Last night the University of Michigan’s Tech Transfer Office held their annual Celebrate Invention event. This event is held each fall to celebrate and honor inventors that are working on exciting new commercial opportunities using U-M IP. It was a cold and rainy evening so I didn’t hold much hope for a large crowd but was excited…
As an entrepreneur, you look at life through a different lens. Instead of seeing the world as it is, you tend to start seeing the world as it “should be” or “could be”. Instead of taking things on face value you tend to stop and question how they came into being and why and who did…
Today ends a 3-day fast paced visit to Chicago for myself and many UM entrepreneurial students who came here to engage the Chicago entrepreneurial network. On Sunday, I was thrilled to see so many wolverines participating in Chicago’s Startup Weekend event. This 50+ hour event is a great way to build energy in a community…
Consider this question: “Describe the value of a gas station”. I like to ask entrepreneurs this question as a thought experiment of how hard it is sometimes to isolate value from something we are used to experiencing every day. A typical response is “a place where I gas my car”. That is incorrect, that is…
Last night was the UM Student Startup Showcase at the new TechArb location where 225 Ann Arbor entrepreneurs gathered to see not only the 8 most recent student startups to complete the TechArb program but also to meet the 20 new UM Student Startups entering TechArb for session #7 (Nov-2011 through April-2012). Many thanks to…
We have made great strides in developing and teaching skills and processes that help entrepreneurs figure out how to take their ideas, reduce risks and more efficiently test and validate (or invalidate) they’re assumptions. As you probably know I’m a huge fan of the lean startup model and customer development. I’m also really happy to…
A record number of University of Michigan student startup teams have applied for access to TechArb for the upcoming session (#7 – November 2011 through April, 2012). Tomorrow (Monday) we have interviews with each of the startup teams that are finalists for the remaining slots for most of the day. I really enjoy meeting entrepreneurs…
“(2030) Order edited or modified” is the latest status on my Chevy Volt order when I checked today… and I’m thrilled! It’s been two weeks since the last change to my Volt order (originally placed on 8/25/2011) and I was craving some update as to the status of my future car… incidentally, the update on…
Trying to get a fire lit when you are camping is sometimes a struggle. Sure, everyone has their 2 cents on how to stack the wood, prime the fire and light a match but ultimately we never know if the fire is going to stay lit, blow out or burn out too fast. Ann Arbor’s…
The CFE is hosting today @ 2pm at Stamps Wei Wei Hsing from the Acumen Fund. These guys are amazing! If you don’t know much about what they do you should watch this TED video by one of their founders, Sasha Dichter titled “The Generosity Experiment”. What I like about this video is that you…
Doug Neal 