Rhode Island 21: Civic Economic Development

New England Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend is a worldwide phenomenon, a 54-hour event to help entrepreneurs, new and experienced, put their ideas into action. 15,000 entrepreneurs in 100 cities and counting - now coming to (southern) New England! A ragtag but committed crew led by Cary Collins from Bryant, supported by the team from StartupWeekend.org, is glad to announce...


New England Start-Up Weekend (NESW) for October 15th thru 17th: http://newengland.startupweekend.org/

What is Start-Up Weekend?

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54-hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. It is an amazing opportunity to connect with other passionate and skilled individuals, and perhaps even find a co-founder or two to transform your idea into reality.

See below for a message from Cary: 

Thanks to my Global Entrepreneurship Program leaders, Michelle DeSalvo and Laura Kopek, as well as the leadership of Bryant University's Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, we'll flesh things out rather quickly but we need your help talking it up and sharing it with the right souls.

We have six (6) universities/colleges in The Rhode Island Entrepreneurship Faculty group and we have the expertise and links made possible by a great many ventures and individuals who care about growing entrepreneurship here in New England.  With the concerted wisdom of that group, we're hoping for a blend of students from all campuses, as well as a 50:50 mixture with the professional/tech communities.

We'll solicit student participation from every one of the six campuses and we'll run "The Start-up Bus" (motorcoach) among the campuses to pick up and drop off students who'll join us for the weekend.  We'll also request low -- read phonetically "LO" and interpreted as "minimal"  -- contributions from groups ranging from corporate and professional types to organizations with a great many minds to throw at an event like this one.

For students from other campuses, we'll chauffeur'em, feed'em, water'em, WiFI'em, and house'em.  No worries.  We'll make them feel at home and we're hopeful this interaction across the state becomes a semi-annual event that finds its way to every campus we have.

MY REQUEST OF YOU:  Share this widely and offer helpful thoughts on speakers, topics, and the ever-necessary low-dollar asks!  

Once we have a reasonably complete agenda -- read "this week's end", we'll link to Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites for followers/following with a new update.  For the brave souls who've read to this point, I'm letting you know I'll be camped outside The Malcolm Chace Athletic Center on the green for the duration of this thing... feel free to join me... with your OWN tent. :)

Watch the event build, participate in the event we hold, and let's see where it leads us next!

Internpreneurs Arise!

What if interns moved your business forward? If you couldn't get enough of them, because they discovered new markets, prototyped uses for new technologies, and solved hard problems? At the Spring RISE Summit, our group discussed the idea of "internpreneurs", teams of college interns that expanded business capability by applying entrepreneurial "startup" approaches to unsolved problems. 

Contrast this with our current approach to interns. Once recruited, interns are assigned inside the current business, and taught skills that are at the core of the today's products, customers, and processes. In essence, we drive our internship development using a rearview mirror. This is both costly in precious staff time, and doesn't leverage the best of what fresh college interns have to offer: external perspectives, knowledge of new technologies and customers, and no investment in "the way things are done today".

Instead of trying to make interns into mini-employees for three months to a semester, what if we used them as "skunkworks", as explorers of new business models and solvers of hard problems? Sound too edgy, too risky? Well, consider what industry stalwart IBM has done with their Extreme Blue program. They recruit top flight interns at their labs around the globe, and put them in teams of software developers and MBA students. In their own words, "Through the program, interns have submitted more than 360 patent disclosures and have made more than sixty open source contributions to the open source community. They helped create solutions for key clients and bring-to-market the next generation of IBM products. Not bad for just 12 weeks of work."

This May, 15 of you, leaders across a spectrum of RI-based organizations, contributed $300 as a "down payment" on a discussion of internpreneurship. As the new semester is convening across New England's colleges, we're ready to host a conversation to explore what internpreneurship might mean as a tool to expand business capabilities and horizons, to harness young talent in ways that are big wins for both interns and organizations, and to better leverage the wealth of energy and education that 80,000 college students bring to Rhode Island each year.

Please join a group of business leaders, entrepreneurship professors, and students for a discussion on Friday September 24th from 12-2 at the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Worst case, you get your $20 back in sandwiches and chips.

Email info@betaspring.com with any questions. 

Job Creation Guaranty Program Support

A note from Keith:

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Keith Stokes"
Date: May 7, 2010 2:00:08 PM EDT
Subject: Job Creation Guaranty Program Support

Dear Economic Development Partners:

The General Assembly is considering the approval of a supplemental FY2010 budget bill, H7105, part of which would establish a $125 million Job Creation Guaranty Program. The program will provide lenders with the credit enhancements they need to approve borrowing for established, growing and new knowledge-based businesses in Rhode Island in industries like advanced manufacturing, construction, defense, life sciences, health care, advanced electronics, digital media, software design and engineering and financial services.

The time is now for Rhode Islanders to take action in changing the future of our great state. Attached is a letter of support for the measure embedded with some key talking points and a copy of the proposed legislation.If you believe this guarantee is worthy of your support, please write a letter to the General Assembly.You can find the e-mail addresses for legislators on the General Assembly website (www.rilin.state.ri.us), or contact Mike Blazek at 404-278-2146 or mblazek@riedc.com at our office for assistance.

Below is a list of some key General Assembly offices.

Senate President, Sen. M. Teresa Paiva Weed: sen-paivaweed@rilin.state.ri.us
Speaker of the House, Rep. Gordon D. Fox: rep-fox@rilin.state.ri.us
Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Daniel P. Connors: sen-connors@rilin.state.ri.us
House Majority Leader, Rep. Nicolas A. Mattiello: rep-mattiello@rilin.state.ri.us
Senate Finance Chair, Sen. Daniel DaPonte: sen-daponte@rilin.state.ri.us
House Finance Chair, Rep. Steven M. Costantino: rep-costantino@rilin.state.ri.us

Please forward copies of any letters you send to Mike Blazek so we can track the level of outreach to the General Assembly.

Sincerely,
Keith Stokes

Click here to download:
H7105Article7.pdf (34 KB)
(download)

Click here to download:
Jobs Initiative Letter of Support.doc (25 KB)
(download)

Welcome to Keith Stokes

Stokes

Together with the RI21 group, US Congressman James Langevin, RI Speaker Gordon Fox, RI Chairman Stephen Costantino, RI Senator Rhoda Perry, RI Senator Josh Miller, RI Rep Edith Ajello, with Thomas Deller and Lynne McCormack representing Providence Mayor Cicilline, with Raymond Simone, Nancy Langrall and Christopher Albert representing US Senator Jack Reed, Rhode Island College President Nancy Cariuollo, Brown University VP Dick Spies, Randall Rosenbaum from Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Providence Superintendent Tom Brady, and members of the RI Chambers of Commerce with many distinguished guests we welcomed Keith Stokes – the new head of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.

Unlike many areas of the country that have been taken over by big-box retail, Rhode Island still has a wealth of unique restaurants and retailers that are true gems.  These are legitimate parts of a true creative economy -- they are what make the creative class want to live somewhere. Keith and I have also been having this conversation about how art and design problem solving can underpin many of the economic development initiatives happening in our state.

RISD students live and work in Providence, and many of them stay to open business or work in existing industries. For example, EDC just funded RISD alum Kevin Cunningham ARCH 05’s Spirare Surfboards. Even more would stay, given the opportunity.

Welcome Keith from all of us! -JM

PS Thanks to RISD Govt Relations Director Babette Allina for shooting the quick photo on her mobile camera.

Josh Clark

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Today I met a local app designer/developer that has come to Providence via Paris and New York: Josh Clark. He has most recently spoken at SXSW -- a great conference to know what's happening out there. It's rare to find a person like Josh that speaks so intently to the topic of interface design and mobile devices. -JM

A Startup Economy for RI

Post by Allan Tear, Betaspring
 
At our session on the 21st century economy for RI, Neil Steinberg from the RI Foundation reiterated his desire to see one plan for transforming our state economy and its economic role on the national and global stage.
 
I'd like to suggest that "one plan" centers around getting good - globally good - at starting new ventures.
 
As John Maeda mentioned, research from the Kauffmann Foundation shows that startups and firms less than 5 years account for nearly all US net job growth in the last 25 years. (http://bit.ly/8idEa8) Furthermore, this growth is highly concentrated into a small percentage of top performing firms. In other words, each year, most young companies grow sustainably, a few break out and hire a lot very quickly, and most of the mature economy is a wash, with layoffs in one sector canceling out hiring in another.

RI was once good at starting companies. We often focus on what kind of companies they were - textile, jewelry, marine, industrial manufacturing. I think this focus can be distracting, as it wasn't the kind of companies that was so important, as the fact that RI started lots of them. There _is_ one underlying characteristic of the entrepreneurial success of RI in the past - that these batches of companies predominantly sold their products, services and ideas outside of the confines of RI, bringing in cash from beyond our borders and increasing value networks with the rest of the country and around the globe.

Somewhere along the way we stopped starting lots of companies, particularly companies that sold to customers beyond our state borders. As new high-growth venture creation has slowed, we've relied on RI's stalwarts, stars from previous generations that had become solid, profitable businesses. But these companies can't carry the job creation load solo forever, and are buffeted by economic cycles, taxes regulations and policy in ways that startups are not.

Our economy needs a startup engine. This is where Betaspring comes in. Betaspring, started in 2009, is a startup accelerator for first time entrepreneurial teams with ideas powered by technology or design. Our goal is to start high growth companies in batches, by the dozens rather than by the ones-and-twos. In 2009 we launched 7 companies with 25 entrepreneurs, 4 of which continue to grow in revenue, customers or funding.

Through a competitive application process, we take teams locally and from around the globe and bring them to Providence for 12 weeks to build and launch their products. We give them rent-and-ramen noodles money, a shared office with all the other teams, and basic legal support. Most importantly, they connect with, learn from, and build networks through 50 of our state and region's best entrepreneurial mentors. These mentor relationships and the community the teams build with each other, dramatically increase their chances of success, and help cement a deep relationship with Rhode Island. At the end of the program, on Demo Day, the teams pitch to 100 investors, corporate partners and media from the Northeast. 

Betaspring is a unique public private partnership, where the state Governor's Workforce Board has committed initial operating capital and private investors have committed the equity funding for the companies. Its a good start, but its just a start (and still just getting started!) To really turn the dial on startup activity, we need several versions of something like Betaspring. And we need to find ways to help our healthy larger organizations to get the best of what startups can offer - by partnering with startups, creating new lines of business, or spinning out ideas 
Into brand new ventures.     
 
So, let's start something.
 
Allan Tear, Betaspring

Jonathan Stark

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I met Jonathan Stark today in my office at RISD. He's a developer of mobile applications with three books under his belt. Jonathan embodies a rare mix of artist and technologist, and his knowledge of systems that support multiple mobile platform development is extremely valuable. Rhode Island has many such gifted software developers that can be leveraged right now. More later, JM