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Incuba8LABS in Midland offers space for makers

MID MICHIGAN’S SECOND WAVE- Incuba8LABS, in downtown Midland, will make its debut in November or December, flinging its doors open to the public with much more than desks, conference rooms and office equipment for members and guests to rent daily, weekly, monthly or annually.

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Grassroots Recognition of 30 Years of Entrepreneurship Education Leadership

CONSORTIUM FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION- Did you hear the LAUNCH of National Entrepreneurship Week 2011 by Cathy Ashmore at the “Future of Entrepreneurship Education Summit” in Orlando, Friday, February 18? Thanks to the leadership of Michael Simmons of Extreme Entrepreneurship there was an all-day focus on THE FUTURE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION with 130 specially invited national leaders to discuss this critical issue. You could have heard it streaming live…and hopefully the videos will be available soon. Read More

What Is The Future Of Entrepreneurship Education?

MICHAEL SIMMONS AND MALLA HARIDAT OF YOUNGENTREPRENEUR- Seven top young entrepreneurs and leaders in the entrepreneurship education movement shared their thoughts during a panel at the Future of Entrepreneurship Education Summit (February 18) at theUniversity of Central Florida. The summit, created by Extreme Entrepreneurship Education (also led by young entrepreneurs), gathered over 130 top entrepreneurship education leaders from government, foundations, organizations, media, and corporations to talk about the future of the field.

Their panel was moderated by Donna Fenn, author of UpStarts!, and included:

• Ryan Allis of iContact (earned over $40 million in 2010). Ryan built the firm from its start in July 2003 to its current size of 240 employees and 67,000.

• Scott Gerber of the Young Entrepreneur Council. Scott is a serial entrepreneur and Scott is the most-syndicated young entrepreneurship columnist in the world.

• Trevor Owens of the Lean Startup Machine (LSM). LSM teaches entrepreneurs how to rapidly improve their businesses through a customer feedback process called customer development.

• Chris McCann of Startup Digest. Startup Digest publishes a weekly email newsletter of the best events in 57 cities and 6 Universities to over 100,000 subscribers.

• Caryn Shick of Incuba8. Incuba8 is a series of initiatives that inspire and generate entrepreneurial activity that cultivate cultures of action, fully vetted ideas and make concepts a reality.

• Travis Kiefer of Gumball Capital. Gumball is a social enterprise that has challenged over 3,000 students at 25 schools to raise maximum revenue and awareness on poverty alleviation using only $27 and 27 gumballs.
• Ankur Jain of the Kairos Society. Kairos is a student run, not for profit foundation created to tap the power of the brightest undergraduate entrepreneurs to develop business innovations with global impact.

Watch the Full Panel

To watch the full, 1-hour panel, visit the following links:

• Part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa3VIbHYdIg
• Part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O9dx98j5yc
• Part 3 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyI5KeaispI
• Part 4 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBaJEvofzzY

Visions for the Field

Starting with the end in mind, below are the participants’ personal visions for the field of entrepreneurship education:

• Entrepreneurship education and financial literacy should be required for all high schools.
• There should be viable opportunities as entrepreneurs should be given to those who are not college bound.
• There should be less business plan competitions and more events where youth can test their ideas.
• The overall density of entrepreneurs should increase so entrepreneurs don’t feel alone.
• Students should have their context shifted so they realize they can create businesses that solve big social problems.

Highlights

How do we get there? Below are highlights on strategies panelists provided for aspiring entrepreneurs and those supporting aspiring entrepreneurs:

• Reaching the first 100k is the hardest.  But once you reach this level, it becomes easier to scale.  You’ll need to spend three to four years to reach the $1 million revenue and ten years to reach the $100 million mark.

• It’s important to create business models that aren’t based solely on raising money.  Instead, create a solid product or service and generate sales.  The pay-off should not be the goal of venture capital but rather the creation of a solid business model.

• It’s not about the best idea but the EXECUTION of the idea.  Know the landscape of your industry and your company and know how to play the game of business.

• It’s important to learn how to sell.  You don’t need a product but you will need to have masterful sales skills. Get started selling before you focus on building. Published Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Written by Michael Simmons and Malla Haridat. Michael Simmons is the co-founder of the Future of Entrepreneurship Education Summit and Extreme Entrepreneurship Education. Malla Haridat is the founder of New Designs for Life and a blogger at 9to5entrepreneur.com.

11 for 2011: Riffs on Today’s Entrepreneurship

JENNINGS MOSS OF PORTFORLIO.COM- Spend a few days in the company of entrepreneurs, or devote a solid 12 hours to listening to educators and self-made businesspeople talk about ways to encourage entrepreneurship, and you’ll come away with a few conclusions. That’s what happened to me last week after spending three days in Orlando: the first two spent at a retreat for young entrepreneurs and the third at a summit exploring the future of entrepreneurship education.

Rather than write a lengthy tome on any single topic discussed last week, I’m opting for a different approach (an impending flight back to New York and a looming deadline might have something to do with this). And since this is 2011, I offer not 10 but 11 lessons about the state of entrepreneurship today.

1. The biggest single takeaway from Friday’s marathon summit—organized by the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour and held at the University of Central Florida—is that educators at big and small institutions across the country say their schools are finally tailoring programs to teach about entrepreneurship. That’s definitely a solid development, since business programs traditionally deal with economic theory, supply and demand, and big finance. But just saying your university is adding entrepreneurship courses to a curriculum isn’t enough. Schools need to ensure they’re not just teaching the theory of entrepreneurship, but that they’re developing programs that actually let students create and develop new companies. Plus, they need to recognize that it’s not just business students who can benefit from these courses: would-be engineers, artists, doctors, journalists, and many more would be eager to create their own companies.

2. Following President Barack Obama’s launch of the Startup America program to encourage and support entrepreneurs, the administration sent representatives to Orlando to send the message “we’re here to help.” No one in the audience was critical of this effort. Far from it. The general consensus was it was about time Washington went beyond outreach to corporations and traditional small businesses. But this doesn’t mean the entrepreneurs were pro-government. One very successful creator of a multimillion-dollar company had a wild idea: eliminate as many government functions as possible and turn those tasks over to entrepreneurs.

3. Beyond what the feds and universities are doing, new resources for entrepreneurs are being created seemingly every day. There are intense and exclusive programs like Y Combinator and 500 Startups that will offer guidance, training, and funding for select companies in exchange for equity in companies. There are branded programs by American Express, Bank of America, Cisco Systems, and more to aid entrepreneurs. And there are incubators cropping up all over the country to lend a hand. To find these, you need to do two things: Be creative in looking for them (use online searches with various key words), and don’t get discouraged if you get turned down.

4. The high-tech startups get all the glory, but they only account for a minimal number of startups. Scott Gerber, the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council who has a few businesses in the works, emphasizes this point and says 99 percent of all startup efforts are inherently non-tech. The YEC’s membership is filled with this type of business owner; people like Adam Witty, who founded and leads the Advantage Media Group, a company rooted in one of the oldest pursuits: publishing. Witty’s company mixes the old, putting out books and magazines, with the new through ebooks and multimedia production. Gerber, who briefed the summit on results of a survey of young entrepreneurs, also made clear to include more traditional small-business enterprises like dry cleaners in his call for more entrepreneurship.

5. When someone talks about being a “social entrepreneur,” he’s not talking about running another network like Facebook or LinkedIn. He’s referring to creating a company that either has a noble purpose or takes a creative approach to funding charitable operations. Robert Nicholson is an example of the first. The Ohio native is co-owner and operator of two companies that aid developmentally disabled adults. His companies are all about improving his communities. Ryan Allis is an example of the second. The founder of iContact, an email marketing company for small businesses, Allis mandates that 1 percent of his company’s payroll, 1 percent of equity, 1 percent of product, and 1 percent of employee time goes to supporting nonprofit organizations in North Carolina, where iContact is based.

6. In the example above, notice I used the pronoun “he.” That wasn’t on accident. Men significantly outnumber women in the entrepreneurial ranks, a fact that’s not lost on either gender. During a session Friday on young entrepreneurs, only one of the seven business owners on stage was a woman. Caryn Shick, president and CEO of Opportunity Analysts, suggested one reason for this dearth of women creating their own businesses might have something to do with an aversion to risk, a desire to be more practical or safe with career choices.
7. Don’t just look down the street, across town, or into a neighboring state for fresh leads or the talent to operate your business. Go global. This is a favorite topic for Portfolio.com, and it deserves repeating here. Online employment sites like ODesk can help you find contractors in other parts of the world who may be more cost effective. British Airways is in the second year of its Face-to-Face program to give U.S. entrepreneurs foreign trips to help them grow their business. And groups like the Entrepreneurs’ Organization have programs dedicated to small-scale globalization. The world is getting smaller all the time. And that’s a great thing.

8. My reporter friends may hate me for saying this, but say it I will: Entrepreneurs ask better questions than journalists. During the two days I spent with the two dozen entrepreneurs under the age of 30, I felt like I was the one holding a press conference. They asked question after question about who I was, what my profession was all about, where I saw opportunities, and who my most meaningful interviews were. They peppered each other with similar questions and went deeper to ask probing financial questions without fear of offending anyone. To be an entrepreneur, you have to be all the things journalists should be: inquisitive, curious, and determined to get answers. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to make sure you listen to the answers and take appropriate action.

9. Even if you ask the right questions and get good answers, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by it all and may be in need of some motivation. Here’s one way to get it: Talk to a young entrepreneur. Their energy and drive is simply intoxicating. A prime example is Arel Moodie, one of the partners in the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, a company whose primary purpose is sending successful business owners in their 20s to college campuses around the country. Moodie served as master-of-ceremonies for Friday’s summit, getting the audience to high-five each other in crazy ways, and peppering his remarks with multiple uses of the word awesome. Moodie’s spirit is infectious, and an entrepreneur of any age would gain a boost by being around him.

10. Entrepreneurship breeds more entrepreneurs. Sure, it’s great that the nation’s universities are developing more programs for those who want to create startups. And it’s a welcome sign that Washington is waking up to the power of the entrepreneur. But perhaps the best proponent for taking the plunge is to see your classmate, neighbor, or sibling be successful with a startup. If jumping in all the way is too much of a perceived gamble, try developing a smaller-scale, new company as a sideline to your 9-to-5 job. This trend even has its own, somewhat awkward name: sidepreneurship.

11. All of this leads to one final observation. And there’s nothing special or unique or new to this one. Nike had it right with its corporate slogan. Stop thinking about potentially starting your own business and just do it. It won’t be easy, it won’t be instantly successful, and it won’t come without a healthy amount of mistakes and failure. But it will be all yours—and it could just be the best thing you’ve ever done.Published Monday, February 21, 2011