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startup america challenge + free mentoring

2012-02-03T21:12:57Z

As I travel around, it is amazing to find out just how many startups still do not know about BizSpark. I spoke at the Startup Illinois 1st Anniversary event a couple days ago in Chicago and had so many emails after the event asking for more information on this “amazing program for tech startups called BizSpark”.

Well, there is a friendly regional competition going on with the Microsoft Regions and Startup America that will give all you tech startups access to BizSpark among other great benefits. If you are a tech startup, go sign up for Startup America with this link to show how the Central US has just as many high-quality, high-potential startups! You have until February 14th at 12pm ET until the competition ends.

Also, I am raising the ante a bit. For all those startups that sign-up, I will offer an hour (or so) of mentoring time that will enable you to learn more about BizSpark, how to scale your startup in the cloud, why Windows Phone rocks the party, or how to get access to other Microsoft resources to help you gain an advantage in the market. If you are in the Chicagoland area, this can be in person or we can take it virtually with a great little startup called Ohours. The challenge is on!

Excelerate Labs Gets BizSpark Plus

2012-01-31T18:45:44Z

In case you didn’t hear the big announcement yesterday about BizSpark Plus, check it out here. The bigger announcement is that our very own Excelerate Labs will be participating in the BizSpark Plus program just in time for applicants to start applying.

Also, today, Excelerate graduate and BizSpark company Buzz Referrals just announced their series a funding with investors including the first investment from the Invest Illinois Venture Fund.

I Loved Her First

2012-01-18T06:45:28Z

Thank you, Southwest Airlines’ stewardess. Thank you for asking me if everything was okay tonight on my flight to San Francisco. I realize that it was probably not usual for a 38-year-old man who was trained to kill in the army to spend 4 hours on your flight desperately fighting back tears that were streaming down his face. I realize that grown men, socially, are expected to maintain their manly persona. I am sorry. I loved her first.

You see, Southwest, it has been a little while that I have been away from the little angel that I was blessed with almost 8 months ago… away for a significant amount of time (more than a few days). You see, she says “DaDa” now even though I know it is probably not in reference to me and just easy to say. She looks at me with meaning and purpose in her eyes and for the first time I think I realized, more than anything in my life, I can honestly look back into those bright, beautiful, blue eyes and feel so amazingly proud.

Let me first say that I am the last person to be giving advice. I have had my own challenges and fought my own demons. But there is one thing that I know to be true. If you are a father, you are a father first. It is one of the realizations I had when I waited, for what seemed forever, for my little girl to cry when she was born. When Molly was born, there was a complication with meconium and when she was delivered she was silent. She was silent.

At that moment it felt like a terrible movie. Everything for me felt like slow motion. My heart was beating so fast and all I could do was pray. I am not particularly a religious person, but my grandmother and grandfather had past (my grandmother recently then) and I distinctly remember whispering to them at that moment “gram and papa, tell someone up there to make my baby breathe”.

Let me also be clear, I am not giving advice. I am sharing experience. Dads, there is nothing that trumps your baby… especially before a year old. The nurse in the delivery room had to tell me to come and see my baby once she cried for the first time after what seemed like forever because I was so panicked. I was sobbing. I walked over to where they took her to get her to breathe… and then she looked at me. She cried after agonizing seconds of silence. I think she might have smiled. I remember standing over her and one of my tears falling and hitting her little cheek. I knew then that there was not another girl in this world that I could ever love as much.

I boarded the plane tonight to San Francisco for the rest of the week. It will be the longest time I have been away from Molly since she was born. I was over the initial tears I had leaving the house and promptly handed my boarding pass over to the friendly gate attendant at Midway in Chicago. I buckled in for my 4 hour and 40 minute flight to San Francisco and dreaded the thought of the drive to Mountain View once I landed. Maybe I could catch up on email during the flight. I thought I could be productive and try to manage my dreadfully unmanageable inbox. Damn! No Wi-Fi on the flight. Southwest why do you have Wi-Fi on 1 hour flights I take and not the longer ones I take? Ugh.

I took my aisle seat, plugged my headphones in to my Focus S and started the music. LMFAO. Good upbeat song to be productive to. Next song was “I Loved Her First”. Shit. I don’t even like country music. I sat for like 20 minutes and listened over and over again. Then I started my tablet and started viewing all my SmugMug photos of Molly I saved down. Shit again. Here come the tears.

Dads, you loved her/him first. You can argue with Mom on this one but if you were like me, I peered into Molly’s blue eyes first right after she took her first breathe and understood for the first time in my life what unconditional love is. She/he might love Mommy first, but I can tell you that I inequitably loved her first. Whether it is work, friends, hobbies, vices, etc. remember always that you loved her/him first. And if you are sitting here contemplating if that is true, then go pick up your little girl/boy and look into their eyes. Say their name, even if they are too young to know you are talking to them. Hold them tight and say “I love you. I love you more than you will ever know. There is nothing in this world that is more important than spending every moment I can with you.” She/he will understand. You better keep your word.

Southwest Airlines stewardess, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to ask me if I was okay. Thank you for taking the time to kneel next to me and view the pictures of my Molly on my phone. Thank you for listening to the crazy story of how I am I already planning her 1^st birthday party and wanting desperately a Mickey Mouse cake. Thank you for listening to my boring stories of how amazing she is. Thank you for understanding how much I miss my little girl. After all, I loved her first.

Meet Ben Milne, Founder of Dwolla

2011-10-21T18:22:20Z

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I had a chance to sit down with Ben Milne of Dwolla (http://dwolla.com) at Chicago Ideas Week, an amazing BizSpark company changing the way consumers and merchants think about transactions. Dwolla also has a rich API for developers to take advantage of their fast and secure payment processing system.

Ben is also speaking at ThincIowa and I am excited to sit down with him here to talk about their rich API and how developers can take advantage of it.

Heading to ThincIowa

2011-10-21T15:46:42Z

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Chris Bernard and Brian Gorbett from Microsoft BizSpark are heading to Des Moines, Iowa to represent BizSpark and talk to entrepreneurs from both startups and large corporations. Should be an interesting mix.

Unfortunately, because of a flight cancellation, we arrived later than we wanted to but still did not miss any of the great speakers. Being entrepreneurial themselves, they took advantage of the HD camera in their Windows Phone to shoot them heading into the conference

StartupWeekend Chicago

2011-10-18T03:08:57Z

If you were given 54 hours to build a businesses, what would you create?

That’s the question 60 Chicago students and community members faced for the the 2011 Startup Weekend challenge. The event brought together developers, graphics designers, business people, and big thinkers together to build a web or mobile application that could function as a viable business post-event. At the end of the startup marathon, one team walks away with $2,000 to further their idea and a community of supportive mentors.

Startup Weekend is a global initiative that boasts success stories like Zaarly and LaunchRock. With a tagline of “No talk. All action,” you can imagine the kind of intensity these entrepreneurs experience.

The teams of young entrepreneurs looked as if they had been cramming for finals – exhausted, anxious and nervous. But to my surprise, the teams pitched like pros – passionate, tight, and well thought-out. As at all great demo days, technical difficulties occurred but the entrepreneurs didn’t let the glitches dampen their passion or their message.

After the last pitch, the judges – Doug Neil, Josh Hernandez, Sue Kim, Tom Boettcher, and Tony Wilkins - left to deliberate. After what I am sure seemed like a decade to the entrepreneurs, the judges emerged to announce the winners.

3rd. place - Jamout.fm
Jamout helps musicians breakdown the greatest barrier to awesome jam sessions – location. Jamout.fm offers musicians virtual jam sessions. They also might be the only StartupWeekend teams ever to include a rap in their pitch.

2nd place – EditHuddle
A crowdsourced blog editing tool & wordpress plugin, that allows a blogger’s readers to correct mistakes without writing a snarky note in the comment section. Basically readers highlight the errors in the text and identify what the type of error it is. EditHuddle then alerts the the blogger to the error. At the time of pitch, EditHuddle was already being used by nine bloggers with over 180,000 page views combined.

1st place - BikeRecov
BikeRecov seems like a godsend for all paranoid (with good reason) bikers. BikeRecov is a mobile app that helps bicyclists report bicycle accidents and theft easier. BikeRecov’s chip product embeds in your bike, most likely in the seat, tracks your exercise and more interestingly alerts you when your bike is riding away without you.

All of the winners developed businesses that offer solutions to real problems and impressed the crowd with their knowledge of their market. These guys are worth watching and I am looking forward to tracking the progress of these companies and the entrepreneurs other endeavors.

Just as important as the businesses that developed was the experience that all participants gained. Startup Weekend is a great place to find hungry and talented entrepreneurs who no doubt, given more than 54 hours, will build great companies in the future. Congratulations to all that attended and partcipated!

ThinkChicago Students Visit Microsoft

2011-10-15T14:22:39Z

There are many perks of being a Microsoft employee – great health benefits ( 100% covered .. yeah, its awesome), flying everywhere to meet with fascinating startups, working with the smartest people in the world and with the most forward-thinking innovative company in the world. But most importantly to me, the best perk that comes with working at Microsoft is the opportunity to give back to our community on a consistent basis.

Yesterday myself and a few other Microsoft employees had the honor of meeting with eight of the brightest students the Midwest has to offer as a part of the ThinkChicago initiative. The program selected a handful of the regions brightest college seniors to come to Chicago during CIW, attend Tedx Midwest and learn about job opportunities at some of Chicago’s most esteemed businesses like Groupon, Google, Grubhub, and Microsoft.

In line with Tedx and CIW, we wanted to highlight Microsoft’s dedication innovation and cutting-edge research conducted around the world and in almost every field. Working outside of research, I can forget how committed Microsoft is to pushing the envelope and creating innovative technology for today and future. Every fiscal year from 2010 to 2012, Microsoft spends 9.5 billion on research – that’s not a typo, that’s billion with a B.

And what are they researching? That’s the best part – anything and everything. Microsoft knows that discovery happens both with strategic intent and also serendipitously. They allow their researchers to pursue innovation and exploration almost without bounds because they know only then can truly great things be found, on purpose or not.
Two years ago, Microsoft wanted to educate their internal teams about what our research teams were doing and share a glimpse into their vision of technology. They made this video which was at the time more visionary, than practical. Interestingly enough, today some of these dreams are rough realities. And I believe that our experience with technology will continue to move towards the natural uninhibited interaction that you see in the video and also with the Microsoft Connect technology.

I had seen the video before, but seeing it through the eyes of the generation that will make these visions a reality gave me a fresh perspective and a new renewed excitement to be a small part of Microsoft’s team.
The students were quick to pick up on the themes in the video: the Internet of things, the voice to text translation, an intuitive and seamless interaction with technology etc. They were also quick to point out the two biggest obstacles to making this vision a reality – a lack of ubiquitous bandwidth & the accessibility issues that come with new and presumably expensive technology.

Despite the obstacles, I could tell from the students’ discussion that we are actually much closer to this vision than I originally thought. The visionary concepts were tangible to the students. They could more than imagine them, they could picture their lives in them. And anyone that can walk, talk, and discover within their own dreams are people we want working at Microsoft.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was sitting in a similar seat, viewing my company from the outside, wondering if I could fit inside this huge corporate machine. Like I told the students, there was and it has been the most gratifying work I could have imagined. With all of the sectors and industries Microsoft participates in, I know that there is a place perfectly suited for someone with ambitious creative talent like them.

BizSpark Spotlight: Innovative Exams

2011-10-15T14:00:34Z

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As all of Chicago focuses their attention on innovation, we thought we would turn our spotlight on some of our very own local BizSpark innovators.

Meet Innovative Exams – a Chicago-based startup revolutionizing assessment through their remote proctoring technology.

I had a chance to sit down with Ruben Garcia, the Founder and CEO of Innovative Exams, at Chicago Ideas Week (CIW) to find out how they are doing and what he thinks of CIW.

Innovative Exams’ technology enables companies to administer secure and fair testing by providing a secure way to remotely authenticate candidates. Innovative Exams SaaS services are inherently mobile allowing companies to conveniently bring the exam to the candidate and ensuring 100% protection of the exam content.

Innovative Exams has been a part of the BizSpark program since their 2009 inception and have now grown into a five-man operation providing professional testing for some of Chicago’s largest international firms .

Learn more about Inovative Exams on their website & follow their updates on Twitter @innovativeexams.

Tech & Web Spotlight: LifeLens

2011-10-13T18:35:53Z

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There was one group of speakers at CIW’s Tech & Web MegaTalk that stood out a bit.

They weren’t media moguls, or designers, or founders of the next mobile marketplace.

But within two minutes of starting their speech, the soft-spoken and seemingly unknown speakers had the audience on the edge of their seats and their fellow speakers wide-eyed with amazement. Meet Lifelens, winners of Microsoft’s 2011 Imagine Cup challenge.

This year’s competition challenged students around the world to build a technology around the theme: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.”

Using the two main goals of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals - “Reducing child mortality” and “Combating widespread disease” – as guidelines, Microsoft sifted through hundreds of thousands of applicants and landed on three live-saving technologies. One of which was LifeLens, a malaria detection technology for smartphones.

Using a Windows Phone 7 smartphone and a microscope camera lens, the LifeLens team created a point-of-sight malaria diagnosis system. Using LifeLens you can take a photograph of a blood sample & then identify clusters of malaria One million people who die each year and 85 percent of them are children under five years old. By reducing the amount of time to transfer and inspect samples in lab from days to seconds, the LifeLens technology could be a potentially lifesaving technology for doctors in the field.

Last night, I couldn’t have been more proud that Microsoft was a part of LifeLen’s story. Check out what people were saying about their amazing technology.

5 Reasons The Midwest Is Primed For Startup Success

2011-10-13T17:50:15Z

There must have been something in the air yesterday because as I looked around at the buzzing crowd, networking and dreaming outloud, I saw that everyone, both old and young, looked so ready, so eager. For what, I can’t say definitively but I can guess that just like me Chicago Ideas Week had made them excited and almost frantically anxious to learn, build and create.

Neither myself nor the crowd had to wait long for another dose of entrepreneurial adrenaline. For almost two hours the Kauffman Foundation Midwest Entrepreneur Summit and its panelist served up inspiration and Midwestern pride.

If anyone in the room had questioned whether the Midwest could grow and sustain thriving startup communities, they left with a definitive answer – yes.

5 Reasons The Midwest Is Primed For Startup Success

Talent
Did you know the midwest boasts 8 out of the top 25 entrepreneurial colleges and 6 of the top 20 engineering schools? While the MidWest isn’t often referred to as the educational breeding ground of entrepreneurial talent, Rockfish‘s Chief Marketing Officer Dave Knox and Founder of The Brandery pointed out that the heartland has everything and everyone it needs to be a innovative powerhouse. As the startup community continues to grow and thrive, more and more of our talented youth are staying to build the Heartland’s idea economy.

Work Ethic
President of Zyvex Technologies Lance Criscuolo spoke about moving his Texan nano-tech startup to Columbus, Ohio and what he thought about bringing on local buckeye talent. ”The midwestern work ethic is like porn. I don’t know how to define it, but I know it when I see it,” said Criscuolo.

Midwestern entrepreneurs are often seen as the underdogs, overlooked and counted out, but instead of instilling defeat or complacency, our underdog status builds gumption, ambition and a damn good work ethic. Yesterday’s panelists reminded me over and over again that Rust Belt entrepreneurs have been raised to value work over words. Most of the founders shirked questions about future plans because of their relucantce to put their mouth before their hands.

When you don’t toil the land and plant the seeds, the harvest doesn’t seem as bountiful. Entrepreneurs from the Heartland don’t expect anyone else to do the work for them. They wouldn’t want anyone to.

Loyalty
It’s no secret that quality talent in The Valley is easy to come, but keeping that talent is a whole other story. I mean no disrespect to the thriving startup epicenters, but as anyone who has worked in the industry can attest the fast-paced nature of The Valley & The Alley creates an unrest in its entrepreneurs. Many of them jumping from ‘the next best thing’ to ‘the next next best thing,’ in hopes of being apart of the next Facebook or Google. And that’s why every head in the room nodded when Knox spoke to a quality that separates midwestern startups from other – loyalty.

It didn’t surprise me that of Knox’s 18 original developers, 17 are still apart of the RockFish team today. Midwesterners have a deep sense of apprectation when someone takes a chance on them. Maybe its because we grew up with teams like the Bears, or the Cubs but we don’t jump ship when the times get tough.. we sit in subzero temperatures and dream of next season.

Leadership
Everyone that has attended Chicago Ideas Week has witnessed the passion of this city’s entrepnreurial leaders. Groupon investor, Lightbank cofounder and Chicago Ideas Week curator Brad Keywell‘s determination to bring the regions thought leaders, and social innovators together is testmate to his (and other leaders like him) commitment to their community.

JB Pritzker, co-founder of private investment firm The Pritzker Group & founder of New World Ventures, is one the Midwest’s leading technology investors and a powerful force within the community. In addition to putting his money where his heart is, Pritzer was instrumental in building Chicago’s entrepreneurial infrastructure like the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, the Illinois Venture Capital Association, the Illinois Innovation Accelerator Fund, Excelerate Labs and Built in Chicago.

In an effort to bring the entrepreneurial community together daily, Pritzer along with Troy Henikoff of incubator Excelerate Labs, Matt Moog of startup Viewpoints Network and Kevin Willer of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center have set their sights on creating a co-working space for technology startups to open early next year. Of course there are many regional leaders that I have failed to mention but Keywell and Pritzer are great examples of the committed leaders that are working tirelessly to cultivate an ecosystem where startups can not only survive, but can thrive.

Community
Midwestern startups realize they’re viewed as the step-child of the startup word, but that realization only emboldens them to pour into the lives of fellow entrepreneurs more often, recruit more new talent, and plant their companies’ roots deeper in their city.

While it’s getting easier to build your startups outside of the megahubs, it is still not a breeze to raise funding and attention in the Midwest. Unlike startups in the Valley who never have to consider or worry about their location, Midwestern startups have to consciously choose and rechoose to build their companies close to home. Every round of founding they recommit themselves to their city. Ben Milne, founder & CEO, of (BizSpark company) Dwolla , said this of building and the initial struggles growing his startup in Des Moines, Iowa: ”You really have to want to do (build) it there.”

And Ben’s right – it’s not as easy build here, but soon it will be.

Soon founding a startup in the Midwest will be the MOST logical decision because more and more startups like Dwolla are determined to pave the way for their fellow entrepreneurs. Soon the GrubHubs and the Dwollas will be the ExPayPalers and ExGooglers of today, funding innovators and building incubators and like their Silicon predecessors their commitment will be just as tied to their roots as to their wallets.

UPDATE: Thanks Dave for providing the great deck he used