in doing it was reminded of an offbeat and simple test I came up with several years to qualify brand and product names -- by testing them in Scrabble. Using a small sample survey, I've found that successful names tend to score higher in Scrabble. YouTube, the world's largest video sharing site, scores an impressive 12, while fast-growing Facebook weighs in with a rack-busting total of 19. Well-known brand names ...

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