Talk about exiting and cutting edge.  Cheaplimorates.com has been invited by PhocusWright the leading authority on travel and travel trends to demonstrate our exciting and innovative new technology at the Travel Innovation Summit on November 16-19 in Orlando Florida this year.  The innovators from around the world come together to demonstrated innovative technologies that will change the travel industry and how consumers utilize travel.

It is truly exciting to know that we are not only considered an innovator in the travel industry but too a new and essential part of the industry as a whole.  Not only are we a presenter at the event, we are also launching the company nationally on the first day of the conference.  We have so many things going on that day that it will be a truly exciting and extremely unique launch.

CheapLimoRates.com will be the one of the first true comparison shopping and booking engine for the unmanaged business, leisure and retail segment of the travel industry.  Our website will incorporate several unique tools that will allow travelers to shop, compare and book chauffeured services from one website with a few simple clicks of their mouse.  Our network of suppliers will be able to offer their excess inventory to our consumers in real time and offer them incentives to utilize their services.  We see this as a true benefit to our customers and to the industry as a whole.

CheapLimoRates.com will cause quite a stir in the industry and we believe we will introduce a whole new segment of travelers to a ten billion dollar industry.  We are very excited about this opportunity and look forward to creating distribution partnerships with some of the leaders in the industry.  If you are in the travel or hospitality industry and would like to discuss our unique product and opportunity please contact the individual named below.  We look forward to seeing you at the conference.

Jae Morey

VP of Business Development

Jae@cheaplimorates.com

http://CheapLimoRates.com

http://twitter.com/cheaplimorates

The Department of Energy has billions in loan guarantees to hand out to alternative energy firms and automakers. But the highly competitive process has been criticized as slow, unmoving even.

What is a government agency to do? Hire a venture capitalist, of course.

The DOE announced Wednesday the appointment of Jonathan Silver, a former managing general partner at Washington D.C.-based venture capitalist firm Core Capital Partners, to head its loan guarantee and green auto programs. Core Capital invests in alternative energy, software, telecommunications and advanced manufacturing technology.

Silver will report directly to DOE Secretary Steven Chu and has been hired to accelerate the application review process for both programs, according to the agency.

This is all part of the DOE’s attempts to “streamline” operations. The agency has its hands full managing the slew of applications all vying for billions of dollars of potential loan guarantees.

The DOE’s loan guarantee program has $4 billion in appropriations to support $25 billion in loans. The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program has $7.5 billion in appropriations to support up to $25 billion in loans. Those credit subsidies are in addition to the more than $50 billion in loan guarantee authority the DOE has to advance nuclear, clean coal, advanced renewables and energy efficiency technologies, the agency said in a statement.

Some loan guarantees have been awarded. Solyndra received a$535 million loan guaranteeto finance construction of its solar photovoltaic panel manufacturing facility. Automakers Nissan, Ford, Tesla, Fisker Automotive and Tenneco have received loan guarantees through the ATVM program.

It’s a development worth noting because — as Earth2tech also mentions– it’s in line with President Obama’s apparent love of all things VC. Just two years ago Obama, then a senator and presidential candidate, floated a plan to create a cleantech venture capital fund to help move technologies from the lab to commercialization.

Silver’s veins don’t run completely with VC blood. There is a hefty amount of inside the beltway government work as well. He served as policy adviser to the secretaries of Commerce, Interior and Treasury departments. Silver was part of the team that negotiated the first clean car agreement with U.S. automakers during that time.

And he won’t be the only recently hired venture capitalist prowling the halls over at the DOE or in other government agencies, for that matter. For example, former VC Nick Sinai was hired last summer at the Federal Communications Commission to work on the country’s broadband and communications infrastructure with anemphasis on the smart grid.

Source: http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10002485/venture-capitalist-to-steer-does-energy-loan-program/

How most entrepreneurs initially present their idea to a Venture Capitalist.

Me Me Me!
2 mins Introduction: why they’re amazing
5 mins The Problem: why everyone else is wrong (why they’re amazing)
15 mins My Solution: passionately explaining their solution in depth (why they’re amazing)
5 mins Capital Expenditure: whiz through what they will spend the money on
2 mins The Plan: Blue sky 5 year plan on how the business will grow exponentially

Then they wonder why it didn’t work. The ask, “is it because they didn’t explain their vision clearly enough? mmmm, surely not… it must be because the VC is short sighted and doesn’t like or understand their idea?” So, the entrepreneur asks how can they get the VC to be as passionate about their idea, as once they do, surely they’ll invest?

It won’t work and they won’t (except in rare occasions), they’re only investing with the entrepreneur for one reason, to make money! They’re not interested in the problem, or the solution, or what the entrepreneur does, so the entrepreneur shouldn’t waste their time and effort trying to get the VC interested. The entrepreneur has to think like the VC! so if you’re presenting to a VC here’s the way to do it.

Show Me The Money!
5 mins ROI: What is their return and when will they receive it
10 mins Capital Expenditure: How much investment you need, time frame, phases and why
10 mins Risk Assessment: Company structure, detailing assets, IP, tangibles etc
2 mins The Idea: The product
2 mins You: Your background and history, contact details

This doesn’t only work on VC’s, try this approach with your next client presentation, get all the guess work, the money & nitty gritty details out of the way at the beginning, then show them where there money is being invested, that way you’ll know right from the start whether you’re wasting your time or not, and if they’re really interested they’ll extend the meeting to talk through your ideas.

I doubt this is good advice for all of you, but for some of you it certainly is.

When is the best time to look for money to grow your business? It is likely when you don’t need it. Why? Because that is when you are in the best position to use the money for what the venture capitalist/bank/Uncle intended it for. Growth. Sales. Profit.

I am sure there are some banks and VC’s out there who would be willing to provide capital for a turnaround, or an idea you just came up with but they are few and far between, and it will cost you a lot more.

So why would you take money when you don’t need it from a VC? The value should be well beyond the capital invested. If you are bringing in money and are in it just for the money, than you are off base and should rethink your approach.

A good VC acts as a mentor, business coach, sounding board, network resource, and helps you keep your focus. We brought a venture capitalist early on in our company, not because we needed the money, but because we wanted the accountability. I won’t lie to you, having the money definitely helped. Our franchise sales nearly tripled just after the injection of capital. We put that money to work quickly and it allowed us to strengthen our management team, and offer more to our franchisees while  we were still a young company.

In my humble opinion, if you are just starting a business the first place to look to fund operations are friends, family, and fools. Please make sure that one of those fools is yourself. I have heard that Visa/MasterCard finance the majority of start-ups and I don’t doubt it. After an idea begins to take shape, and you have your first customer you really have a few options to raising money but the one I recommend is organic growth. The way you put money into your bank account is from your customers writing a check not an investor. The more checks that get written from customers the more likely VC’s and Angels will be interested your business. If your business is one that could grow a lot faster and if it had marketing and sales behind it, than I would definitely advise you to start looking at an equity investment as an option to accelerate growth. Most of my experience with VC’s and Angels come from this category.

This being said, I recognize that there are some great business that start with a wicked idea, pitch investors, fund research, develop a product and then take it to market. There is no question that this is a path taken, but usually less traveled.

This post comes after a discussion through comments with Fred Destin on one of his recent posts. This is something I’ve been thinking for a long time, and I just thought it may be time for me to put this on paper: Nothing in the way term sheets are crafted creates an incentive for any of both parties to value advice from investors.

Let me just state first that I’m not saying that some VCs or BAs are not adding value to companies they’ve invested in. I know Fred and he’s definitely a nice fellow and very proactive investor, he’s for example participating in a lot of initiatives like Seedcamp. But, my point is that VCs or BAs are best viewed as pure financiers with the incentive structure put in place through current shareholder agreements: Their added value is in putting money in the projects that will be providing the best returns – with or without them on board.

Today, once the money has been committed, there is no incentive for the entrepreneurs to listen to investors’ advice – entrepreneurs are not paying for it. Furthermore, there is no incentive for investors to put extra skin in the game – if they do, other investors will benefit from these freebies on the same terms than they will.

OK, we regularly do see some investors providing extra help. But for me, their incentive belongs to either empathy or reputation management (providing value now to get a discount on future financing rounds with other startups). The carried interest, that is often cited, is not actually a hard incentive. Investors will receive it, whether or not they were really instrumental in the success of the company. Sure, investors have an incentive not to let the company fail, but the way to “fix” a company is certainly something that is not widely shared between entrepreneurs and investors, and I don’t think entrepreneurs see them as advice they have paid for when they issued equities.

So my whole point to entrepreneurs is that they should not expect particular help from VCs or BAs. Sure, they will get some “free” advice, but like everything that is free, you may like it or not, it may even have a lot of value for you, but you can not complain on the quality.

I’m actually thinking that we need alternate incentive structures so that entrepreneurs do pay for advice that have value for the project. There is a problem of assymetry in information products like advice, it is that you don’t know the value until you’ve consumed them, and when you’ve consumed them for free, you have litlle binding to pay their full value. My current thinking is that alternative currencies may be a good way to solve this problem: You can imagine that projects will be able to issue local currencies that will be backed someday by actual shares of the profit. But this is another story, a subject for another post…

I’m a poor college student

Well I don’t really make much money

The economy is in the CRAPPER right now

You just can’t really understand my situation – time are just real tough

Maybe later

I’m sure those who HAVE will make the difference

As soon as I “win the lottery”

I’m sure we have all either uttered or listened to some form or fashion of the above statements.  I know that talking about our “giving” is for the most part taboo since it seems EVERYONE knows that God’s Word says - “don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” - in regards to giving to those in need.

But I’m about to break with tradition – and for what I believe is a VERY WORTHY CAUSE!  I try to make a habit of not asking people to do things that I myself would not be willing to do.  So what I’m about to ask – YEP YOU GUESSED IT – I JUST DID!

 I “CHIPPED IN” – I became a Verve Venture Capitalist and now I’m asking anyone and everyone to do the same.  My buddy VINCE and a whole gang of people are doing something AWESOME IN LAS VEGAS and they NEED ME – and YOU – and YOU – and yes even you there with no job and the rent coming due (okay so maybe that’s a lil harsh but I think you get my point – they need people that may have needs themselves to STEP UP AND DO SOMETHING HUGE – SOMETHING BIGGER THAN EACH ONE OF US INDIVIDUALLY)

So please take like 5 minutes – go watch the video on this post – and read it and then DARE TO CHIP IN!  I am FULLY CONVINCED you won’t regret it!

And if you are all HARD CORE about that whole – “not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing” – well great – then let BOTH HANDS CHIP IN and give double the amount – IT WILL BE OUR LITTLE SECRET – I promise I won’t tell!

New Adelaide company,
Founded by Peter Maddern (principal) – his ONLY previous commercial experience as co-founder of biology company
help obtain GOVERNMENT funding for IT ventures……….. (Government should ban rip offs like this)
Unreasonable demands, nasty experience

Will never work with VC again

Here is a story from VentureBeat.

“It has been a rough three months for startups hoping to get acquired. Well, it’s been more like a rough year, but there’s new data from Dow Jones VentureSource focusing on the third quarter of 2009.

Overall, venture-backed liquidity (the combination of mergers, acquisitions, and initial public offerings) added up to $2.7 billion, down 49 percent from the same period last year, VentureSource says. It’s even a drop from the $3 billion of venture liquidity earned in Q2.

Things were even worse for M&As, which fell 56 percent to $2.25 billion paid in 71 deals — though the number would have been higher if VentureSource had counted Amazon’s $807 million purchase of Zappos, which hasn’t closed yet. Instead, that should add a big boost to next quarter’s numbers.

Acquired companies also made less money (median acquisition price fell 52 percent to $22 million) and had been waiting for longer to sell (median age increased 23 percent to 6.13 years).

On the other hand, IPOs were actually up from last year, with a combined total $451.25 million, the highest since 2007. That’s less exciting than it sounds, since the vast majority of that money came from battery company’s A123’s spectacular IPO, and there were only two IPOs in all. So it’s hard to see the increase as indicative of any big trend, except the fact that big IPOs are still possible. But hey, after the yearlong period (which ended in Q2) of no IPOs , that’s something.”

Read the full story here.

Click on this image to visit the BGN website

I just registered for Brain Gain Network, “an online networking and productivity tool that connects talented professionals and students interested in helping to increase the global competitiveness of Philippine industries”. I learned about this a few years back when, while at the Ayala Young Leaders Congress, I listened to the talk of Dr. Paco Sandejas, a young Electrical Engineering genius from Stanford with big dreams for the Philippines and who, unfortunately, some know only as “the husband of (local celebrity) Christine Jacob”.

Through this initiative, Sandejas and his team hope to connect Filipinos abroad–many of whom have graduate degrees and have a good professional background–with local talent to boost Philippine competitiveness and create more opportunities within the country.

Here’s a short excerpt from their website:

“While always promoting entrepreneurial initiative and a can-do-attitude, BGN seeks to convert the “brain drain” into a “Brain Gain” through the following activities: building an extensive membership database of highly-skilled, experienced and motivated individuals; facilitating communication and cooperation among them; and, providing the necessary online (and occasionally off-line) productivity tools in order for them to make entrepreneurial ideas a reality. For example, the projects might be NGO consultancies for tech transfer to Philippine companies, consultations between government and private sector leaders, university consortia for the advancement of engineering education, or the actual formation of start-up ventures in need of venture capital funding.”

It was interesting enough to get me started, and it might be interesting for you, too. Why not check it out and start brain-gaining?

Brad Feld, Venture Capitalist and founder of Foundry Group

A regular columnist in Entrepreneur Magazine, Brad Feld has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years. Prior to co-founding Foundy Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital.

Although Brad is not from Tampa, we were still delighted when we got the opportunity to interview and feature him on SouthTampasphere.com.

South Tampasphere: What was your very first job?  How, specifically, did you begin to build your work ethic at this job?  For example, my first job was a busboy.  Some of the ways I started to develop my own work ethic were arriving fifteen minutes early every day and always doing the sidework that no one else wanted to do.
Brad Feld: My first job was as a maintenance guy at my childhood tennis club. I got fired for not doing a good job. My second job was at a fast food restaurant called Potato’s Etc. in Dallas. I got fired for calling the manager a bitch after she dumped my work in the sink one day for no apparent reason. I stopped working for other people after that.

ST: Failure and rejection for entrepreneurs is pretty normal, and I’ve read you’ve had your share of hard times. How did you stay motivated and inspired through start up phases, losing money and other tough periods?
BF: I view failure as a normal part of the entrepreneurial process. Once you recognize failure is part of the process, it simply becomes another step along the way to ultimate success.

ST: What is your best investment advice?
BF: Invest in yourself.

ST: What are some top skills needed in order to succeed as an entrepreneur or business owner?
BF: One important trait that isn’t talked about that much is obsessive focus. The great entrepreneurs are maniacal about their vision and what they want to ultimately accomplish.

ST: Let’s say there’s a college student out there who started a software company in his dorm room. He emails you, Brad Feld, and wants to show you what he’s got, for investment purposes. If you like what you see, do you consider investing or do you just offer advice?
BF: At the minimum, I’ll always try to be responsive and provide some advice. If it fits within the investment themes that I have (see www.foundrygroup.com) I’ll take a deeper look. I’ll want to develop a relationship in advance of deciding to invest so typically the initial exchange is a starting point on what can be a long process, but you never know.

ST: You’ve ran quite a few marathons. Do you listen to certain artists or particular genres of music to keep you going? Do you stick to a certain diet when preparing for a marathon?
BF: I often run naked (no headphones) – I prefer just to zone out. When I do listen to music, it’s usually a podcast like Coverville or a book on tape. Regarding diet – I’m a fishaterian – but I eat too much.

ST: It’s hard for an entrepreneur to share credit for the business he or she created, or to ask for help. Do you think this is what holds most entrepreneurs back from achieving success?
BF: Some entrepreneurs are great at sharing the spotlight, others are not. I prefer working with the ones that do share, as I tend to like them better as people. But I have no way to correlate success or failure to this – it’s just different styles.

ST: You’re an investor who has his own column in Entrepreneur Magazine, and your email address is widely known amongst readers. What are some of the worst business ideas people have emailed you with, looking for your investment?
BF: I get complete random stuff that makes no sense all the time. Rather than view them as terrible ideas, I always look for a gem and try to offer some constructive feedback.

ST: There’s a quote, “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” “Mary” loves to sit on her couch, eating peanuts, using her laptop and watching movies. I’d tell her to go into the furniture manufacturing industry, produce and sell flavored peanuts, start a laptop repair company or become a film editor. No doubt each would take lots of hard work, but would you tell her the same, or would you tell her to get off her lazy butt and find a secure career?
BF: I’d tell her to do what she loves, but if she wants to build a successful business, she needs to apply it to a vision around a business that can be huge.

ST: What do you look for in employees when you hire? Does an MBA matter?
BF: There are loads of benefits to getting one – including spending two years exploring various aspects of business – but it’s not a key driver for the vast majority of people I’ve been involved in hiring.

Brad is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes widely read and well respected blogs at feld.com and askthevc.com  He can be reached at Brad@Feld.com.

Each year entrepreneurs pitch Venture Capital firms in hopes that their startup company or business expansion will get funded by them. The vast majority do not get funded. Furthermore, “getting funding” almost always means the entrepreneur must sell a sizable piece of his company to the VC.

Getting funded by a VC is a dream, but it can easily turn into a nightmare for both the entrepreneur and the VC. Because the VC owns a piece of the company, if further rounds of funding are needed in the future it could mean diluting only the founder’s ownership, depending on how the contracts were setup. It’s not too uncommon for founders to eventually wind up with a minority stake in their own company and to lose control of it. For the VC, there’s a big chance of failure. They usually need an exit strategy, such as taking the company public to sell its shares to the marketplace or to sell the company to a private party. But before they sell it, they need to try to juice up the revenue of the company to max out the sales price. When maxing out revenue becomes the primary unconditional focus, it’s easy for the business to go in a very different direction than the founder had intended.

The above horrors can happen when an entrepreneur does get funding. Let’s not forget that most entrepreneurs seeking capital just don’t get funded.

These are problems. And yet the world has a way about finding solutions to problems and getting them to those who can benefit. Sometimes the solution can be so incredibly simple that it’s hard to believe. In the case of funding a small business, the solution I see is a matter of breaking the habit of selling equity.

Instead, sell revenue. A slice of your gross revenue, that is. Here are the benefits when raising capital:

• Keep all of your company. Don’t sell it to investors.
• A flexible payment. In a month with low sales, your payment to the investor is lower. In a month with higher sales, your payment to the investor is higher.
• More long term profit is kept. Once you’ve paid the investor fully as agreed, you still own and control all of your company.

Here are the benefits to the investor:

• A built in exit strategy. A revenue participation contract can have a fixed repayment period or a fixed repayment amount, similar to debt.
• Lower risk. It’s easier to project gross revenues than it is to project profit. An investor whose repayment is a percentage of gross revenue only needs to be confident the entrepreneur can and will make the payments.
• More winners. Because of the built in exit strategy, the investor doesn’t have to assume most of their investments will tank and thus doesn’t need to have an astronomical ROI for the slim few that succeed.

For example, an entrepreneur has a business with $100k in gross income and $48k in net income. He needs $50k to expand his business by hiring and training a sales force and getting a larger office. He projects that in 6 months the expansion will result in an increase to $400k in gross income and $250k in net income. So an investor pays $50k to buy the right to receive 20% of the business’s gross revenue each month until those payments total $100k.

The investor will make a 100% ROI once the repayment is completed. If all goes as planned, that 100% ROI will be paid in under 18 months. It could happen faster or slower, depending on how well the business performs as projected.

For the entrepreneur seeking capital, the chances of finding an investor (or investors) can significantly broaden when he can pitch a lower risk investment that has a built in exit strategy.

What’s more, this model is very compatible with smaller investment amounts. In today’s world, a startup with tons of potential might not be able to get VCs’ attention unless they need millions of dollars. With revenue participation contracts, an entpreneur can seek out tens of thousands or a few hundred thousand dollars in capital from smaller local investors and businessmen. That also means the entpreneur may be dealing with a kinder local businessman rather than heading out to Silicon Valley to deal with the sharks.

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Once upon a time, when Baby Boomers ventured into the business world, those who could manage operations were Kings. But the ascendancy of financial re-engineering changed all that. Along with product lines and business units, even the most talented individuals turned into Pawns – and thereby became expendable.

Let’s be frank right off the bat. My friend Art has had a career many might envy. Affable, talented, with a razor-sharp intellect, he once managed operations worth over a billion in today’s dollars and earned the respect of employees and customers alike.

But now, at age 59, Art fully admits his career’s at a temporary dead end. And he’s as dismayed and frustrated about it as those at lower rungs of the corporate ladder.

“Yes, we have some savings,” he says. “We don’t have kids in college, and we weren’t heavily involved in the stock market. But like so many other Boomers, I’m finding it hard to get a job now, even worthwhile consulting jobs.”

Art’s wife Susan, 57, has been able to find an accounting position in Nashville, where the couple lives. But she’s no longer a department head, as she once was. And Art has so far shied away from using his savings to launch an ambitious venture of his own. “I don’t know if I have the requisite ‘fire in the belly’ to be a committed lone wolf entrepreneur,” he tells me. “I’d really like to get back to what I do well, which is managing a major operation.”

How did a lauded executive with 30-odd years of top-level managerial experience end up grossly underemployed years before retirement age? Like so many Boomers, Art has essentially been the victim of “financial re-engineering,” that all-purpose grab bag term which has come to mean the perpetual rejiggering of a company’s products, properties, divisions, and all-too-often people, in order to squeeze the greatest possible financial returns out of a firm’s designated assets.

Art’s field is healthcare. But virtually every sector of the US economy has been affected by the spectre of financial re-engineering the past few decades. Old concepts of corporate integrity, mission, and loyalty to employees have flown out the window, say critics, to be replaced by an environment where short-term advantage has supplanted long-term goals and the Main Chance is the only chance that counts.

Here Today, Who Knows Where Tomorrow

“It was different when I started out,” says Art, with more than a tinge of nostalgia. Born and raised in a small town in the South, he comes from a mini-dynasty of rural physicians. His dad, granddad, and two great uncles were all country doctors, and his mother trained as a nurse.

But Art got a business degree from West Virginia University and started out in the audit division of a Big Eight accounting firm in Norfolk. Ironically, he ended up in healthcare, like his family, by doing such a good job for clients in that sector, a regional senior living chain recruited him.

So began 32 years working for six different companies in the healthcare sector, some of which seemed to be periodically chopped up, patched together, switched around, and swapped shamelessly like trading cards.

The first company Art worked for was purchased by a much larger competitor five years into his tenure. That worked out well for Art, who eventually became a divisional president, with responsibility for over 250 separate healthcare facilities. But when this company, too, was “re-engineered” by asset shufflers, his position disappeared, and he went to work for a smaller outfit, itself in the midst of a realignment of product and service lines, as well as one of the first “securitizations” of healthcare real estate assets.

Through these moves and re-positionings, Art observed major changes in basic corporate attitudes. “When I started working,” he observes, “competent, ambitious managers strove to prove their worth in line positions, overseeing operations, products, and people. Staff people were in the background, while those in line operations held sway.”

But by the 1980’s, things began to change rapidly. Financial re-engineering became all the rage, and operating executives took a back seat to a new crop of would-be “dealmakers,” whose main objective seemed to be shifting assets – and people – around for the quickest possible return.

Art was only in his 30’s then, but he remembers old timers’ resentment of a seemingly endless stream of newly-minted finance MBA’s, who swooped into corporate offices with confidence verging on conceit, convinced that they had reinvented the wheel and that those who failed to concentrate on immediate “optimization” of results were hopelessly behind the times.

“I guess these fellas are all over 40 now,” laughs Art. “But back then, they seemed very young and very zealous. Meanwhile, operations began to suffer, because the Best and the Brightest no longer wanted to spend their careers actually managing things, instead of shuffling assets and doing deals.”

At the turn of the Millennium, Art was recruited as a senior executive of a start-up company which was expected to evolve into a major player in assisted-living, home healthcare, and private caregiver services. Here, he experienced the fickleness of financiers and Wall Street’s frenzied chase for the financial fad of the moment.

“Our president and founder, a respected physician, had lined up what seemed to be very solid financing from a flamboyant venture capitalist,” Art relates. “We were promised substantial financial backing for several years, enough to provide a platform for sustained growth.”

But the superstar financier pulled out at the last moment, leaving the new company essentially high and dry. “It was those heady years of the Dot.Com Boom,” Art says, “and the financier decided healthcare wasn’t Boom-y enough. He abandoned us for some West Coast computer start-ups, telling us he could make incredible returns there – I think the figure was 30 percent a year. And No, I’m not sure what happened to him.”

What happened to Art was major disillusionment. The start-up couldn’t make it, and a subsequent short stint at another healthcare company also disappointed, as it, too, went through “re-engineering” and changed its focus. About two years ago, Art went out on his own, but he hasn’t enjoyed it much and would like to be part of a corporate team again, if the possibility presents itself.

“I’ll bounce back, and so will the Boomer generation,” he says confidently. “It’s good so many of us are angry. We’ll move through the anger and shake things up, as we always have.”

One thing that sorely needs shaking up, Art believes, is companies’ recent reliance on short-term financial gains at the expense of long-term prosperity, for themselves and their employees. “A company is only as good as its managers and its workers,” he says. “The entire corporate world has to get back to basics. And the root of those basics is operations.”

What Do You Think?

Have you or anyone you know been “re-engineered” right out of a job or a company?

How have corporations in the US and Canada gone astray?

Have Baby Boomers been particularly hurt by financial re-engineering?

Have those in line operations suffered at the expense of financial wiz kids?

Do you think many companies are finally seeing the light?

Will Boomers return to corporate jobs as the economy picks up, or will they prefer to take the entrepreneurial route back to financial prosperity?

For the next story in the series, “Will Boomers Save Twitter?” click on: http://wp.me/pxD3J-K

For a look at how “Sophisticated Communes” may take Baby Boomers full circle as we age, see: http://wp.me/pxD3J-x

Are you a busy executive on the go?  Maybe you have retired and you lead and active life of leisure that includes extensive travel.  There are millions of people in the world that book their travel through various means and one of the means that has made all of our lives easier is the advent of on-line booking tools and search engines. If you have ever utilized those tools you know the benefits of such services.  However, if you are going to book chauffeured ground transportation, where do you turn?

Currently we have under development a web 2.0 search, shop and compare booking engine website that will list thousands of limousine companies together in one centralized location.  This website will give the busy business traveler and the savvy leisure enthusiast access to thousands of limousines and sedans at deeply discounted rates.  In today’s economic climate, this website will benefit the consumer and the suppliers of chauffeured ground transportation, by providing both with finding great deals or marketing great deals.

Over the next few months, our technology platform will be launched to market and millions of consumers will have access to the only comparison shopping and booking engine website today.  If you think that you would be interested in having such tools and services available to you, keep an eye out for CheapLimoRates.com.  You can return to this blog for more details in the near future.  If you are an online travel service and you are interested in partnering with us please contact us.

Has any society ever recovered from an economic recession by holding what ground it has? Absolutely not. Progress requires forward movement, no man has ever reached his destination by standing still. The prime example of a society that stood still in order to save its economy is Soviet Russia. An example of a society that pulled itself out of recession by unleashing the force of individual ambition is the United States following the Great Depression. No, it was not the New Deal or World War II that facilitated economic recovery, it was the forward movement of risk takers that drove innovation and production. Now, in the midst of another severe economic downturn, we are once again embracing a “hold the line” mentality, and rejecting ambition as the motor of economic success.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Just when the economy needs risk-taking the most, risk-takers are under the most threat. The Treasury now wants venture-capital firms declared as systemic risks and put under tight restrictions as part of the broader re-regulation of financial firms. Venture capitalists argue that since they don’t use debt and their firms are comparatively small, they shouldn’t come under rules designed for highly leveraged, too-big-to-fail banks.

How this debate turns out matters, because some 20% of U.S. gross national product is created by companies that were formed through venture backing. They include Intel, Apple and Google. How policy makers treat venture capital is a measure of the amount of innovation and enterprise that happens in an economy, with more regulation leading to less innovation.

This is a good time to recall that the venture-capital industry was born as a reaction to New Deal regulations that stifled capital and prolonged the Depression. The country’s first venture-capital firm (other than family-run funds) was American Research and Development, planned in the 1930s and launched after World War II in Boston.

Its leader was longtime Harvard Business School professor Georges Doriot, who is the subject of a fascinating recent biography, “Creative Capital,” by Spencer Ante. Mr. Ante, a BusinessWeek editor, tells me that as he researched the topic “one of the most surprising things I learned was how concerned financiers and industrialists had become about the riskless economy in direct response to the New Deal. Even in the 1930s, people understood that small business was the lifeblood of the economy.”

American Research and Development backed early-stage companies deemed too risky by banks and investment trusts at the time. The firm was an early investor in Digital Equipment Corp., the Boston-area company that revolutionized computing.

Uncertainty about which regulations applied to early-stage investing slowed the growth of venture capital. It wasn’t until deregulation in the late 1970s that the industry took off. The capital gains tax rate was cut to 28% from nearly 50% in 1978, and for the first time pension funds and other fiduciaries could include venture capital as part of an overall portfolio. During this vital period venture firms began to nourish what are today’s high-tech leaders, from information technology and the Internet to genetic research and health care.

The proposal now to tighten how venture firms operate suggests that we are in a stage of the regulatory cycle closer to the New Deal than to the entrepreneurial era that followed. Adding regulatory burdens would do nothing to help the investors in venture funds who are willing to take the big risks, knowing that about half of venture-backed companies fail. It would only increase the costs of doing business and make risk-takers more risk-averse.

No venture capital firm has asked to be bailed out, and none are too big to fail. As hard as it is for regulators to understand, the nature of venture capital is such that it should not even aspire to be a low-risk enterprise.

The practical arguments against further regulation (particularly of small businesses and risk takers) are overwhelming. From a philosophical standpoint, we have to ask the question: by what right? Was the U.S. not founded on the belief that every individual should be free to stand or fall, succeed or fail on his own merits and by his own strength?

Once again, the U.S. government is punishing individuals for showing initiative and daring to succeed above and beyond their fellow man –individuals who have asked nothing of society beyond the freedom to live their own lives.

Like milkman I have a job, the difference being that I don’t get paid (I wasn’t kidding about that R15)!

My job is effectively the development and alteration of the business plan, marketing collateral, and all the other tid bits in preparation for our evening meet ups. Also doing all the contacting and arranging of meetings with regards to potential partners and ‘not-so potential’ investors.

I think that’s one of the biggest questions and concerns in business start-ups, is where will we get the money to pull this off. We have no where close to sufficient start-up capital of our own, we have no funding from a venture capitalist, and bumping into a real angel is more likely to happen than to find an angel investor looking to play in the same industry. Game over?

That’s the scary thing, No! The BI has slowly become a tangible product or a working business or an executable service. And it validates the statement, “it’s not what you know, it’s who know”, and I don’t mean big corporate heavies, I’m talking about a persons family, friends from school, varsity, sport, the pub…that network is key, and the currency is favours and/or freebies.

Only when I realised for myself that VC funding, wasn’t everything, I then found what we had been doing over the last 4 to 5 months, had a coined term, Bootstrapping (search it on our link ‘Venture Level’ for articles)!

If only the universe allowed me to find these many articles on ‘bootstrapping’ 4 to 5 months ago, it could have saved me weeks of sleepless nights.But then again how could I have found an industry practiced method to surviving (not growing per say) without VC funding, when VC funding was all I was looking for.

Nothing is ever just black or white. Entrepreneurs need to learn how to shade. – sheppard

My last post, and observation of business & government students, was popular enough that I think I’ll share a second one here.   This is an observation that I’ve shared with a large number of people in the past seven years, as part of my greater set of take-aways on working in venture capital.

I worked for Atlas Venture from 2001-2002 as an Associate, and during that time I had the chance to observe quite a the interesting paradoxes that make up success in early-stage venture capital.  This particular observation is about the paradox surrounding being seen as “smart”.

In the short term, venture capitalists often look smart by saying “No”.  But in the long term, venture capitalists can only look smart by saying “Yes”.

This applies generally to new people joining the industry, regardless of level.  New associate, venture partner, general partner.  Venture capitalists deal with exceptionally long cycles.  It takes the better part of a decade to build most businesses, and it can take that long to really determine who in venture capital is doing the job, and who is just playing the part.

In the long term, the metric is simple: how many successful entrepreneurs & companies did the venture capitalist fund & help build to extraordinary outcomes.

In the short term, people are desperate for any tangible signal that will predict the long term.   Unfortunately, in many cases, the short hand for this becomes evaluating their critical thinking about risks and issues on every pitch.

As a product leader, I see this behavior play out on a regular basis outside of venture capital as well.  More experienced product managers will review the work of junior product managers, and will prove their capabilities by highlighting problems.

They don’t realize that they will never be great by pointing out flaws.  They will be great by translating that knowledge into solutions for other people’s products, as well as leading their own innovative initiatives.

I could always tell when a general partner, whether at Atlas or another firm, was “ready to fund”.  You would see their posture in meeting shift radically from finding ways to say no to finding ways to say yes.

Not surprisingly, my fondest memories of venture capital surround the start-ups where I said yes.

Judge for yourself.

As I heard the story, an “eager beaver” young entrepreneur unexpectedly encountered a billionaire venture capitalist at a tradeshow and boorishly insisted that his start-up company “couldn’t miss.” The VC realized he was trapped. “Do you have a card?” “Of course. Got one right here!” He tried to hand it to the VC. “No, please. Here’s what I want you to do. On the back of that card, explain why I should invest a dollar in your project.” The young man was astonished. “That’s impossible! I can’t do that.” Pause. “Well then, I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”

How many times in a business situation, when asked what time it is, have you earnestly and thoroughly explained how a clock works?

When among strangers, Ben Hogan refused to engage in chit chat, small talk, etc. Once at a Christmas party that he had dreaded attending, a woman came up to him and gushed, “Oh Mr. Hogan, I just bet someone $50 I could get you to say three words!” Long pause. “You lose.”

When Ernest Hemingway was challenged to tell a story with only six words, he responded, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Can you express your company’s strategy, core business, competitive advantage or disadvantage, mission, etc. with only six words? Or with ten?

If brevity is not the soul of wit, it is certainly preferable to the swamp gas, flimflam, flapdoodle, and other forms of nonsense that many people view as “communicating.”

Ladies: The next time someone compliments you on how attractive you look, a simple “Thank you” will do. No need to explain that you have been wearing the dress since junior high school and it was a hand-me-down from a male cousin no one in the family ever discusses.

Gentlemen: The next time someone compliments you on how fit you look, a simple “Thank you” will do. No need to tell them about the multi-family touch football game in your neighborhood on Thanksgiving Day last year when you knocked a seven-year old girl unconscious with your “best ever cross-body block.”

Comments, questions, requests, or suggestions? Please share them. They will be most welcome and I thank you for them. Best regards, Bob

Here come an article written by Mark Scott at BusinessWeek.

“Last week, I was in Geneva attending a cleantech summit that brought together Europe’s top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs looking for investment. One theme kept emerging: VCs are moving their money away from energy generation projects, such as wind-farm and solar-parks. The reason? Funding those types of businesses is just too expensive for investors already struggling from the global downturn.

That message was reinforced on June 23 when consultants New Energy Finance released preliminary results about cleantech investment. Not surprising, they also found VCs were steering clear of energy generation projects. In the first half of 2009, venture capital and private equity firms forked out $3 billion globally for clean energy companies — a 56% drop compared to the same period last year.”

To read the full story, click here.

My brother has always been an ambitious guy, coming up with odd jobs to make and sell things, and marketing them in his own unique ways. However, recently him and a couple of his business buddies started their own company called ecowell aiming to reduce plastic water bottle use and promote the use of a purified water system equipped with additives and more. They also have really awesome Klean Kanteen water bottles on their website. Of course as a good sister, I’m going to probably end up buying more than needed, but hey. Check out their website to learn more and to support their efforts. I’m so proud of him- he even made in on the WSU website!! Way to go bro; http://www.cea.wsu.edu/ecowell

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