My guest blog post for Forbes Velocity was published today. In it, I write about how neither the Legislative Body or the Executive Branch seem to understand that focusing on making funding more easily available to entrepreneurs will ultimately drive economic growth and job creation. There just aren’t enough entrepreneurs in D.C.!
Archive for the ‘Entrepreneur’ Category
Jul
21
Washington, D.C. Needs More Entrepreneurs
Jul
21
Blekko IPO, Day 1
For many months now dozens of people have asked me about what’s cooking at Blekko. And for many months all I’ve been able to say is “Blekko is a big, bold, bet in search. It’s in stealth. Stay tuned.”
Well, today I can finally give them an answer.
And here it is, in video form (thanks Mike Arrington):
Here’s what Blekko’s founders Rich Skrenta and Mike Markson had to say about it:
You can also see what Rich and Mike had to say about Blekko on their respective blogs, here and here.
Finally, here is the original TechCrunch post on Blekko (I’ve included snippets and screenshots below):
“What Makes Blekko Different?
Blekko is a full web search engine, with regular crawls of billions of web pages. But they know that they can’t beat Google at size of index, relevancy and speed right out of the gate. So they’re differentiating themselves in another way – by giving users tools to do new types of searches that they can’t do elsewhere. And by providing an unprecedented level of access to the algorithms and data that Blekko uses to determine relevancy.
That doesn’t mean Blekko’s relevancy isn’t great. The company says they’re on par with Google and Bing for most queries. But the differentiating feature are the query refinement tools they call Slashtags. These tools, like /news or /date or /amazon or /blogs, or any combination, make it very simple to quickly filter results to what you are looking for.
Users can create their own slashtags based on a group of URLs. I’ve created one that lists all TechCrunch sites to do easy site search. Others have created slashtags for conservative or liberal blogs, top tech sites, etc. If they make those slashtags public, others can use them, too.
The company also lets users search via a variety of APIs. Add /amazon to search on Amazon. Or /twitter to search via the Twitter API. Or just type /whatever.com to search just that domain.”
(more…)
Jul
16
Here’s To Secretary Chu And The End Of Energy’s Dark Ages
I wrote a guest blog for Forbes Velocity earlier this week about Secretary Steven Chu and the effect he is having on energy innovation, entrepreneurs and the relevance of the Department of Energy in general. The post is entitled, Here’s to Secretary Chu and the End of Energy’s Dark Ages. Enjoy the read!
Jun
30
Alternative Energy: Creating Non-Exportable Jobs
Earlier today, my guest blog post was published on Forbes Velocity Blog. I write about the alternative energy industry being the latest in a series of waves of innovation in the Valley and how this new innovation will affect job creation. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments on this subject. You can read the entire post on Forbes.com.
Jun
02
Innovation and the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship
Last month, fellow CMEA partner Faysal Sohail and I were among the few Venture Capital delegates invited to attend President Obama’s Summit on Entrepreneurship. This gathering of talent and potential from the Muslim world, was an event set in motion by President Obama’s “New Beginning” Cairo Speech last June.
Faysal Sohail and Jim Hornthal at the Presidential Summit
The Middle East represents a huge market opportunity, and recent transactions, like Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob , create role models — one vital part of an entrepreneurial eco-system. While nothing succeeds like success, it takes a lot more than a few financial hits to push back the decades (centuries?) of resistance to risk and the consequences of failure (2nd cousin to risk).
John Dickerson has been writing in Slate a series or articles about America’s Greatest Idea – Risk. Cultural acceptance of failure is a huge challenge. Even in the United States, tolerance has it’s own ‘micro-climatology’. From region to region, city to city, or even block to block, the willingness to take on the seemingly impossible runs from scalding hot to ice cold. After all, who is willing to take a bet with their careers? It is one thing to be wrong and lose money (which, while we never like it to happen, is a fact of life in the venture business). It is another to be willing to take that bet with an even more dear “currency”; an individual’s time and career.
Fellow venture investor John Doerr likes to characterize entrepreneurs as those “individuals who do MORE than anyone thinks possible with LESS than anyone thinks possible.” It takes a similarly optimistic support system of angels, mentors, and venture investors to support and nurture these rising stars, and to also be there to pick them up when they fall down. A failure can be worth two successes, especially for the individuals and teams that are able to learn from their mistakes. This scar tissue has been vital to the success of most of our high tech heroes. Our ability to transplant this model in other parts of the world is vital if we as a nation are to prosper and be secure.
The Presidential Summit was an important first step in this long journey. I hope that we have the patience to see this all the way through. Job creation is not just an important issue in the US. The unemployment rates in the Middle East are staggering, and getting worse. It is in our national interest to do what we can to nurture the job creation that comes with successful entrepreneurship. Giving youth something worth living for is a far better prescription for our own security than enabling the seeds of insecurity and intolerance to take a greater hold, making them even harder to dislodge. It is our responsibility to spread the seeds of creativity and innovation as far as the winds of change will carry them.
May
25
From Start-up to Shut-down in 36 Hours — Saga of a Volcano Entrepreneur
Dateline: London
As part of the stranded pack of Americans stuck in London last month after Iceland’s volcano burped, and shut down the skies over Europe, the stranded masses were faced with a common dilemma … how are we ever going to get out of here? The news changed hour to hour. Saturday’s flights were cancelled, rescheduled to Monday. Sundays were cancelled, rescheduled to Tuesday, and so on.
We became increasingly frustrated by the realization that the details of when and how we would finally get home was beyond our control. Rather than just sit by passively and bemoan our condition, I recruited some fellow Skoll World Forum exiles, Drummond Pike, Dave Chen, and Jim Greenbaum, to join me in brainstorming our alternatives. We sized the market to be as many as 250 fellow Skoll Forum attendees, who all felt the pressure (some more than others) to find an alternative way home. So the problem was defined, the market sized, and the search for solutions began.
We could take a train to Denmark, and a ferry to Iceland (ironically, no flights were cancelled in Iceland, since the volcano was east of the airport, and planes had no problem taking off and landing). Infrequent ferry service made this option a poor choice. A ferry to France and a train to Paris was considered. However, flights from Paris were also at risk, and seats on the EuroStar were quickly sold out. How about a charter bus from London to Madrid? Spain had no problems with the volcanic ash, and a bus with two drivers could make the trip non-stop in about 18 hours, with only brief stops for fuel.
May
25
Social Good with Market Returns — A Report from the Skoll World Forum
Last month, I was fortunate to attend the 7th Annual Skoll World Forum, with around 800 of the world’s most impactful and influential social entrepreneurs and key partners who gather at the University of Oxford to exchange ideas, contacts and information. One of the highlights was a panel that confronted the conventional wisdom that social returns come at the expense of financial returns. Or, to put it more simply, could you have your cake and eat it too?
This was the position of David Chen, from Equilibrium Capital, who maintains that forward looking investors (owners, not traders), can help solve market problems and have a positive impact on the environment and society while generating market rates of return. However, there is often a role for public policy in facilitating and encouraging innovation in key sectors.
The US economy is no stranger to these practices. The creation of the 30-year mortgage was a reflection of the public policy to make home ownership more affordable. Rural electrification, the interstate highway system, the Telecommunications Act, and the internet are further examples of how effective public policy can stimulate huge market growth.
This lesson has not been lost on the Chinese. Taking note from Tom Friedman’s editorial last fall, the US is at risk from trading our current addiction to Middle East oil for a future addiction to solar panels made in China. Fortunately, we are not completely asleep at the wheel. The DOE is doing it’s part with innovative loan guarantees to support emerging technologies.
The question is, are we doing enough? Free markets are great if no one is pulling strings. When nation states sit at the table, the stakes increase, and so does the governmental ante. Do we have the political will to take a long term, patient view of the horizon? If we don’t, then “We’re Number Two” may sadly become our future rallying cry.
May
06
Watch Tom Baruch at The White House on May 7th
Watch Tom Baruch at The White House last Friday as part of the Energy Innovation Networks Meeting.
The conference on Energy Innovation Networks was held on Friday, May 7, 2010 from 9:00am-4:00pm in The White House’s EEOB South Court Auditorium. Tom participated in a panel discussion titled “Jumpstarting Commercialization and Early-Stage Companies”.
