Innovate Pasadena is, as usual, leading the charge to showcase the Tech Community in the Greater Pasadena area. Their next event is a week long extravaganza of Pitchfests, Hackathons, Seminars, and more during the week of 3/10. Check it out on their site at: Innovate Pasadena. Many Pasadena Angels will join the events, and I’ll be judging apps at the Hackathon. See you there!
The Pasadena Innovation Council organized a great tech executive meeting in Pasadena on Friday. A group of 20 or so local entrepreneurs gathered at Jones’ coffee to meet, share stories, and talk over new ventures. This is another good step toward pulling together the tech community in the greater Pasadena area. It was a great crowd. Ted Tekippe, CEO of Doublebeam joined us, as did Kevin Scanlon, Chairman of the Pasadena Angels. Andy Wilson, CEO […]
Pasadena may be the best tech story never told. Somehow the home of IdeaLab, OpenX, CalTech, Art Center College of Design, and JPL doesn’t have much of a reputation as a innovation hub. A number of tech companies, such as Bluebeam and Materia, are quietly building powerful businesses, and many startups are in Old Town. Still, Pasadena never hits anyone’s radar as a hot tech destination. We can put a rover on Mars repeatedly, but […]
There are days when I feel like we’ve gotten a bit carried away with social media. You get bombarded with Facebook requests–P&G wants me to “like” their consumer products, as if Tide is my best pal. You can’t go to a website without getting hit with requests to do something on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, ad nauseum. But once in a while, someone gets it right and delivers a social experience that benefits the consumer […]
I was lucky enough to be at LaunchPad LA last night to hear Dustin Dolginow from Atlas Ventures/AngelList.co coach the incoming class on how best to use AngelList to fund their companies. Much of the advice was basic–have your elevator pitch down, raise enough $$ for 18 months runway, etc. Then Dustin shifted to “crowdfunding SEO” — how to get discovered, understood, and funded on AngelList. We learned the details of how to interact with networks of […]
At a recent accelerator event on the West Side, a friendly young founder told me that he had been coached by his mentor not to talk to Angel groups. As a Pasadena Angel, I wanted to be shocked, but I wasn’t. The Angel funding process can be arduous. But as a community, we have to figure out how Angels can effectively participate in the development of accelerator-based companies. With the VC ranks shrinking, founders need […]
New companies are being created at stunning speed by today’s founders. If you can’t keep up, you are dead. As you may have gathered from my blog, I’ve spent the last couple of months visiting with companies and incubators. My key takeaway–companies are being created faster and more cheaply than I would have believed possible. Let me give you a few examples: SwingbySwing Golf created an iPhone/Android app that lets golfers use the GPS in their […]
Tuesday, I joined Charles Buhler and Matt Nishiguchi, the founders of inLife (www.inLife.co), for a quick tour of the LaunchPad accelerator and a visit with Sam Teller. The quick takeaways….the space is very cool, and Sam has more energy than any other 3 people I know. First, the space. Very Santa Monica…you enter off the alley, follow a series of miniature signs to find the space and Sam. They are giving you an intelligence test […]
The MIT event mentioned in my last post was held at the beautiful new Synergy Business Technology Center (www.synergybtc.com ) in Santa Barbara. Michael Holliday, architect who conceived the incubator and designed the space has built one of the most inspired environments I have seen in a very long time. Take a look at these photos: An incubator 2 blocks from the beach? Count me in.
More than 150 MIT alums gathered Wednesday night for a discussion of incubators/accelerators. Appropriately enough, we gathered in the about-to-open Synergy Business and Technology Center, Santa Barbara’s latest incubator. The panel had many kind words for the incubator concept, but generated some controversy around the investments made by some accelerators. Photo: www.noozhawk.com The Synergy Center is a restored lemon packing plant, with a cool industrial feel—the ceilings are 30 feet high, and the building is […]
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