Inside VT KnowledgeWorks

The Accelerated Entrepreneur - What Are We Going To Do?

Having written a business plan in the morning, only to find it obsolete in the afternoon, when I was asked by a prospective intern for Handshake Media, Incorporated, my VT KnowledgeWorks member company, "What are we going to do?", I was speechless.

Do?! We're going to do everything!

Business model tweaking, business strategy execution, business development, networking meetings, client appointments, product creation, product quality assessment, bookkeeping, human resource management...

Pick up a textbook on the principles of business.  All of that.  That's what we'll be doing.

"In what order are we going to be doing all that?"

Uh.

I know that a list of goals, measurable objectives, and activities, delineated by a timeline, must be created for a course of study for an internship.  

We can use one of my obsolete business plans from yesterday to create the goals and objectives.

The activities?

I think I need an interactive interface, perhaps created by interface expert Joshua Eckstein, founder of VT KnowledgeWorks member company Agent Computer. 

I think that's the only medium which could convey the activities of an internship with an entrepreneur.

Do, think, see, hear, check gut instinct, choose - simultaneously.

Media Fragmentation and What To Do About It

That was the subject of the keynote address by Ken Ray, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for AT&T Advertising Solutions, at the inaugural VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit, Thursday, April 2, 2009, in Blacksburg, Virginia.

A persuasive and animated speaker, Ken Ray had startling facts and figures to report on how consumers are finding out about companies' products and services.  Here's one of my favorite slides from his presentation:

Ken Ray's PowerPoint slides from his address, Optimizing Customer Acquisition in a World of Media Fragmentation, are available for viewing.

More on Ken Ray:

After joining AT&T/BellSouth’s strategy organization in 1994, Ray moved through a series of operational assignments where he led teams of up to 4,000 people. Currently, Ray leads and serves in one of AT&T’s four major business units, Advertising Solutions, which has $5 billion annual revenues.

VT KnowledgeWorks YouTube Video Stars - 88Owls.com and BecomeAlum.com

 

88Owls.com matches businesses with business consultants.

 

Jim McIntyre of BecomeAlum.com, an enterprise of Innovative Academic Solutions, describes the benefits of using a business consultant from 88Owls.

 

Allan Tsang of 88Owls and Jim McIntyre of Innovative Academic Solutions both lead member companies of technology incubator and business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks.

Mr. Bicep Recommends Jammin' with LimbGear

LimbGear, a member company of VT KnowledgeWorks, was featured on the Good Morning San Diego Show on March 28, 2009, thanks to Bruce Pechman, a.k.a. "Mr. Bicep - The Muscleman of Technology."

To view the video, on this Bruce on TV page, scroll down to "Bruce Appears on KUSI TV — Hot Products 2009."

Beneath the image of Mr. Bicep as he appears in the image in this post, click "Click here to see rebroadcast."'

Then fast forward to 3:40 for the LimbGear segment.

Tyson Daniel created LimbGear® mp3-enabled sports apparel, a product line of WeighOut LLC.  In January 2009, within 60 days of arriving and starting full-time at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, LimbGear® was featured on The Today Show.  A a video of Santa dancing in his LimbGear^® Noggin Net^™MP3 enabled skullcap appeared on Handshake 2.0.  He tells the story of the founding of his company in A Way Out on Handshake 2.0.

I'm expecting a LimbGear brand name language transformatioon.  Think items - Kleenex, Xerox - and verbs - Google.

"Hey, Mom, where's my LimbGear?"

"Should I buy this LimbGear or this LimbGear?"

"You want to play one-on-one with me?  You're gonna get LimbGeared!"

Go, Tyson, Muscleman of LimbGear!

The Wired Road

"The path to prosperity and the future of the Twin Counties opened on Monday in Galax," according to The Carroll News.  "State and local officials joined together at the Rex Theatre to celebrate the launch of The Wired Road, a broadband deployment initiative geared at making sure all citizens and businesses in Carroll, Grayson and Galax [Virginia] have access to the Information Superhighway at the highest speeds possible."

The Wired Road project was designed and built by Design Nine, a broadband network design and engineering services firm founded by Andrew Cohill.  Cohill is also the founder of Web Villages, a VT KnowledgeWorks member company.

In his press release, Cohill described the regional network as "the largest integrated fiber and wireless open access, open services municipal network in the United States."  He continued, "The high performance network will eventually provide services across more than 1,000 square miles of mountainous terrain in southwest Virginia." 

The full story is on Handshake 2.0 - Design Nine Announces The Wired Road - Integrated Fiber and Wireless Municipal Network.

To learn more about Andrew Cohill and The Wired Road, you can read the Design Nine blog, Technology Futures, follow Design Nine on Twitter @DesignNine, and read Clicking Back Over the Years - Most Wired Town in America and Most Wired Town: Building Community One Click at a Time - on Handshake 2.0.

A Meeting with a Master of Business Consulting

The power of “It’s who you know” played out powerfully when, through connections at VT KnowledgeWorks, I landed a business consulting column for Handshake 2.0 from Allan Tsang, founder of 88owls.

Through his expertise in business and in business consulting, Allan created 88owls, an online service matching businesses with business consultants.  His encyclopedic knowledge of business information and business processes - required for him to create such a system - is mind-boggling to me.

To help out a local start-up - moi - Allan made space for me this week and I got an appointment to meet with The Master Consultant himself.

I will tell you I have had a lot of meetings in my life where I felt like I didn’t have to be there - anybody would do. 

“I want to hear what you do,” is the opener, but the person recites or pitches a much-rehearsed script, indulges in a self-narrative, or tries to forcefully convince me what to think or feel about some subject or other.  Those are lonely, tedious meetings. 

Some meetings evolve into dialogue and the mutual discoveries from the synergy of interaction can be insight-producing and deeply satisfying.

My meeting with Allan wasn’t like either of those.

I can’t even remember his opener.  I can’t identify his process.

Something about who he is, what he knows, the questions he asks, how he listens, what he hears beyond the words, resulted in me thinking about my business model, my company, even myself in ways I didn’t even know you could think. 

At the end of our two-hour meeting, I had no idea what his pitch was, knew little about him personally, and knew what I thought and felt, not what he did. 

And get this.  I didn’t just have one of those nicey-nice, workshop-y experiences that feel so great, but, upon a return to the desk, makes them one more puff of hot air from the laptop’s fan.

I not only had an experience, I knew what to do with it.  I’ve already started.

Come on, I’ve been on the planet half a century, I’ve been around the block.  A peak experience at Panera’s in Blacksburg, Virginia?

Yep. 

My two cents?  Get one for yourself.

***

88owls is a Rising Star nominee for the NewVa Corridor Technology Council, NCTC TechNite Awards and a member company of VT KnowledgeWorks.

The Accelerated Entrepreneur - Wine

While I majored in history at Virginia Tech, I minored in geology and discovered a particular love for the word “adamantine,” associating it with the hard luster of the wine-red garnet.

Rows of cabernet franc grapes at Eclipse Winery,
a start-up venture in Riner, Virginia,
and a client of Handshake 2.0

“Adamantine” describes a transformation that has occurred in my entrepreneurial thinking as a result of the inaugural VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit and the potential of seeking outside investment for my start-up corporation.

While I have described my unfunded sour grapes, a relentless willingness to put it out there, and strictness with the vision, “strictness” is no longer an adequate term to describe my vision.

Adamantine.  Sharp and hard enough to be faceted.  Wine red.

To have a chance to be one of five companies to pitch to angel investors at the afternoon session of the Summit, I had to first apply via Angelsoft.

Angelsoft’s online application asks very specific, very straightforward questions about a company’s business model.  When I go on and on while answering a question, it’s often because I’m uncertain about the answer.  There’s no going on and on with Angelsoft.  Each answer field is limited to a certain number of characters.  

With each application question, I questioned my company, my business model, and my ability to lead a start-up now, and a mature venture later.

I found myself feeling not only called to be brief, but to be committed, to speak with the courage of my convictions.

The harder it got, the harder I got.

I discovered my initial passion for my idea evolving into a deeper understanding and a powerful regard for what my company already is and what it can become.

A wine-red toast, then, to an adamantine vision for Handshake 2.0, an enterprise of Handshake Media, Incorporated, an undaunted member company of business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks.

The Accelerated Entrepreneur - Sour Grapes

If you follow this blog, you know I write Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, the VT KnowledgeWorks blog, founded a corporation under the auspices of VT KnowledgeWorks, and that corporation became one of its member companies. 

You know that when the inaugural VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit was announced, including a chance for five companies to pitch to angel investors who would congregate in Blacksburg, Virginia to hear the companies’ presentations, I shared my struggles over deciding whether or not to apply to be one those five companies. 

Entrepreneurial drive, optimism, and idealism won out - as they tend to for me - and I then shared the challenging process of creating the online application and its requirements for current finances, financial projections, a business plan, a PowerPoint presentation, and a video.

Then silence.

My silence was due to sour grapes, which I find unbecoming, so I didn’t reveal them.  But I value authenticity and transparency in corporate leadership.  Sigh.  So here are my sour grapes:

• I applied to be one of the five companies to pitch to angel investors.  My company wasn’t selected.
• I then - the loser - profiled the companies - the winners - in this blog. 
• I then - the loser - watched the companies - the winners - make their presentations to the angel investors without being one of them.
• I felt baffled when I learned that each of the companies was asking for a million dollars or more.  I know the funding levels for angel investing and venture capital can overlap, and maybe I was thinking small, but gee, I could do a lot with $5,000, even create jobs with $25,000.
• My expectation was that, during the companies’ presentations, the angel investors and the companies’ leaders would discuss ways to be of mutual value to each other.  I have heard “an expectation is a resentment waiting to happen.”  Let’s just say the approach taken was not what I expected and not part of my vision for my company.

The phrase “sour grapes” may have originated from the fable attributed to Aesop in which the fox, who couldn't reach the grapes, claimed they were probably sour anyway.

My parents have invested in me and my dreams and my future many times, including funding my company, including funding all my schooling, including a master’s degree in counseling.  They didn’t pay for that last item for nothing.

Dismissal of the value of something one tried for and didn’t get?

It’s inevitably born of hurt.  Hurt is so painful to acknowledge, so “not the done thing” in our culture, and feels so threateningly vulnerable, that it makes sense to transform it into bitterness.

Intellectualizing is one way to distance oneself from hurt, too, and I believe I’ve done enough of that.

Unacknowledged hurt, though, creates limits rather than extents.  The energy goes into protection, not expansion.  An entrepreneur can't afford that - or fulfill dreams like that.

So.

I, Anne Giles Clelland, founder of a member company of business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks, a.k.a. The Accelerated Entrepreneur, feel hurt and disappointed that my company was not picked to pitch to angel investors.

There.

Done. 

Free for the next dream.

Testimonials from the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit

"I just wanted to thank you for a first class event.  The event is a model that others should follow.  The collaboration with VT KnowledgeWorks, LeClairRyan, CVG, VAAN and others requires some careful coordination and you did a wonderful job.  If entrepreneurship is to succeed in the 'Rest Of Virginia,"=' ['ROA' - Rest of Virginia vs. 'NOVA' - Northern Virginia] events like these will be a cornerstone.  Well done, Jim."
 
--Jim Lansing, Managing Director of Virginia Annual Business Forums

"LiveFire! is a great opportunity to fuel the entrepreneurial spirit and to simultaneously get real-time feedback on your business model. The end result is refining the model so it is presented concisely and conveys the right information for an investor to determine if you are potentially a good match for their investment philosophy."
 
--Mandy McCall, COO, StarChase, presenting company at LiveFire!
 
"CVG LiveFire! provided an excellent opportunity to present our investment opportunity in a setting very similar to investor conferences. The investor panel provided valuable input and feedback which will result in a more polished presentation."
 
--Ed Leary, Contravac, presenting company at LiveFire!

"I had a great time at the summit! It was an invaluable experience as a young entrepreneur, especially to compete for the first time.  The competition was a great way for my team and me to really solidify our idea into a viable business; we had to identify our target audiences, our value proposition, and our business model, which inevitably helped us learn and grow and now we are even more prepared to make it happen! 
 
The Summit itself was a great experience--I networked heavily with local entrepreneurs and other people who shared ideas, advice, and stories that improved my outlook on my business as well as how to make it better.  CVG Live! was an incredibly insightful portion of the Summit that taught me how to pitch my idea, understand what investors are really looking for, and other important aspects of building a business. 
 
Thanks for hosting the Summit! It was a true learning experience that has made me feel more confident about becoming a successful entrepreneur. "
 
--Melissa Brown, uService.org, Student Business Concept Competition Winner

"I was impressed with the quality of speakers and the level of professionalism of all those involved. Thank you for all your hard work and the learning opportunity you shared with the larger community. I met some incredibly talented people and I expect to carry forward my learning into my job and future endeavors. I, for one, walked away with a much better understanding of an entrepreneur’s challenges and resources." 
 
--Lisa K. Garcia, VT Midas Institute

"I wanted to thank you for hosting the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit.  As an undergraduate, I gained tremendous knowledge about defending one’s company, entrepreneurship, and marketing a small company through a great variety of venues.   These skills will be invaluable to me in my career as a manager and businessman.  I look forward to future events sponsored by VT KnowledgeWorks and the next Annual Entrepreneurship Summit.  It was a wonderful day and a rare but powerful look into the potential opportunities available to entrepreneurs and business owners, and was an invaluable learning experience."

--Erik Ebel, Virginia Tech, Class of 2010

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The inaugural VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit was held on April 2, 2009, in Blacksburg, Virginia.  Thanks to all who helped make the Summit a resounding success.

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