I blogged about the Kiva business for business credit card project with Avanta yesterday. Here is a link to the blog that they have created to chronicle some of the stories from this project and the on-line community of entrepreneurs they are helping to create. Right now the bloggers are documenting the Kiva-funded Somoan seamstress’ trip to the United States for the KivaB4B launch party. At the party she will meet one of her American supporters, a film maker from San Francisco.
Belmont Students Sweep International Awards
Sixteen of our students traveled to Atlanta to participate in the International meeting of Delta Epsilon Chi, which is the collegiate division of DECA.
Over 1500 college students participate in various business competitions.
58 teams with over 100 students participated in the Entrepreneurial Challenge — one of the featured events of this conference. It is a three day event in which students (in teams of 1-3) come up with a business idea for a specific industry or trend (this year it had to be a “green” business). They research the idea and make a pitch for a business proposal to a series of business executives who serve as judges. The finalists all had to present to a panel of five executives on Tuesday morning.
Belmont had 5 of the final 10 teams!
1st place — Belmont — Kevin Jennings (Entrepreneurship and Music Business
major — from Nashville) and Sally want to buy topamax Munns (Entrepreneurship major from
Brentwood) Winning Team members share $5,000 Don DeBolt Scholarship and up to $3,000 in travel awards to attend the International Franchise Association Annual Meeting to present their winning proposal. They also got $10,000 in seed money from ideablob.com.
2nd place — Belmont — Noah Curran (International Business/Entrepreneurship
concentration) and Julie Zaloba (Entrepreneurship major) — $3,000 prize
In addition to being on the first place team in the Entrepreneurial Challenge, Kevin Jennings also took 1st place in the Business Plan Competition for his business soundAFX, which he currently runs in our hatchery program.
The advisers for the Belmont team in this competition included Becky Gann (program coordinator for our Center for Entrepreneurship), Robert Lambert (professor of Marketing), Jose Gonzalez (Instructor of Entrepreneurship), and me.
I will post a few pictures from the event as soon as I get them from our team members.
Go Belmont!!
Pioneer Entrepreneurship Educator Passes
I was sad to hear the news that Jeffry A. Timmons, the Franklin W. Olin Distinguished Professor in Entrepreneurship at Babson College, died unexpectedly on April 8, 2008, at his winter home in South Carolina. He was 66.
Timmons was one of the pioneers in the development of entrepreneurship education and research in America. He was internationally recognized as a leading authority for his research, innovative curriculum development, and teaching in entrepreneurship, new ventures, entrepreneurial finance and venture capital.
Inc. magazine called him “The Johnny Appleseed of Entrepreneurship Education” and his doctoral dissertation, “Entrepreneurial and Leadership Development in an Inner City Ghetto and a Rural Depressed Area (Harvard, 1971)” was the first use of the word “entrepreneurial” in a dissertation title. He created the first business plan competition at the college level in 1984 at Babson College.
In the early 1980s when I was a young professor trying to get an entrepreneurship program going, Jeff was always willing to offer advice and encouragement. I will always remember his kindness.
May he rest in peace.
Be Patient and Realistic When Suitors Call
In my column this week at the Tennessean I talk about the exit process:
The formal process of selling a business usually starts with a letter of inquiry. The first time you get one, the temptation is to start counting all the money you think you are about to get.
But this stage is about as serious as a smile and a wink at a singles bar. About 90 percent of the time these inquiries go nowhere.
The Next Buggy Whip
Entrepreneur.com predicts ten businesses that will go the way of buggy whip manufacturers:
- Record stores: My students would agree, They have already transitioned our campus-based business that was a record store into a “dorm store”
- Camera film manufacturing: there goes my Instamatic
- Crop dusters
- Gay bars
- Newspapers:Can blogs be next??
- Pay phones: When was the last time you actually saw one?
- Used bookstores: Does that mean that students will also stop reselling my textbooks?
- Piggy banks
- Telemarketing: Yeah, right….
- Coin-operated arcades
Can you think of any you want to add?
My Old Beat Up Guitar
Well I found her in a pawnshop
somewhere up in Ohio
where I guess some rounder came up short
and he had to let her go
It cost me ninety dollars
but it’s worth much more by far
cause I never had a better friend
than that old beat up guitar
Jerry Jeff Walker
This old Jerry Jeff Walker song has always had a soft spot in my heart as it reminds me of my guitar. I have a 1961 Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar. Although I did not find her in a pawn shop, I did buy her used in the early 1970s from a used musical instrument store. (And it was not actually in Ohio, but Fond du Lac, Wisconsin). But, I digress…
| It looks like this: | |
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It is the only guitar I have ever owned. I have never wanted to replace her in large part because her sound has gotten richer and richer over the years. The older it gets, the better it sounds. A new product has been developed by a couple of entrepreneurs out of Florida that might change my thinking. I first heard about it when a colleague of mine attended a business plan competition in California with one of our students. The company is called ToneRite, and it rapidly speeds up the “aging” process of musical instruments to create an old sound out of relatively new instruments. Cool idea! |
New Venture Blog
Milt Capps, a seasoned journalist, has launched a new blog called Venture Nashville.
Capps says that “The purpose of The Venture Nashville Blog (VN) is to
help increase the flow of accurate information about research,
innovation, technological developments and investment activity in one
of America’s finest cities, Nashville, Tennessee.”
Although the focus is on Nashville, he is building a blog that will
be of interest to anyone dealing with technology entrepreneurship.
The Lighter Side of Seeking Investment Capital
Stressed about getting that “A” Round of funding closed? Have you
heard “no” from one too many angel investors? Then maybe you want to
let off a little steam and show up to a pitch wearing one of the shirts
offered by Startup Wear.
Here is my personal favorite:
A New Meaning of Golfing Green
My son sent me a link to a golfing blog site that talks about new bio-degradable golf balls for use on cruises:
The original balls were made of rawhide, but the material’s
hardness was caving in people’s expensive drivers. Now, the balls are
made mostly of polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA (think Elmer’s Glue), which
has some elasticity. [Company founder Todd] Baker says the balls are
pretty lifelike when hit with wedges and other lofted irons, but admits
they only travel a little more than half the distance of a person’s
typical driver shot. Hey, you can’t have everything.More importantly, when submerged in water, the balls break down in
three to five days into non-toxic elements, carbon dioxide and water.
The company is Eco Golf Balls, located in Indianapolis.
The company website has a page dedicated to their golf balls being used in the Antarctic.
There’s a Storm Brewin’
Recession clouds appeared in the skies over Main Street, according
to the most recent National Federation of Independent Business Small
Business Economic Trends member survey. The NFIB Index of Small
Business Optimism fell 3.3 points in March to 89.6 — its lowest
reading since the monthly surveys were started in 1986, and the lowest
quarterly reading since the second quarter of 1980. The decline was
driven by a sour outlook for business buy phentermine/topiramate conditions and real sales growth,
accounting for half the decline in the Index. Weaker plans to create
new jobs accounted for 21 percent of the decline.
“We are seeing recession readings,” said NFIB Chief Economist William Dunkelberg.
What is worse is that the labor market is still somewhat tight and price pressures continue to push costs up.
More signs that stagflation might be on the horizon.