MIT’s Media Lab Sixth Sense Project

To our God-given five senses, MIT’s Media Lab is working to add a sixth. I’m in for $350; anybody game? Watch Pattie Maes’ presentation at TED below for details. An interview with the genius behind the concept, Pranav Mistry is here: And to cap it off, Mistry’s web site [take note of the site's design!] is here: Hank

Meet Chris Beltran, Instructor for ENTR480 Spring 2010 Semester

Last Friday at a end of semester party for those involved in the Entrepreneurship Certificate Program at Purdue University [thanks Natalie!], I met and talked with a young entrepreneur [30-ouch!] who will be the instructor for ENTR480, the capstone course, next semester. His name is Christopher Beltran, a native of McAllen, TX and  co-founder and VP of product development for Passageways. Passageways just won the Governor’s Award for Tomorrow’s Leaders. Launched in 2003, today Passageways has 30 employees and is well on their way to great things. In 2008, it was also ranked 27th in the Inc 500 software company category.

Want to know more about Christopher? Here’s the link to his Facebook page: and to Passageways Twitter feed.  It looks like students in the capstone course will be in very good hands!  BTW, second place in the recent Miss World contest was won by a Mexican lass with the name Peria Beltran. Hank

Add a new word to your Geek Vocabulary: Dogfooding

From here: What Google employees are “dogfooding,” is the much anticipated Google phone. See here for more speculation. Hank

Have A Happy Friday: Entrepreneurs Need to Heed – UpTime

We’ll be shifting to a M-F blog model until Purdue University’s Spring 2010 semester starts, with down time in January to attend oldest son’s wedding in Seattle. Enjoy! Hank

Entrepreneurship @ Purdue University: Final Project Wix (web) Pages

Teams in my ENTR200 class @ Purdue University are required to construct a Web site in support of their Charles River Ventures application for financial support. Below are links to their submissions. Teams will make six minute in-class presentations today as part of their final exam in the class. Hank

At what cost cheap fashion? (Or) A license to steal? BbB

Forever 21

Oh, we love this store.  Great fashions, amazingly low prices, sometimes cheaply made but who cares; it’s hip and by the time it falls apart, it’ll be out of style anyway!

Founded in 1984 by Don and Jin Chang, their first store was only 900 square feet, located in Los Angeles, California. They offered fashion forward styles at great prices, just like they do today.  Their first year sales were only $35,000 but the store’s popularity grew quickly and by year two, sales increased to $700,000!  Today they have stores in nearly every mall across the US and plan to open a 90,000 square foot store in Manhattan, in the highly visible space in Times Square where Virgin Records used to be.  Annual sales will reach over 1.8 billion this year. Yikes!

If you’ve ever shopped at Forever 21 you might have noticed “John 3:16” written on the bottom of their shopping bags.   That’s a subtle biblical reference that Don put there because of his strong religious beliefs.  Though he portrays himself as a good person with his value system in the right place, he and his wife have been under fire more than once for some of their business practices.

The Chang’s have been sued by more than one designer for stealing their ideas right off the runway, and running to quickly recreate them for a fraction of the cost. Anna Sui, Gwen Stefani and Diane Von Furstenberg have all tried to sue Forever 21 Inc. for stealing their designs. Forever 21 had a curiously similar style to a $325 Von Furstenberg smock dress selling in their stores for only $32;  Great for the customer, bad for the designer.

In the rag trade, merchants have traditionally copied designers and sold versions of their latest styles sans the designer label.  Perhaps the fabrics and the quality are not the same, but the copied style is offered to their less affluent customers at a lower price point.  Designers believe this shortens the life cycle of their design cutting into their profit potential.  Others believe this is what energizes the fashion industry and keeps the fashion cycle turning.  Unfortunately for designers there are no clear-cut trademark laws in the fashion industry to protect their designs. Does that make it O.K. to copy someone else’s idea and profit from it?

BbB

Coffee grounds to $bucks$

“Two University students gave up lucrative careers in finance to start a business based on sustainability. They grow gourmet mushrooms from used coffee grounds – how amazing is that?  The company’s name is BTTR Ventures and they operate out of Fresno, California. The company’s name is pronounced ‘better’ and it stands for ‘back to the roots’. Its founders, Alejandro Velez and Nikhil Arora, parlayed their love of business and the environment into a thriving green business that already has grocery giant Whole Foods as a client.” [Robert Ludvig, The Perfect Business Idea, 11/19.09]

What’s the takeaway for readers of this blog? Sustainability works. Hank

Lessons Learned From Entrepreneur Blake of TOMS

This blog was written by my Entrepreneurship Learning Community ENTR200 Team 7. Hank

Blake, founder of TOMS, created an alpargata for the U.S. market and decided to give away a new pair of shoes to a needy child for every pair he sold. When I was listening to his story, I was quite inspired by his idea of new social entrepreneurism as well as his passion for his career. As he said, “you can have a for-profit business and simultaneously incorporate giving in anything you do.”

3 years ago, Blake was tired of working in a technology company so he chose to take a month off to Argentina. While there, he found the shoe drive, a volunteer organization that collected shoes from rich families to help children without shoes so that those kids can go to school. At that time, he was impressed by the enthusiasm and passion of the volunteers and how happy a mother was when her kid received the shoes. However, as he thought further about the whole thing, Blake realized that there was a problem of the organization that was unsustainable. So he came up with the idea of TOMS Shoes.

The first thing I’ve learned from him is his sincerity towards others. The beginning of the journey was quite impressive. On the first Saturday, he called and emailed about 60 stores but received no reply. On the next Saturday, he went to  stores and finally found one that was willing to helping. Later on, he got a phone call from Vogue which was really a key point for the business. Since then, the company began to rapidly develop. Not only does it have a famous designer, but he also get the help from AT&T. Whenever he gets the chance to introduce people about TOMS, Blake is always enthusiastic. Sincerity is key because only are you honest to others will they trust you and give you the opportunity.

Another thing is what Blake has realized the way to success-take the chance and find a way. He said that there were many people talking about sustainability nowadays, but how to keep an organization without relying on donations was a specific issue. By grasping all the opportunities, he was able to come up with the idea of selling shoes and use his network to sell them, which can definitely make the business work and help needy children at the same time. It’s really a good way to accomplish the sustainability and be inspiration for social entrepreneurs.

Moreover, customers really help him a lot because customers are great resource. They can help support the business by not only buying its product, but also expending the influence of the business. When Blake was in an airport, he encountered a girl in a pair of TOMS shoes. The interesting part of this story is that the little girl told Blake what TOMS was and felt passionate about the company and the girl even didn’t recognize him. Thus it seemed that the girl was helping advertise. How amazing it can be when people tell others about a company only because they feel passionate about it. The customers can always be a window of a business.

It is significant to know how to run a business like TOMS, but it’s also important to be aware of how to be an entrepreneur like Blake. He is not just feel excited about his idea, but he has responsibility and passion within his heart. When asked why the company was called TOMS instead of Blake, he said that “TOMS” actually stand for “tomorrow”. Maybe tomorrow can always bring people hope and happiness.

Please view the video embedded below at the request of the team. Hank

Entrepreneurs should play fair too!

Elizabeth Lambert of New Mexico: Suspended for Foul Play

It’s always been said that soccer is a rough sport. However a few weeks ago University of New Mexico soccer player Elizabeth Lambert took it to another level. During a game versus Brighman Young University (BYU), Lambert was caught making many dirty plays against the BYU players. (See the Video). She has now been suspended from the team, and cannot participate in practices, games or conditioning. The Mountain West Conference completely stands behind New Mexico’s coach to suspend Lambert, and do not agree with overly aggressive behavior. Lambert made a public apology saying she was “deeply and wholeheartedly regretful”.

After viewing the video, we can honestly not believe how violent she played. Katelyne is a soccer player and has claimed to never have made any plays like those. It made us as a group feels good that she was punished and made a public apology. With all the scandals and stories involved in all aspects of college sports it made us happy to see that bad sportsmanship hasn’t made the cut of things that coaches turn their backs on.

The video below was embedded at the team’s request. Hank

LinkedIn

This blog entry was written by Team 8 in my Entrepreneurship Learning Community ENTR200 class. Hank

LinkedIn is a social networking site geared for the workplace. Being a relatively new site, opened in May 2003, it has quite a large base of 50 million users. Half of these are found in the U.S. alone, but it spans the globe with as many as 200 countries. This site has its advantages for new business owners. The first of which is that it can introduce you to many other business owners that could have been previously been overlooked. A business owner can add connections from their contacts already in their e-mail list but could also find important alliances with other companies, to outsource if needed. The second is that it has options of web seminar and trade shows that the user can utilize. Another interesting feature is that it lists local jobs and even the profile of a hiring manager. The site is a gated community to really build trust among the connections while networking. This is an important concept to that of the class [ENTR200] because, though students may have heard of LinkedIn, they may not know how to utilize it. This is how we, as team 8, found the entrepreneur Tom Houck to do our midterm interview with.

Not only is LinkedIn a useful tool for entrepreneurs but it is also entrepreneurial itself. Just as with Facebook and Myspace, LinkedIn is always looking for new and innovative ideas to keep customers returning to the site. It started an interesting idea called LinkedIn Answers which is similar to Yahoo Answers in that it allows a user to ask their community a question while getting an answer that they can trust.  LinkedIn An interesting site that includes an introductory video is listed below. The management team has a lot of experience in the internet world, the CEO, Jeff Weiner, had a leading role in Yahoo’s Network Division. Other officers worked with PayPal and Ask Jeeves. LinkedIn has accumulated multiple investors including Sequoia Capital, all worth $53 million. Not only did these entrepreneurs who head up LinkedIn fix a networking and professional problem but they also helped other entrepreneurs like themselves, completing the circle.

http://press.linkedin.com/about