Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

See it, Build it… early traction for a local startup

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Nice profile in Comstock’s Magazine of local startup and BigBang winner Japa and its founder Mathew Magno. It’s not the first parking app (hence the name, Just Another Parking App), but a good lesson for anyone getting started that the key isn’t revolutionary tech. More important is a vision of the ultimate network and the drive to start building it.

The vision:

“Smart cities are coming, from smart streetlights to citywide wifi to smart trash cans,” Magno says. “We already have smart parking meters where you can pay through an app. With Japa, we can take any third-party data, put it into one app and have the whole bird’s eye view of the transportation industry in a futuristic way.”

So far, Japa has sensors installed at UC Berkeley and in Walnut Creek (and soon at the UC Davis Med Center). https://buff.ly/2FpGjPo

A window into entrepreneurship education

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Some exceptional folks in entrepreneurship at HBS just announced Harvard was closing their NYC-based Startup Studio. Considering the program’s ambitions matched the leadership of the Entrepreneurship program and the largesse of the school, the outcome offers a great window into the challenges of teaching entrepreneurship.1 Continue reading →

2016: The Year of The Hype

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For my 2016 Innovation of the Year—celebrating that innovation which most changed the game—one stood clearly in front of all others. Largely because it also stood clearly behind so many of the others: hype. Like all past IOTY winners, hyperbole wasn’t invented in 2016 but this was the year it demonstrated its truly disruptive potential. Continue reading →

On the Folly of Adopting A while Hoping for Apple

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FastCompany released its annual “50 Most Innovative Companies” list, one of the more enjoyable of the dozens published every year. Pick up any one of these and three things become immediately apparent. First, there is no shortage of role models for innovation. Second, outside the crowd favorites (Apple, Google, and Facebook) there is little overlap between lists. Third and perhaps most importantly, each company and what makes them innovative ranges wildly. Continue reading →

Cleantech entrepreneurs fighting the last war

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Two articles give different views of the battlefield that is cleantech entrepreneurship these days: one from 1000’ and the other from the trenches. They offer a good lesson on the importance of having an innovation strategy informed by history more than hyperbole. Continue reading →

A long view of disruption

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The more dire the climate change predictions, the louder the calls for new and disruptive technologies. While it’s a great aspiration, as a theory disruptive innovation provides dangerous guidance on how disruption really happens. Continue reading →

Career entrepreneurs

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As I’ve mentioned before, people often think entrepreneurship is a one-idea, one-shot game: you have a great idea and you pursue it until it makes you rich or makes you run back home. That’s a shame because it keeps people from exploring entrepreneurship as a career. It’s like thinking only rock stars can have careers in music. In truth, most entrepreneurs take part in multiple startups before launching their own, and they play many different roles besides the rock star. Continue reading →

Mark Suster’s 7 lessons from failing

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Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Mark Suster provides a great example of the educational value inherent in making mistakes. And, since the only thing that comes close to learning from failure is learning from other people’s failures, this is a great interview where he shares the main mistakes he made in his first company. Continue reading →