Today, I learned quite a great deal about business and would like to share. I went to RIT’s annual Entrepreneur Conference, a business, serial entrepreneur, and startup focused conference featuring many local and non-so local business minded folks. Starting bright and early at 8AM (ugh) and going until around 3-4PM, there were 3 main lecture blocks, with a keynote in the middle from Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText, a enterprise-focused software company in Silicon Valley. I attended a “Business 101” panel, then “Valuation of Early Risk Technology” lecture, and closed with a quite interesting “Starting a Video Game Company” talk, which made it quite a busy day and impressed me quite a deal with my college. I wish they would pull off events of this quality more frequently! Anyways, let me enlighten you on everything except the video game talk, which I will save for part 2 and its own separate article!
Business 101
Three main principles of entrepreneurship are:
- having a market or an opportunity
- resources; money, technology, or IP
- a good management team; people
With your idea and these items, use your passion to make things happen. You must remain very devoted to your idea and your team. You cannot handle everything, but you should be able to trust and delegate stuff to your team. Find a mentor and advisory board to review your situation with monthly.
One of the surprising ideas that was brought up was how the current US economic downtown was a good thing for business. People with cash are willing to invest it in new and different methods, along with being able to get talented people for cheap rates. You need a plan to get to market, but with angel investors and new communities today, it’s far easier to find someone willing to invest than previously.
Valuation of Early Risk Tech
To be honest, this talk was a bit out of my league. Featuring Ted Hagelin, a professor from Syracuse University, he went deep into the economics and logistics of measuring value. He had made complaints about the USPTO, stemming from the 6 years it took him to get a patent on his method of valuing tech. It was a foreign area for me, but I able to salvage a bit from his talk.
Keynote
The keynote talk was the highlight of my day, from Ross Mayfield, mentioned above. He gave a broad overview of web 2.0, the technologies it has presented to the public, and how his company uses them to generate value in companies. He had a very open way of talking, with the ability to split the divide between the know-it-all nerd and the unfamiliar person quite well. During my time out in Silicon Valley, I found a very sharp disparity between those who know every single VIP in the Valley and those outside the Valley who could care less. It’s very easy in Silicon Valley to get wrapped up in grand ideas and have your thoughts supported by those around you, when no one else cares… He also presented some very good stories from taking risks with his business, that others would shy away from. He mentioned finding a CEO through a blog post and LinkedIn, and publicly documenting the process. Being open and accepting help from customers to generate value seemed to be the main trend from web 2.0.
Overall, a very well done conference with lots to learn from and quite an impressive show from RIT. It was a bit more formal than a Barcamp, but still informal enough that you could ask questions during a presentation, a format which I really enjoy. Keep following me for Part 2, where I will discuss the video game industry, an industry that I’m quite passionate about!