Drunkenblog interviews Wil Shipley, one of the creators of the quite successful Delicious Monster: “The greatest media cataloging software in the world”. Well worth reading. Via Brent.
Category: Entrepreneurs
Fossett Crosses the Atlantic in a Vickers Vimy
Financier and adventurer Steve Fossett flew a replica of the first airplane to travel nonstop across the Atlantic recently. Aviation Week:
Pilot Steve Fossett and navigator Mark Rebholz took off from St. John’s, Newfoundland, on July 2 at about 7 p.m. in fog, heavy cloud cover and strong winds. They had a good tailwind until midway and made most of the trip under cloud cover, not seeing the Sun until about the last 5 hr.
Fossett and Rebholz expected the crossing to be completed by 4-5 p.m. the next day and, in fact, landed at 5:05 p.m. Irish time, setting down safely at the eighth hole of Connemara golf course. That was a slightly better result than the original June 14-15, 1919, crossing by Royal Flying Corps pilot Capt. John Alcock and navigator Lt. Arthur Whitten Brown. They ended up nose-down on soft ground after a 16-hr. crossing that included an ice storm.
More on Fossett
Organic Farming 101
Apprentices leave the program at the end of their six-month term proficient at pest control, propagation, irrigation and maintaining soil fertility with organic matter. They also leave with a network of instructors, farmers and former apprentices to turn to when questions arise, and they often leave with a job offer in hand from a contact made at the apprenticeship. Most importantly, they leave firmly committed to practicing and promoting agricultural systems that work within the limitations imposed by natural resource cycles.
UC Santa Cruz’s Apprenticeship in Environmental Horticulture evolved from student interest in the 3-acre garden installed on campus by Alan Chadwick in the late 1960s. Using only hand tools and organic soil amendments, Chadwick molded a steep hillside near what was then the center of campus into a highly productive vegetable, fruit and flower garden.
Bold Air: Wisonsin Air Taxi Service
Radlinger’s vision is that business travelers would be able to pull up 15 minutes before departure at a smaller airport such as Timmerman Field, West Bend or Waukesha’s Crites Field, hop aboard a plane aRadlinger’s vision is that business travelers would be able to pull up 15 minutes before departure at a smaller airport such as Timmerman Field, West Bend or Waukesha’s Crites Field, hop aboard a plane and take off, making their total trip not much longer than the actual flying time.
“People are tired of the inefficient, cattle-call mentality of commercial and low-cost carriers, the lack of service and the inability to fly direct to a destination,” said Radlinger, executive vice president of Bold Air, which has headquarters in downtown Milwaukee. “If they can get where they’re going faster and in comfort, at a price competitive with what they’re currently paying, that’s a no-brainer.”
Bold Air would likely charge about the same or slightly more than the commercial fare on a route, Radlinger said. He hopes to begin offering flights by the second quarter of 2006.nd take off, making their total trip not much longer than the actual flying time.
“People are tired of the inefficient, cattle-call mentality of commercial and low-cost carriers, the lack of service and the inability to fly direct to a destination,” said Radlinger, executive vice president of Bold Air, which has headquarters in downtown Milwaukee. “If they can get where they’re going faster and in comfort, at a price competitive with what they’re currently paying, that’s a no-brainer.”
Bold Air would likely charge about the same or slightly more than the commercial fare on a route, Radlinger said. He hopes to begin offering flights by the second quarter of 2006.
Bold Air, with it’s non aircraft ownership approach is slightly different than the emerging “microjet” initiatives underway, including Dayjet as well as Pogo, among others.
The Knowledge Worker Gap
Whole Foods Marketing Strategy
But Whole Foods Market Inc. doesn’t pay for product placements or mentions on television shows. It has managed to make its brand name synonymous with healthy living, and grow its sales at a double-digit clip, while spending little on traditional advertising and marketing.
Consumers don’t see Whole Foods ads in their local papers, during daytime television shows or even in magazines.
While other food retailers spend heavily to draw shoppers, Whole Foods counts on its brand, its reputation and targeted community efforts to bring in customers.
Nanotechnology & Solar Power
Investors along Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park [CA] are pouring money into solar nanotech startups, hoping that thinking small will translate into big profits.
Both inventors and investors are betting that flexible sheets of tiny solar cells used to harness the sun’s strength will ultimately provide a cheaper, more efficient source of energy than the current smorgasbord of alternative and fossil fuels.
Nanosys and Nanosolar in Palo Alto — along with Konarka in Lowell, Mass. — say their research will result in thin rolls of highly efficient light-collecting plastics spread across rooftops or built into building materials.
Biotech Continues to Grow in San Francisco
EARLIER THIS YEAR, SIRNA THERAPEUTICS ANNOUNCED it was moving its corporate headquarters from Boulder, Colo., to San Francisco — one more in the long line of biotechnology firms to put down roots in the region. From a real-estate perspective, homegrown and transplanted companies together have transformed the fabled Bay area into the largest biotech community in the country, occupying 16 million square feet. And demand for laboratory space, from San Francisco to Palo Alto, shows no sign of slowing, as the proximity of Genentech and first-rate universities beckons other research firms.
Venture Capital in Wisconsin/Milwaukee
John Schmid takes a look at a proposed Venture Capital Fund for inner city Milwaukee.
Venture capitalists, a clique of financiers obsessed with risk and exponential growth, incubated the Internet, seeded the bioengineering boom and propelled the likes of Google, eBay, Microsoft, FedEx and Starbucks out of their infancy. Now, for the first time, they intend to apply the same approach to Milwaukee’s inner city.
VC in Wisconsin is very much a chicken and egg problem. My view is that Wisconsin lacks a risk taking, entrepreneurial environment, which is ironic because it used to exist here, in the days when manufacturing was the rage. We see evidence of this everywhere, from The Madison School District’s annual “same service” approach to budgeting in an era of constant change to our very slow adoption of the critical assets for the next generation of entrepreneurs: broadband (wifi and fiber networks to the home). Wisconsin is not a player politically in these initiatives, unlike other areas.
The truth, in my view, is that there’s plenty of money in Wisconsin. We’re simply lacking the will, and perhaps people – though I wonder about this, to apply it to new businesses.
Finally, any VC discussion must include internet entrepreneur Paul Graham’s essay: A Unified Theory of VC Suckage. (I know some venture capitalists and believe they can play an important role. The idea and execution, however are critical).
Finally, why not look at results? Madison’s fast growing (now – started in 1978) Epic Systems never took venture capital, while Berbee did (started in 1994). Judy Faulkner has run Epic from the beginning while Berbee founder Jim Berbee hasn’t run the company for years, and recently left. Foodusa, hypercosm, guild.com (apparently 40+M, including over 2m of local funds) and sonic foundry all took venture capital. A number of local biotech firms are also vc financed.
Opportunities for Small Banks
Aside from roadside deposits, Western National offers a courier service to pick up deposits from small-business customers and gives out toy safes for the children of the personal account holders.
It is touches like those that Mr. Hinz says will snare customers frustrated with the impersonal faces of the giants. Customers, he says, want to be greeted by name and treated as though their $2,000 savings accounts or $50,000 small-business loans really matter to Western National.
“We found that especially with small-business lending and banking, being able to know your customer is critical,” he said. “Being part of the community in which they work is critical. The big bank networks aren’t really built to take care of smaller loans.”
Sort of business 101…