Great topic. IMPORTANT topic. No question that one of the great resources of the Boulder area is the intellectual capital located in CU-Boulder: both from a raw talent and inspirational perspective. One of my funnest things is occasionally helping Frank Moyes with his business planning class for the MBA and Undergrad business programs. CU-Boulder consistently turns out great students and great plans because Frank is a great instructor and he thoroughly incorporates the business community along the path. He has 21 year old students turning out plans that I didn't figure out how to do until I was 35 or 40. This might happen more than I'm aware, but just like TechStars encourage 3 person teams, it would be great to "create the opportunity" for more interaction between the business school and the engineering school. Some of the best of the best plans in the MBA classes are when an MBA team connects with an engineering student and builds a plan around the engineer's idea or incorporating the enginneer's acumen.

In my 2 years at CTEK (Colorado Technology Incubator), I saw a lot of engineering driven companies: some good ideas. Some just a technology looking for a problem (and not finding it.) When you find the "good engineering idea", it usually comes with a prototype (that's what the engineer has been working on every night and weekend while a student). And a prototype of a good solution is relatively easy to fund and find the marketing resources to work with.

HOWEVER, the tough one to fund is the marketing/sales dude that has been in industry and sees a gap in solutions. They have a GREAT idea... but no engineering resource nor money to build the prototype.

I think the REAL opportunity for entrepreneurship is to have those marketing/sales driven ideas matched to the engineering talent that can make them happen.

THAT is the interaction that needs to be happening at CU. Meetup Boulder and TechStars are forums for some of that type interaction. But I think we could proactively force opportunities like that to happen in the CU community.

You know, planned serendipity. ;-)

Jim
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JimPollock at AWhere.com

Because of the iPhone, I have become a devoted NetNewsWire fan. I had always used Safari on my Mac for RSS feeds, because my treo kind sucked for reading. But when I got the iPhone, it became imperative to sync rss between home and pocket. Enter NNW.

My only wish is that the iPhone version would support the rotate capability to read text in portrait. I end up opening longer articles in iPhone Safari for more comfortable reading.

Jim

Just 1-clicked it per your recommendation. Amazon is showing a Kindle version now available. Thanks for the pass-along.

People spend too much time maligning lawyers. When you boil it down, it's only 99% of all lawyers that give a bad name to the rest.

Jim

PS: Mark and Jason please forgive me.

I am stepping into waters that are deeper than my swimming ability, but what the heck. I doubt the entire auto industry in the US is about to implode. Sounds like GM was closest to the edge when sales began to drop. But if you suddenly took GM out of the picture (which is HUGE, no question), I dare say there would suddenly be WAY more than enough business for Ford, Chrysler and the other foreign companies. Suddenly a tough year for all becomes a miserale GM year and a Happy New Year for all others. And before GM itself fails completely, it will do what all entrepreneurs do and cut back, shed dead weight and focus.

If the Fed "bails out GM"... what are they bailing them into? To fail NEXT quarter with the same product lineup? SOMETHING is WRONG at GM and other car companies and they need to learn how to survive in the very real, very dynamic world in which the rest of us live.

Jim

Jason, Good post and (as many of your posts are) very timely for us. We are beginning to make the transition to revenue-positive and planning for a larger potential raise in the fall... which means we're reaching the point where we can be a bit more aggressive about offering "traditional" benefits to employees. And in fact, will need to in order to attract competitive talent, as you noted.

Thanks!

Jim

AWhere, inc.

I gotta say, I love my iPhone. The Safari is a great experience for a phone. (in fact, I wish Safari on my Mac could be continuously expanded the same way!) Also, it actually has a UI that works for multi-way calls. I've done a bunch of 3-way and 4-way calls (it will do 6-way). You can see all members of the call and disconnect or go solo with any one... and get back to the group without hanging everyone up. ;-)

Jim

I am totally with Bruce above. I have a MacBook Pro and a technogeek, but its connected to network by 802.11n, does hourly complete backups by WiFi, printer is on WiFi, streams music to my stereo by WiFi, bluetooth mouse, and I can't remember which side the DVD slot is on. Even the one physical connection, the power adapter, is a magnet grip. Not just a Mac story, if I had a Windoze Machine, I would be connected the same way. Or could I? ;-)

Jim

I ran across these guys last year when David Cohen tried it out. Very interesting how a hosted (centralized resource like voicemail) solution leverages normally linear human resources into a scalable solution. I looked at the same model for near-realtime language translation capability for a bizplan a couple of buddies and I were contemplating a couple of years ago. Jim

Now you're making sense. Time to get off your angel butt and organize a little LLC to fund an In-N-Out burger franchise in Boulder. :-) That would bump the 43% to at least 49.

Jim