Movers & Changers

One of the students in my Entrepreneurship Learning Community class suggested that MTV was running a contest named Movers & Changers that would interest fellow students. $25,000 is on the line and you still have a month to jump in. Below are some of the details quoted from here: A 30 sec UT is embedded at bottom. Hank

“mtvU has opened a new social entrepreneurship (or social innovation) contest targeting college aged students. Some of the finalist will be featured on a new show on mtvU called “Movers and Changers”. Grand prize is $25,000 for the winning venture and a chance to ring the opening bell at the NYSE. Three finalist will fly to NY and present to leading social entrepreneurs including Blake Mycoskie, Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS SHOES.

From their press release:

“Movers & Changers” calls on 16-28 year old college students, individually or in teams of up to three people, to develop and produce a compelling business proposal to revolutionize the future of the world’s social market.  Ideas must be creative, original, and scalable to large corporations, in addition to illustrating determination and persistent optimism.  Students can submit entries online at http://www.moversandchangers.com and are encouraged to submit a video “elevator pitch” application beginning at noon on August 17, 2009 through midnight on October 16, 2009.

The competition will culminate at NYSE Euronext’s Global Entrepreneurship Week: Mentoring Madness, where students from around the world will gather with business leaders and hear leading entrepreneurs talk frankly about how young people can create their own futures.  The top three “Movers & Changers” teams or individuals will fly to New York City for “Mentoring Madness,” to network and connect with prominent business leaders and present their pitches to the NYSE “Movers & Changers” Board. “

Have A Happy Friday: And be thankful you’re not in LA

There are forty some awesome pictures of the LA Station fire at the link below. Hank

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/wildfires_in_southern_californ.html

Bonobos

 Bonobo is the name of a pigmy chimpanzee which is the closest extant relative to humans. [wiki] Add an “s +.com”, and you have Bonobos.com, a new startup located in Manhattan that’s attempting to accomplish with men’s pants what Zappos did with shoes. Tuesday in ENTR200 class I mentioned repositioning of ping pong; today Bonobos is repositioning the purchase of pants by men. Only two years old, Bonobos raked up $1.6 million in its first year, 2008, and is on track for their second year to be in the $5-6 million range supported by $3 million in Venture funding. Read their full story on Vator here, and view an interesting interview with Bambi and Bonobos’ CEO/founder Andy Dunn below. Note the loving/caring manner Andy uses to fold the demo trousers. Hank

Broadband – Not

"Broadband," or how fast your internet works both receiving and sending information packets [the Youtube video you are watching for instance] is defined vastly differently in different locals. What is "broadband" in Seattle, is not in general defined in a like manner from a speed perspective in rural North Carolina.

One of the Obama administration incentives is to push “broadband” to rural and underserved areas. And herein lies the dirty pool broadband suppliers are attempting to foist off on the FCC.  They want to define “broadband” as being at the very low end of the spectrum, like 256K which is not that much faster than dial-up modems achieved in year’s past. By so doing they will qualify for millions of dollars in TARP funding and laugh all the way to the bank without having to actually build infrastructure to support true “broadband.”

The video below explains the situation very well. Me? I live in the country on a gravel road some three miles from the central switch from which our broadband taps into the internet backbone. We reliably obtain 5mbps down, and 1mbps up [before overhead]. That’s broadband. A recent report on USA’s broadband speed [or lack thereof] is here. Entrepreneurs beware! Hank

Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition Announcement + One More

On Friday 9/4/09, the following article by Max Showalter appeared in Lafayette’s Journal & Courier. It is quoted in its entirety for your information [and action!] Hank

“The 23rd annual Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition is scheduled for Feb. 23 at Purdue University.

A callout for the event will be held at 6 p.m. next Tuesday and Wednesday in Room 121 at the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship at Purdue’s Discovery Park.

“The callout will explain the competition to students and will offer tips to those who have a great business idea but need guidance for putting together a business plan to turn that idea into reality,” said Nathalie Duval-Couetil, associate director of the Burton D. Morgan Center.

THE COMPETITION

The annual activity is open to all Purdue students.

It offers a total prize package of $100,000 to teams that develop and present business plans for viable new ventures.

Teams composed of undergraduate students will compete in the Black Division. Teams of faculty, staff, graduate students, alumni and area business people will compete in the Gold Division.

Top prize in the Black Division is $20,000. The winner of the Gold Division will receive $30,000.

TO PARTICIPATE

Registration for the 2010 event begins Tuesday. Competition sponsors are the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship and the Krannert School of Management at Purdue.

To register or receive more information, visit www.purdue.edu/entrepreneurship, e-mail bdmcenter@purdue.edu or call Jackie Lanter at (765) 494-1335.

– Max Showalter/mshowalter@jconline.com”

Money Shot – Purdue Innovations Callout

Disclaimer: Hank is one of Innovations’ advisors

Charlie

Last Wednesday the Lafayette Journal and Courier (J&C) ran an article by Bob Scott about a cancer patient and his dog, Charlie. The human side of the article is that Shawn Cooper is suffering from colon cancer but is “surviving” with the help of his lab Charlie. See picture below from the cited J&C article.

So why something about a cancer patient and his dog in a blog geared towards students of entrepreneurship? Shawn is entrepreneurial in his approach to helping himself and others with colon cancer – by producing a calendar “Charlie Cares.” Check out Shawn’s web site here and think about Charlie Cares if a special gift occasion arises in your life, or just because you care. Did you ever notice that dog spelled backwards is God? Hank

Saturday: Women as purchasers of cars

Did you know that on the average, research suggests women pay more for cars than men? [WSJ 8/27/09 p. D1]. Seeing this as a “problem” requiring action, Anne Fleming launched a web site called Women-Drivers.com which in just 9 months, has tapped “Wisdom of Women” for several thousand inputs. Her “About Page” has interesting insights into Anne and how/why she stared this timely resource for women. Atta-girl Anne. A great for grins ad for Women-Drivers.com is embedded below. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: And opt out of Google

What entrepreneurs should not do by Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban, an IU graduate, in 2009 was listed as #296 on Forbes’ list of world’s most wealthy with $2.3 billion in assets. He is also know as a character, often getting thrown out of the games his NBA team the Dallas Mavericks. are playing in. But there’s more to Mark than meets the eye. He often drops in on  other venues, and offers advice to young entrepreneurs. Here’s a short read of such wisdom that is well worth 5 minutes of ENTR200 student’s time, and anyone who would like to express themselves more professionally. Hank