Cal Poly Business School seniors Lelani Torres and Brandon LaRose prepare for a remote/Skype video interview with Web 2.0 startup RememberItNow.com.
The students are conducting interviews with entrepreneurs this quarter, as part of their 3rd-party independent market research, beta testing, and business model analysis for Startup Trek Television Inc.
While in Portland, Oregon this week Startup Trek TV interviewed Professor Rob Wiltbank, one of the top authorities in the US on the subject of Angel investing. In addition to teaching Entrepreneurship at Willamette University in Salem OR, Rob is a partner at a Seattle venture capital firm. He has recently raised a $300k Angel investment funds which his entrepreneurship students at Willamette Univ. are in the process of beginning to invest, in $50k chunks. Rob plans to scale this innovative, first-of-type student-managed Angel fund to $5M.
Orfalea School of Business Student Kaila Anderson of Cal Poly “Business 454″ class, studying entrepreneurship, interviews Niites.com founder Dustin Ryen.
Q: WHAT IS NIITES.com? A: It is a local content website for students, featuring local nightclubs.
Q: WHY ARE CAL POLY STUDENTS CONDUCTING STARTUP INTERVIEWS? A: Startup Trek is the subject of Cal Poly’s “Learn by doing” Entrepreneurship Class, Business 454, this Quarter. More information about the program is available in this Startup Trek article.
Startup Trek Television, Inc. announced and completed another (November 10 > Dec 8, 2009) “Innovation in the Western USA” Tour:
We video interviewed startups in each city. This was our schedule:
Yesterday afternoon Startup Trek ventured to Sausalito, CA to visit with senior Keiretsu Forum member Mr. Max Shapiro. Max is a Keiretsu Forum enthusiast, and CEO of innovative human resources firm PeopleConnect.com
This week Nima Salke, a School of business senior enrolled in Business 454 at Cal Poly, asked me an excellent question: “what criteria exactly, defines a company as a ‘start-up’?”.
This is an not a particularly easy question to answer, and it is not a question that there is any perfect, black-and-white answer for. This question reminds me of famous quote by Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward while discussing the Larry Flynt Pornography case: ”I do not know what hard-core pornography is, but I know it when I see it”.
Are Venture Capitalists going to lose their shirts on Twitter?Some historical perspective on the immense bet Venture Capitalists have made:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/30/where-twitter-ranks-in-vc-history/
This article shows how the odds are against this investment returning funds to investors. Because Twitter falls into the zone of “VC insanity” Tulip-bulb style investing, circa the 1999 Nasdaq bubble.
Business School Seniors in the School of Business at California Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo CA; “Cal Poly”) enrolled in “Business 454″ are tackling the pre-launch planning for a new digital media production firm which will launch in January 2010 as “StartupTrek.TV”
The 36 business school seniors in the Orfalea School of business will gain hands-on experience working in a tech startup company, as it plans a high-profile launch on the web, in advance of developing cable and broadcast television content relationships.