San Diego Bootstrappers Breakfast group meets at 7:30am on 4th Friday of the month. January meeting will have a roundtable discussion focus on lesson learned and promises to provide useful advise for high-tech startups.
The roundtable meetings are moderated by Mark Fitchmun, founding partner principal of Somatek who is excited to foster technology entrepreneurship and to facilitate serious discussions of ideas and resources.
More about Mark Fitchmun, our San Diego moderator: he is a founding partner principal of Somatek, is a serial entreprenuer with over 25 years of experience in developing products for both biomedical research and FDA regulated clinical applications. Clinical projects have included antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, small recombinant proteins, and viruses. Research products have included assay kits and reagents, purification equipment and supplies.
Jeremy Leval is currently an MBA student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At the young age of ten, Jeremy started his first entrepreneurial venture, Megamix Productions, DJing birthday parties for grade school aged children with only two plastic disco balls and a karaoke machine. Within five years, Megamix Productions acquired professional equipment, grew its client base and became registered as a legal corporation in the state of Illinois.
When Jeremy was sixteen years old, he realized there was a growing demand for graphic work in the eBay seller community. In an attempt to capitalize on this opportunity, Jeremy taught himself graphic design and eventually grew his client base to over one hundred clients (including such manufacturers as Everlast Generators , VR3, and Salamander Sound Innovations Inc.). While working with these manufacturers, Jeremy learned their process for contacting, coordinating and negotiating with international manufacturing facilities.
By his second year as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Jeremy had successfully imported consumer electronics and glass art from China, India and Nepal. Recently, Jeremy has started a student based ride sharing website called IlliniRides.com to meet the growing demand for ride sharing amongst students at the University while lowering transportation costs and promoting green travel..
Bootstrappers Breakfast is sponsoring a new local group for high-tech entrepreneurs. The Champaign Bootstrappers Breakfast group has early morning meetings on 4th Wednesday of the month.
The roundtable meetings are moderated by Eyal Amir and Jeremy Leval. They are excited to foster tech entrepreneurship by facilitating communication to share ideas and resources.
“I’m the Co-Founding CEO of FasPark (the street-parking app), and a professor of computer science at the university of Illinois. I love making technology that changes people’s lives. Looking forward to meeting all of you entrepreneurs that dream big,” said Eyal Amir.
About your Champaign moderators:
Eyal Amir is Co-Founding CEO of FasPark (AI Incube, Inc) and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD from Stanford University, and is the winner of multiple awards for his Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, including best PhD thesis in Computer Science at Stanford University (2001-2) and a Top-10 to Watch in AI by IEEE (2006). He is interested in entrepreneurship and technology that affects people’s lives.
Jeremy Leval is currently an MBA student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At the young age of ten, Jeremy started his first entrepreneurial venture, Megamix Productions, DJing birthday parties for grade school aged children with only two plastic disco balls and a karaoke machine. Within five years, Megamix Productions acquired professional equipment, grew its client base and became registered as a legal corporation in the state of Illinois.
Recently, Jeremy has started a student based ride sharing website called IlliniRides.com to meet the growing demand for ride sharing amongst students at the University while lowering transportation costs and promoting green travel.
If you are interested in becoming a facilitator at one of our breakfast, please contact us. Moderator positions are volunteer and require facilitation skills and a demonstrated passion for entrepreneurship.
Every month Corey Haines and Sarah Gray do a series of free office hours where we give technical advice on your project. We also host a “Dinner with Techies” through Grub With Us. This is modeled on a Bootstrappers Breakfast meeting — a small table of people discussing their technical issues, and getting advice from us and each other. They’re really fun: good food, good advice and meeting new people.
Starting out as a software development company in 2001, Code 42 Software is the creator of CrashPlan and CrashPlan PRO, the award-winning onsite, offsite and cloud backup solution for consumers and businesses.
Today we continue to deliver high-performance, easy-to-use hardware and software solutions that protect the world’s data.
This will be a great meeting.
Date: July 28th, 2011
Time: 7:30 -9 am
Venue: Wilde Roast Cafe 65 Main St SE, Minneapolis, MN
Bootstrappers Breakfasts® group welcomes special guest – Deborah Shea who will share her “Billboards in the Desert” website tips.
The roundtable discussion will cover why you have a business website
Increase your prospects list
Convert more prospects into leads and customers
And brand your business to drive the goals created above as a total process
Date: July 26th, 2011
Time: 7:30 -9 am
Venue: Heavenly Cafe 3116 Oak Road Walnut Creek, CA
As Hellbent’s CEO and President, Deb Shea provides oversight to all campaign development and execution, exploring with her team the confluence of creative design, strategy, function, and technology. She founded Hellbent Marketing in 2003 after many years in art and creative director roles within design studios and Silicon Valley tech companies that served a global market. In these positions Deb led teams that spanned Europe, India and Asia, inspiring collaboration among multiple language and cultural groups and creating new graphical standards for online design. This deep experience in brand strategy and outbound marketing materials for sales, web, trade, video and print production is the foundation of Hellbent Marketing. After five years of steady growth, a stream of happy, repeat clients and more than 130 awards for excellence in marketing and creative design, Hellbent added extensive online and SEO expertise services in 2008.
She is the Immediate Past President of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) in Silicon Valley and on the Board of Directors for the Peninsula Symphony and the Redwood City Education Foundation. Chosen by the Silicon Valley Business Times as a “2010 100 Top Women of Influence,” Deb was also named a 2010 Top Woman Entrepreneur by Women Entrepreneur Magazine. In 2010, Hellbent Marketing received multiple American Graphic Design honors from the prestigious Graphic Design USA magazine and the 2009 Business of the Year Award from NAWBO-SV.
Mr. Rao will join us for a brief discussion on his thesis from his book: Tempo: Implications of Narrative Driven Decision Making for Startups.
Date: July 19th, 2011
Time: 7:30 -9 am
Venue:Coco’s Restaurant 1206 Oakmead Parkway Sunnyvale, CA
“Narrative-Driven Decision Making for Startups”
Startups already make limited use of narrative concepts such as “Product Market Fit” (a classic example of a tempo shift in a story) to make sense of their evolving, chaotic, roller-coaster experiences. Narrative thinking can arm us with a far richer vocabulary of concepts to help make sense of the entrepreneurial journey and manage it more thoughtfully. I will introduce some of the more intuitive and basic concepts, such as archetypes, doctrines and tempo epochs, and challenge breakfast attendees to assess their experiences, current state and future prospects using those concepts.
Venkatesh Venkat writes a blog (Ribbonfarm) http://ribbonfarm.com looking at topics such as philosophy, art, sociology, and business innovation and technology from unusual perspectives. He also consults, does research and has recently published his book Tempo.http://tempobook.com The book has been praised by many including, John Hagel, co-author of The Power of Pull who notes “Tempo is highly original and engaging…In a world where timing is increasingly central to success…an essential read.” Before turning to full-time writing and consulting, he worked in startup, corporate and academic environments for nearly a decade. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan.
RT @dorait: Social media is fragmenting into social platforms that are best of breed for a certain kind of social engagement. http://t.c ... #2012/02/02
