What are you willing to do with what you’ve been given?

Posted: May 12, 2013 by Bill Cunningham in Leadership, People, Startup
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Joe Carter, Xavier UniversityNetworking is so very important.  Has anyone referred you to another person because they think you might have mutual interests and there might be a deeper reason for you need to connect with that person? That happened to me a few weeks ago.  Jeff Weedman, the CEO of Cintrifuse, suggested that I might be interested in meeting Dr. Victor Garcia, a pediatric surgeon at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.  Jeff described some of the Dr. Garcia’s projects to combat concentrated systemic poverty and thought we should connect.  I immediately knew I needed to meet Dr. Garcia and thought a friend of mine, Owen Raisch (who recently launched the Greater Cincinnati Independent Business Alliance – CiNBA) should meet him as well.   CiNBA is an organization dedicated to building and supporting a strong local business community in Greater Cincinnati. One of Dr. Garcia’s projects included launching new businesses, so this is right on the money for Xavier University‘s and CiNBA’s missions.

Dr. Garcia described a new business venture he is developing with Dan Divelbiss, an environmental engineering graduate student from the University of Cincinnati, and Nate Wildes, an Assistant Brand Manager at the Eureka! Ranch International.  The new venture is an aquaponics business – think a fish tank that grows both fish and vegetables in one integrated, soilless system –  to be launched in Price Hill.  Dr. Garcia, Dan and Nate are collaborating with Diana Vakharia, Price Hill’s Director of Economic Development, on this project.  Diana happens to be a member of the core team that launched CiNBA.  Diana’s goal is to help launch an aquaponics business in Price Hill, so they can hire about 20 people from Price Hill to run the business, and then transition the business into an employee-owned operation.  Diana’s focus  helps create jobs and long-term wealth for the people of Price Hill using a model of economic development created by The Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland, Ohio

Dr. Garcia, explained that “…the aquaponics project serves as one way to help overcome the causes of concentrated disadvantage.”  All too often Dr. Garcia treats the consequences of concentrated disadvantage in the form of gunshot wounds to children.  As a natural problem solver and a highly skilled  surgeon, he realizes that treating the consequences of a problem never overcomes the underlying source of a problem.  He and the others are focused on understanding and attacking the sources of concentrated disadvantage from a systems-thinking perspective to improve the situation.

Would you like to get involved to bring the aquaponics business to life in Price Hill?  Dr. Garcia’s project needs   experienced business professionals and college students to help build and carry out a solid business model for this business venture.  If you would like to involved, watch these three videos and then contact the project (links are available on the www.cincyentre.com website:

1.  http://evergreencooperatives.com/ for a review of the Evergreen Cooperatives model;
2.  http://tinyurl.com/concdisadv to gain an understanding of concentrated disadvantage;
3.  http://tinyurl.com/RW-life-of-purpose to consider what you can do with what you’ve been given.

If these videos stir your interest, please connect with maitia@xavier.edu to find out how you can help.

Chance networking interactions can lead to great opportunities to expand your horizons. Not every interaction will be as fertile as my meeting with Cintrifuse. You will find the more you connect, the more likely you will discover favorable conditions to do great things.

 

Joe Carter’s Links

Cintrifuse logo
http://www.cintrifuse.com		 CINBA LOGO

https://www.facebook.com/GCINBA
evergreen cooperatives logo
http://evergreencooperatives.com/		 eureka ranch logo
http://www.eurekaranch.com/
Price Hill Will logohttp://www.pricehillwill.org/economic-development
Xavier LogoXavier Entrepreneurial Center
http://www.xavier.edu/williams/centers/entrepreneurial-center/index.cfm

© 2013 http://www.cincyentre.com

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The Collective Power of Passion

Posted: May 5, 2013 by Amanda Greenwell in Innovation, People, Startup
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AmandaGreenwellPassionate startups are spreading like wildfire in the region due to the courage of entrepreneurs to gain self-awareness, take risks, and turn great ideas into great businesses like never before. Passionate entrepreneurs work on their ideas constantly and now they take action to launch their ventures fulltime.  Like entrepreneurs, the community has developed great ideas for enabling startups like UpTech and the Brandery to accelerate the next big ideas into reality.  These organizations are startups as well and provide many tools and programs for entrepreneurs to follow their dreams.  The empowerment of entrepreneurs manifests itself in the following ways:

  • Exciting regional collaboration, the Ohio River is no longer the Ohio Ocean
  • Young talent moving into (and back to) and staying in our region
  • The great balance of exciting business opportunities and quality of life
  • A thriving entrepreneur community in the Northern Kentucky / Greater Cincinnati.

Amazing things happen when you follow your dreams. Northern Kentucky University’s tag line says it all: “Dreamers welcome.”  When you welcome dreamers with open arms, give them the tools to succeed, there is an unparalleled power that only collective passion can bring.

Three essential characteristics make up the personality of a successful entrepreneur:

1)     Self-awareness:  Do I have what it takes to be an entreprenur? Successful entrepreneurs have done the hard work to become aware of their talents, gifts, strengths, and weaknesses.  They get clarity on what they want and what they don’t want.  Embarking on a journey to discover who you really are, will only pay dividends in your career and your relationships. Tools like Tom Rath’s book Strengths Finder and programs like Startup Weekend help you discover your inner entrepreneur

2)     Passion:  What do you love to do?  What activities do you engage in that causes you to lose all track of time?  Successful entrepreneurs often get criticized for working all the time, but they do not feel they are even working at all!  Ask a true dreamer about their passion and their eyes light up, enthusiasm erupts, and their conviction wins you over .

3)     A great idea: Do you have the next Google or Prius in your head? Highly self-aware and passionate entrepreneurs generate great ideas almost automatically and continuously.  They clearly see real-world problems and are driven to fix them. These passionate and self-aware entrepreneurs seem to see around corners and invent incredibly effective products and services to solve difficult and complex challenges.

If you have done the work to embark on the journey to self-awareness, discovered your passion, and have the next big idea, seek out the organizations that can help you make your great ideas come true. The Greater Cincinnati Venture Association website provides an inventory of the region’s entrepreneurial assets in their “Greater Cincinnati Entrepreneur Ecosystem” link. Although the Brandery’s application process closed on May 1st, entreprneurs can appy online to UpTech, Northern Kentucky’s Startup Accelerator until May 24, 2013. Check out more links on this column’s website at http://www.cincyentre.com.

Lean Patents Power Start-ups

Posted: April 28, 2013 by Vance VanDrake III in Legal, Planning, Startup
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vancevandrake

Startups rarely think about intellectual property protection because they believe that comes after the product is complete. These startups should consider a “lean” patent model that mirrors the lean start-up model and shares the same benefits of flexibility, low initial cost, and optimization. This works well for large and small companies to begin protecting their big ideas/.

File a Provisional Patent Application  

Provisional patent applications are cheap to file.  Really cheap.  The filing fee for a small entity (less than 500 employees) is only $125.  Provisional patent applications have fewer filing requirements than a “regular” patent application.  In theory, you can file a Keynote/Powerpoint presentation as a provisional patent application.

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Inventing the Close Shave

Posted: April 21, 2013 by Chuck Matthews in Innovation, Leadership, People
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UC Chuck MatthewsOne of my all-time favorite examples of the quintessential entrepreneur is King C. Gillette.  He embodies what I like to call the entrepreneur’s 3-D vision: drive, determination, and dedication.  His entrepreneurial journey parallels the timeless challenges facing entrepreneurs then and now.  He epitomizes the three essential tasks of the entrepreneur both at start-up and as the venture matures – creativity, leadership, and communication.

Previously, I introduced the core elements of the entrepreneurship process: focus, environment, the entrepreneur, and the engagement/execution process. Even with a clear focus (product and services, customers and competition), an entrepreneur must continually assess an uncertain and changing environment (business, economic, legal, political, social, and technological factors).

Central to all of this is the entrepreneur.  That the entrepreneur must simultaneously wear multiple hats is legendary in the lore of new start-ups. With so many distractions, let’s take a closer look at how the entrepreneur applies concepts of creativity, lessons of leadership, and achieves clarity of communication.

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Startup Right by Swinging for Singles

Posted: April 14, 2013 by Bob Gilbreath in Leadership, People, Planning, Startup
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BobGilbreathIt is baseball season here in Cincinnati again, and whether you observe Opening Day as a religious holiday, or get surprised when fireworks explode in the afternoon downtown, one cannot help but join the spirit. We get to enjoy another 162 episodes of challenge and achievement. Of course we cannot help but re-awaken baseball metaphors to analyze and explain the challenges in the business world.

Entrepreneurship has a lot in common with baseball. In both a lone leader steps to the plate with intense pressure to succeed, a team is counting on you to get a hit, and even a 33% success rate is world-class. Unfortunately, too many rookie batters—and entrepreneurs—fail by swinging for the fences instead of legging out a single.

Startup founders get excited about billion-dollar stories such as Facebook, Google, Instagram and Groupon. These companies seemed to come out of nowhere with a killer idea, and we marvel at the fame and wealth that were created in the blink of an eye. The startup blogs and keynote speeches encourage young founders to “think big” and “change the world.” Such stories have pushed a thousand entrepreneurs to quit their day jobs or senior years to create “the next Google/Facebook/eBay.”

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US Bank Business Watch April 7, 2013

Posted: April 10, 2013 by Bill Cunningham in Ecosystem, Innovation, Leadership, Startup, Technology
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Kelly Leon of  WKRC Channel 12′s US Bank Business Watch program interviews Bill Cunningham, Founder of OneMorePallet.com and Shop Foreman for the Greater Cincinnati Venture Association.

Impressionist

Posted: April 4, 2013 by Bill Cunningham in Leadership, Marketing, Startup
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Bill Cunningham Bio“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.” — Henry Ford

Henry Ford didn’t sell automobiles, he created a great customer user experience that resulted in the tremendous success of Ford Motor Company. Whether you deliver products or services, your customer experience determines whether customers buy and more importantly, whether they will buy again.

The cycle of user experience begins with the first impression of your organization. In Malcolm Gladwell‘s book, Blink, he proves that you make snap decisions within a single microsecond at the start of a user experience and keep that portrait in your mind

Malcom Gladwell

despite evidence to the contrary. You have all heard that you only get one chance to make a first impression. More importantly, according to Seth Godin, is not the first impression, but the realization that you do not know when it will occur. This means you must be ready 24/7 with how customers acquire the user experience with your company.

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PASSION LEADS TO COURAGE

Posted: March 31, 2013 by Tom Heuer in Leadership, People
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heuerWhat are you truly passionate about in your work? What do you really believe in? Is there anything that you will risk it all for? Or is financial security your “true North?”

There is a real paradox blooming in corporate America today. And it is causing personal conflict and anxiety at many levels in organizations. The paradox is associated with an employee’s beliefs and their unwillingness to step up and hold fast to their vision and values in the face of adversity. It is easier or more convenient to back off and go along with the pack. Our stamina for what we believe in fritters away under our absence of courage.

What is startling to me is that even people in firm’s with “leadership reputations” have acquiesced. I asked the question recently to a group of leaders from a principled, growth-oriented company with an outstanding reputation of being a “great place to work.” We wanted to know “why it is difficult to have courage in the workplace.” The response heard most often was that “I am not ready to leave the company or to be put on the back burner. I just can’t trust my boss to respond in the right way.” Such statements tell us fear and lack of passion is a prominent part of the business environment.

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Telling Your Story Is Paramount

Posted: March 24, 2013 by Bill Cunningham in Leadership, Marketing, Startup
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Bill Cunningham BioStarting a business requires many talents – marketing, sales, finance, fund-raising, project management among others. Communicating well is the critical thread running through all of these talents. Your ability to tell your story as founder, designer, programmer or sales warrior will make or break your venture. After all, if the world doesn’t know what you can do for them, then how will they be motivated to trade their hard-earned money for your product or service.

Make these ideas of your bucket list for becoming a great startup.

Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule

Whether pitching an investor or giving a presentation at a conference, use Guy’s 10/20/30 rule as a guide.  ten slides, twenty minutes and thirty point type. If you can’t tell your story in ten slides, then your story is too complicated and your audience (VC’s or customers) won’t remember much of it. Timewise, don’t plan for more than twenty minutes max for presenting. In investor meetings, expect interruptions and questions throughout your talk (a good sign) – so planning for any longer means you won’t get to finish your story in an hour. Guy suggests using thirty point type as a minimum because a) people with money tend to be older and don’t want to squint to read your presentation, and b) using at least 30 point type limits the amount of information on your slide. After all, you want people to listen to your story, not read your slide.

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Our Healthy Ecosystem

Posted: March 17, 2013 by Carolyn Pione-Micheli in Ecosystem, Leadership, Money, Startup, Technology
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CarolynPioneMicheliPeople have asked me recent what is behind all the new entrepreneurial energy in Southwest Ohio.

Maybe you have noticed how startup companies are regularly featured in the media and how seminars and workshops are proliferating on topics such as how to launch a technology company, how to fund a technology company, how to work with a technology company.

Local universities are expanding entrepreneurship and startup accelerator programs, and new organizations such as Cintrifuse, the Brandery and Innov8 for Health have risen up to complement existing groups.

In just two years, the numbers have jumped dramatically: In 2009, 14 Cincinnati-based startups received $27 million in venture capital. In 2011, 36 companies received $70.2 million, according to Ohio State’s Fisher College, which is still gathering 2012 data.

A reporter from Louisville asked me last fall whether this activity was driven by the revitalization of downtown and Over-the-Rhine, drawing new people into the region. Others have credited a down economy with seeding ‘disillusionment’ toward corporate America.

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