MIT’s latest hack

There the Tute goes again….Apr 27. 2009

Pitching ideas to investors

I will one day do a longer post on this -  from my own experience as the one receiving pitches from entrepreneurs. But in the meantime I can the  summary in this presentation by Venture Hacks. I agree that  please do not send me the long word-documents that business school entrepreneurship profs are still teaching their students to write. I really don’t find time to read through them. Be concise, clear and to the point in your .ppt decks.

By the way: If you are an entrepreneur looking to raise funding (esp for the first time), you would really be wise to check out venture hacks first. There is a wealth of information to make you wiser before you send off that email to a VC.

Check it out: http://venturehacks.com/articles/pitching-hacks-at-stanford

Venture financing term sheet generator

Wilson Sonsini just posted a nice tool on venture term sheets. I don’t know how many people might use it to actually generate a term sheet, but it is not a bad way for entrepreneurs and new investors to learn about term sheets and the associated clauses. i can tell by my own limited experience that typical term sheets are much simpler than the form this tool would generate. That said, investors and entrepreneurs should know what terms could be put on the table, what they mean, and how to negotiate them…

http://www.wsgr.com/WSGR/Display.aspx?SectionName=practice/termsheet.htm

From their website:

WSGR Term Sheet Generator

This tool will generate a venture financing term sheet based on your responses to an online questionnaire. It also has an informational component, with basic tutorials and annotations on financing terms. This term sheet generator is a modified version of a tool that we use internally, which comprises one part of a suite of document automation tools that we use to generate start-up and venture financing-related documents.

Because it has been designed as a generic tool that takes into account a number of options, this version of the term sheet generator is fairly expansive and includes significantly more detail than would likely be found in a customized application.

How to construct an elevator pitch for your startup

Here’s an interesting tool from HBS:

HBS Elevator Pitch Builder: http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/pitch/

H1B visas still available for 2010: Another sign of the times

WSJ just reported that for the year 2010, H1B visas are still available….so all you international skilled workers – reach out to your potential employees and see if they knew about this and are more amenable to hiring you given your skill set than the next guy over. Also, not a bad time for  early stage entrepreneurs to see how they can hire the best of the best (technical talent) by employing foreigners. The difficulty in getting the due process completed may be much less now.

Contrast this to last year when these visas ran out within days. Yet another sign of the times we are living through. Not only are most firms not hiring, let alone hiring internationals who would need sponsorship (and associated legal fees/burden), but the availability of government funding (TARP, ARRA etc) also prohibit companies from hiring outside the US.

H-1B Visas Still Available for FY 2010

By Sara Murray

Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said Wednesday that it still has H-1B visas available for fiscal year 2010, a week after it began accepting applications from educated foreigners.

This contrasts with last year when the agency was immediately swamped with more than 160,000 applications for visas, said Eric Thomas, a spokesman for Compete America, a network of companies and organizations that promotes recruiting talent to maintain a competitive workforce.

For fiscal year 2010, which begins Oct. 1, 2009, USCIS can issue up to 20,000 H-1B visas to applicants with a master’s degree or higher and up to 65,000 additions visas to those with bachelor’s degrees or similar training. The agency began accepting applications on April 1.

Prius continues to make advances: Hypermilers get 90mpg but even the US model gets 50mpg

There are electric hybrid cars…and then there is Toyota Prius. Prius has certainly established itself as the benchmark of electric hybrid cars, and if plans stay on track, it might do so in the plug-in hybrid space as well. The only place where Toyota has not made many bold statements is in the all-electric car space. Does Toyota not believe much in an all-electric car as a 2nd car for short-distance drivers? O rmay be they are hiding a development program and just waiting until the Teslas, Thinks, IMiEVs of the world fizzle out to then enter with a bang? I find it difficult to believe Toyota does not have an electric car program in advanced stages.

Anyways…until we have enough serious material to talk about plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars from other companies, Prius remains king (queen sounds more appropriate for some reason) of the commercial electrified cars. Its unique styling is still attractive to customers, esp those who are trying to portray a green image to the rest of the world. Its performance is trust-worthy (despite earlier exaggerated claims on mpg, and some slight safety concerns), and its price is now just right for the US customers. Prius is setting the standard for making what the customers want, and doing it with simplicity. Now if they could only bring out the plug-in hybrid soon…no, not the Hymotion/A123 variety, but a real plug-in hybrid that at least goes 40 miles or so on electric drivetrain alone. GM Volt announcements notwithstanding, I get the feeling that Toyota will also rule the plug-in hybrid light duty car market when it emerges.

Japanese ratings call Prius world’s most efficient car, 89.4 mpg (US)! (source)

We already knew the 2010 Toyota Prius would put up some impressive fuel economy numbers but the official Japanese numbers are just insane. On the standard 10-15 test cycle, the new Prius is rated at 89.4 mpg (U.S.) with CO₂ emissions of just 61 g/km! While the new Prius is certainly efficient, these numbers certainly seem highly unrealistic. It’s likely that Toyota has calibrated the Japan market model to specifically get the maximum out of this low speed urban drive cycle (average speed 16 mph) and most drivers are unlikely to come anywhere near those numbers. Dedicated hypermilers, of course, can top 90 mpg, but that takes way too much effort. On the newer JC08 test cycle, the numbers drop a bit to a mere 76.7 mpg (U.S.). Here in the U.S. the Prius is rated at 50 mpg combined.

Ken Zolot defining a new world order: Lab for startups

Ken is a dear friend, and as strong an advocate and supporter of startups as one can find around here. And not to miss, he has had an amazing training at MIT where he led several initiatives in entrepreneurship and startup development.

Here’s an article he wrote in Xconomy about his new role with the Kauffman Foundation:

A New World Order for High-Growth Firms

Ken Zolot 3/24/09

Many of my friends and neighbors may have noticed that I haven’t been in town as much lately, and that I’m spending more and more of my time in Kansas City. So why would a hardened MIT denizen who used to think that distant travel meant going to Porter Square now be flying back and forth to Missouri every week?

It’s because the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is headquartered in Kansas City, is pioneering new ways to advance our entrepreneurial economy. Kauffman’s president Carl Schramm inspired me the other day when he noted in a CNBC interview that all net job creation over the past thirty years has come from companies less than five years old. So what can we do to keep startups flourishing? I am delighted to be joining the Kauffman Foundation team as a senior fellow as we look out over the economic future and embark on a new approach for increasing both the number of new companies formed and the chances of success for these ventures.

This new initiative is called Kauffman Laboratories for Enterprise Creation. The mission of Kauffman Labs is to create more large-scale, high-growth firms. As someone with a combination of practical experience building companies, and academic experience teaching innovation and entrepreneurship at MIT—not to mention a passion for helping people build great companies—I’m very pleased to be a part of this initiative. It’s a perfect way to continue the work I started at MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

Global heroes: Entrepreneurs

Link to Economist article

A special report on entrepreneurship

Global heroes

Illustration by Nick Dewar

IN DECEMBER last year, three weeks after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and in the midst of the worst global recession since the 1930s, 1,700 bright-eyed Indians gathered in a hotel in Bangalore for a conference on entrepreneurship. They mobbed business heroes such as Azim Premji, who transformed Wipro from a vegetable-oil company into a software giant, and Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys, another software giant. They also engaged in a frenzy of networking. The conference was so popular that the organisers had to erect a huge tent to take the overflow. The aspiring entrepreneurs did not just want to strike it rich; they wanted to play their part in forging a new India. Speaker after speaker praised entrepreneurship as a powerful force for doing good as well as doing well.

Back in 1942 Joseph Schumpeter gave warning that the bureaucratisation of capitalism was killing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Instead of risking the turmoil of “creative destruction”, Keynesian economists, working hand in glove with big business and big government, claimed to be able to provide orderly prosperity. But perspectives have changed in the intervening decades, and Schumpeter’s entrepreneurs are once again roaming the globe.

Since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the 1980s, governments of almost every ideological stripe have embraced entrepreneurship. The European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank have also become evangelists. Indeed, the trend is now so well established that it has become the object of satire. Listen to me, says the leading character in one of the best novels of 2008, Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger”, and “you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious 21st century of man.”

This special report will argue that the entrepreneurial idea has gone mainstream, supported by political leaders on the left as well as on the right, championed by powerful pressure groups, reinforced by a growing infrastructure of universities and venture capitalists and embodied by wildly popular business heroes such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and India’s software kings. The report will also contend that entrepreneurialism needs to be rethought: in almost all instances it involves not creative destruction but creative creation.

Salman Ahmad and Melissa Etheridge: Ring The Bells

I know I am late to this….but just didn’t get to it. Here’s the awesome Salman with Melissa in “Ring the Bells”. Beautiful song. cool stuff….Somehow so apt for what may be happening in Pakistan these days.

Obama’s laser sharp focus on energy…carbon cap within 1 year?

Last night I chose to listen to Obama rather than join a conference with a few lawyers discussing international company registration procedures. I am told (by the lawyers themselves) that I made a wise decision….

…I was elated to see Obama deliver a powerful speech. His body language and his verbage were refreshing and motivating. and that was his most important goal – to rise the morale of a nation that is heavily snowed under in these unprecedented economic times.

…I was leisurely listening to his speech when he said something that surprised me and made me sit up and listen the rest of his speech even more attentively. I asked my wife “Did I just hear him say he wants a carbon cap legislation within 1 year”. Well, she had not paid attention, so I didn’t get the confirmation but this morning when I read the transcript, it turned out to be true. He has made energy one of his top three priorities in the economic recovery program and has placed carbon cap legislation squarely in the middle of it. This could be big…not just for clean energy development in the USA, but also for the rest of the world to observe if the USA would indeed lead the world on this issue.

Here is the section of Obama’s first speech to the congress that focused on energy:

It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21^st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders—and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history—an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

–President Barak Obama, February 24, 2009