Entrepreneurs are About Solving Problems: 8 Ways Community Members are Part of the Solution

Submitted by Jason Evanish on Wed, 03/24/2010 - 3:28am

 Last week I wrote about how young entrepreneurs are working to solve many of the challenges and shortcomings in the community.  We’re not the only ones working hard on these issues, so I'd like to highlight some of those problems and those finding solutions for them:

8 Ways Community Members are Part of the Solution

1) Problem: Lack of a place for entrepreneurs to call home to meet, work, & connect

Having your meetings and Starbucks and working out of your bedroom can work to some extent, but it’s far from ideal.  There’s some real value in working and being around other people sharing your struggles and triumphs. As much as the person next to you in the coffee shop that’s writing the next Great American Novel is cool, it’d be a lot more valuable if they were also an entrepreneur.

  • Solution: The Venture Café
  • About a year ago, Tim Rowe (co-founder of the or Cambridge Innovation Center) started the plans in motion to get this project off the ground. Tim has made it all about the community as he’s used open meetings to discuss what entrepreneurs want in such a space and what’s most important. They know are testing out a “Beta” of the café at the CIC, which includes office hours where you can meet with local Venture Capitalists. You can find out more about the beta with their listing on our calendar.

 

2) Problem: Students are unaware of the innovative companies in the community.

We have over 65 universities in the greater Boston area and most of them have no idea of all the cool companies in our backyard.  With only 26% of Massachusetts college graduates who go on to start companies actually starting them in Massachusetts, we obviously need to do more.  There’s no excuse for that figure and it is an indictment of many problems in the ecosystem.  Our educational system that brings talent from all over the world should be a natural talent draw to our ecosystem, not an excuse for why they don’t stay.  How do you convince talent to stay? Increase their awareness and find them jobs.

 

  • Solution A: Innovation Open Houses
  • Scott Kirsner, local writer for the Globe, organized these to allow students to not only tour local startups, but to hear directly from executives at the companies (a requirement of all companies hosting an event.)  There are 15 companies as part of the first set of companies and the State has stepped up and are organizing some now as well. Learn more about Scott’s Open House events here and the State ones here.
  • Solution B: The Career Combine
  • As I mentioned last week, Greenhorn Connect has formed a partnership with MITX to create the Career Combine.  The Career Combine is a celebration of the innovative companies in the Boston community and a great way to keep many of our students here so that they will become the next generation of great, local leaders. If you’re a company, contact us today to exhibit or job seekers register here.

 

3) Problem: A disconnect between Government and Business

It’s easy to think that the best thing the government can do is get out of the way of business, but in fact, as partners, much more can be accomplished.

 

4) Problem: Groups and initiatives are uncoordinated and often unaware of one another

As entrepreneurs, it’s natural to want to solve problems in front of you, but often if you look deeper there are others already working on that issue or are doing something complimentary that you should work together with. 

  • Solution A: Scott Kirsner’s Cultural Revolutionaries
  • In early January, Scott brought together VCs, Angels, community leaders and major event organizers to discuss the challenges facing the community. It brought a new level of collaboration for the 18 leaders involved in the event and has since led to much more efficient dissemination of important information and collaboration.
  • Solution B: Microsoft NERD and Gus Weber
  • If you’ve been to more than a few events over the last year, you’ve probably found yourself at the Microsoft NERD facility.  Thanks to this new open facility, there are many more events able to be held and they can be a lot larger than they may have previously been. Gus Weber, Microsoft’s lead community outreach, has done a ton to help connect and promote events and organizations thanks to their sponsorship and his guiding of different organizations to collaborate.

 

5) Problem: Lack of events outside of Cambridge and Boston.

Virtually every event in the entrepreneur community is in Boston or Cambridge. This is great for many as it’s right where they work, but there are also great startups in places like Waltham and people who live outside of the city. 

  • Solution: Mass Innovation Nights and Breakfasts
  • Bobbie Carlton has stepped up to create great events for the Waltham crowd. The flagship event is Mass Innovation Nights, which is a monthly launch party for 10 local startups, as well as a great networking event that includes service provider expert tables to ask them questions. She also organizes Innovation Breakfast, which is a roundtable discussion on Friday mornings once a month.

 

6) Problem: Lack of Collaboration, Support and Understanding between CEOs in the same industry

This was one of the issues identified during the Cultural Revolutionary meetings.

  • Solution: Private Dinners with CEOs in certain industries
  • There are a number of members of the Cultural Revolutionaries leading these dinners now. To respect the privacy of the events I won't mention who I've heard are holding these.

 

7) Problem: Lack of mentorship and funding in the early stages of startups

Everyone talks about a lack of early stage funding and mentorship but few have the resources or abilities to step up and solve this issue.

 

8) Problem: Lack of unique, high value, educational events

You can network until you’re blue in the face and listen to panel discussions for eternity, but that won’t always help you the most when you’re trying to build your business. Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit in on some informal education via a presentation or event focused on a specific topic.

  • Solution A: Performable Events.
  • Performable has hosted a number of lunches that bring in great speakers to talk about their areas of expertise from Dave McClure to Sean Ellis to Dan Martell.  These lunches are all free and provide valuable insight you wouldn’t be able to learn from just reading a blog post or two.  They’ve added to their programming now with tonight’s Test Case II event, which helps companies evaluate their landing pages.
  • Solution B: Founder Dialogues
  • Eric Paley of the Founder Collective just announced this event and I’m really excited for it. It’s going to provide insight into how great entrepreneurs in our community made it, which is really important for those of us trying to figure things out for the first time now. Find more details about it on his recent blog post.

 

Believe it or not, all of these initiatives were launched in the last 12 months.  So now that you know a little bit more about what the community is doing to try to help solve these problems, I ask you:

How can you help one of these initiatives?

Is there a problem we’re not working on that you could help solve?

If we all do what we can, many of our problems can be solved.
 
Together, we can revitalize the Boston entrepreneur community.

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