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 since its inception last year in Silicon Valley, the program will now be expanded nationally, with the University of Michigan and Georgia Tech joining Stanford in offering the workshops. The NSF hopes to reach 200 more researchers through its new nodes at U-M and Georgia Tech.
Soon after, it was announced that Blank had invested in a venture fund launched out of his alma mater, the University of Michigan. From their website: “The Michigan eLab was founded by a team of passionate entrepreneurs and investors with ties to the University of Michigan entrepreneurial ecosystem and successful track records in venture capital and creating disruptive startups.” -Source: Sarah Schmid, Xconomy
We were thrilled to moderate this great event. Thanks again to Bizdom and Detroit Venture Partners for co-hosting.
If you missed our summer fireside chat with Steve, be sure to check out the Lean Startup Conference simulcast, in downtown Detroit at the Madison building this Monday, December 3. Bizdom is generously hosting a simulcast of the conference, they will stream the entire event live at the Madison’s 5th floor auditorium. Get registered here: http://detroitleanstartup.eventbrite.com/
View video highlights from the event below:
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