Foundations Archive

  • Earlier this summer, Steve Blank packed the house at Detroit’s Madison building, for a fireside chat with Detroit’s emergent Startup Community. Blank, a serial entrepreneur, author of The Startup Owners Manual, and lecturer at Stanford, dropped in to check out the Madison, meet members of Detroit’s startup community, and share some news about his recent efforts — training University researchers to think more Entrepreneurially: In a partnership with the National Science Foundation, Blank has designed the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, which teaches university scientists how to think like entrepreneurs and bring their inventions to market faster. Though the program has trained 100 teams...

    Steve Blank on Detroit’s Startup Scene

    Posted on November 27, 2012 | 1 Comment
    Earlier this summer, Steve Blank packed the house at Detroit’s Madison building, for a fireside chat with Detroit’s emergent Startup Community. Blank, a serial entrepreneur, author of The Startup Owners Manual, and lecturer at Stanford, dropped in to check out the Madison, meet members of Detroit’s startup community, and share some news about his recent efforts — training University researchers to think more Entrepreneurially: In a partnership with the National Science Foundation, Blank has designed the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, which teaches university scientists how to think like entrepreneurs and bring their inventions to market faster. Though the program has trained 100 teams...

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  • “Scheduling? The word is music to my ears. Who else thinks “fun” when they hear “scheduling”? Raise your hands!” Neil Greenberg squints into the standing-room only audience of the Elizabeth Theater on the second floor of Park Bar, the venue for the first CONNECTION meeting of Freshwater Transit. Indeed a few cautious hands go up, outing their owners’ passion for scheduling and fellow transit-nerdiness. Greenberg launches into another salvo on the nitty-gritty of transit planning and operations and the crowd begins to relax. He’s gregarious, jokey, the avatar of that overzealous high-school math teacher who doesn’t just want you to learn...

    Freshwater: Using Enthusiasm to Source Startup Talent for Public Transit

    Posted on November 19, 2012 | 4 Comments
    “Scheduling? The word is music to my ears. Who else thinks “fun” when they hear “scheduling”? Raise your hands!” Neil Greenberg squints into the standing-room only audience of the Elizabeth Theater on the second floor of Park Bar, the venue for the first CONNECTION meeting of Freshwater Transit. Indeed a few cautious hands go up, outing their owners’ passion for scheduling and fellow transit-nerdiness. Greenberg launches into another salvo on the nitty-gritty of transit planning and operations and the crowd begins to relax. He’s gregarious, jokey, the avatar of that overzealous high-school math teacher who doesn’t just want you to learn...

    Continue Reading...

  • “What are you guys doing?!” Steve, said as he walked into the house. He could tell right away that we were cooking something… “Jerky?!!? In the oven?!?!” The air was moist with the smell of brown sugar, soy sauce, and liquid smoke, erupting from the cracked oven door. Approximately  3 dozen, or 7-8 lbs of beef, cut into thin slivers of meat was suspended by skewers inside the 375 degree appliance. It was my very first enterprise, Leatherface Jerky Company. I, along with two of my closest friends Armando and Stafford, would spend each hour after school at the grocery...

    Leatherface Jerky Company

    Posted on January 3, 2012 | No Comments
    “What are you guys doing?!” Steve, said as he walked into the house. He could tell right away that we were cooking something… “Jerky?!!? In the oven?!?!” The air was moist with the smell of brown sugar, soy sauce, and liquid smoke, erupting from the cracked oven door. Approximately  3 dozen, or 7-8 lbs of beef, cut into thin slivers of meat was suspended by skewers inside the 375 degree appliance. It was my very first enterprise, Leatherface Jerky Company. I, along with two of my closest friends Armando and Stafford, would spend each hour after school at the grocery...

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  • Editor’s Note: This post is authored by Ryan Eggenberger, a Michigan-based entrepreneur coach and the founder of TheWorkpreneur.com. Ryan helps aspiring entrepreneurs create concrete plans of action to achieve their business goals. You can follow Ryan on twitter here. There was a time in my life that I call my darkness. I was asleep at the wheel of my life. My work at the time was characterized by a desire to be a good employee: work hard, try to get a raise, save for retirement. That was my reality because I didn’t know any different. For the entrepreneur that kind of corporate-employee...

    Why Not You?

    Posted on November 28, 2011 | No Comments
    Editor’s Note: This post is authored by Ryan Eggenberger, a Michigan-based entrepreneur coach and the founder of TheWorkpreneur.com. Ryan helps aspiring entrepreneurs create concrete plans of action to achieve their business goals. You can follow Ryan on twitter here. There was a time in my life that I call my darkness. I was asleep at the wheel of my life. My work at the time was characterized by a desire to be a good employee: work hard, try to get a raise, save for retirement. That was my reality because I didn’t know any different. For the entrepreneur that kind of corporate-employee...

    Continue Reading...