Kathleen Gallagher writes a positive article on Trevor D’Souza and Dan Broderick, Managing Directors of Mason Wells’ first venture capital fund, Biomedical Fund 1. MW has invested in two Madison firms: NameProtect and Opgen among other midwest startups.
VC’s certainly play a useful role in the business growth process. That role is not always decisive. Interestingly, many of them do NOT fund startups. They’d rather let someone else (angel investors) take that risk. Anyone interested in this area should read another perspective: internet entrepreneur Paul Graham’s essay: The Unified Theory of VC Suckage.
Category: Entrepreneurs
Do you have the right stuff to become an entrepreneur?
The Essential Traits:
- You can delegate
- You are a teacher
- You are self motivated
- You can work with numbers
- You don’t mind making mistakes
- You like to work
- You don’t mind selling
- You don’t quit easily
Very useful. We need more of this in Madison.
Silicon Valley Solar Startup VC Funding
Energy startups are certainly an area worth watching. I hope we have some more activity here. Dan Gillmor points to Matt Marshall’s take on Nanosolar ($20M round) and Miasole ($16M round).
Inc’s Best Cities to do Business
Madison is 38, while Green Bay is #4 in Inc’s latest list of the best cities to do business in.
The Wired 40
They’re masters of technology and innovation. They’re global thinkers driven by strategic vision. They’re nimbler than Martha Stewart’s PR team. They’re The Wired 40.
Madison Area Income Growth
Lynn Welch on Madison’s 3.9% per capita personal income growth (2002 to 2003), which ranks it 30th among the 360 metropolitan areas measured by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. (interestingly, Appleton’s personal income growth rate was 4.1%) Here’s the BEA’s data (.xls file – 4.27.2005 BEA news release)
Welch credits the high tech economy for these results – perhaps so. Epic Systems has grown substantially as has Promega (mentioned in the article). Of course, Epic is moving to Verona and Promega is in Fitchburg.
Taxes
Wisconsin ranks 12th in per capita tax collections, according to the US Census Bureau. More on state tax comparisons from Kathleen Murphy.
Flight of Fancy – Dayjet
The idea behind DayJet is a lot simpler than the technology it takes to make it happen. Many regional travelers are spending whole days going to airports, sitting in airports, flying to hubs, changing planes, and sitting in more airports that they could almost drive faster to their final destination. By going point-to-point when the passenger wants to fly, DayJet replicates that driving experience, but with a chauffer and at over 400 mph.
The difference between DayJet and a traditional aircraft charter is that all you’ll be chartering is the seat you are sitting in. That means if you take a friend it costs twice as much, but it doesn’t mean that you are paying for seats you don’t use. And unlike a charter, DayJet won’t charge for sending the plane to pick you up — only for when you are actually in that seat.
Only time will tell if this concept is successful. I’m for it. Imagine skipping security lines and regional hubs and going right where you want to go.
Fetal Cell Therapy for Humans
University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher said he would ask federal regulators Friday to approve the first clinical trial injecting special stem cells into the spinal cords of people with the degenerative nerve ailment called Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The trial would test whether a technique anatomy professor Clive Svendsen has pioneered on rats afflicted with the disease is safe to use on people. If successful, Svendsen said a much larger clinical trial aimed at treating the disease could be under way in two or three years.
…..
The research does not involve human embryonic stem cells, the blank-slate cells derived from human embryos that can be molded into any type of tissue cell in the body.
Jack’s Shoes
Jack’s always has interesting shoes.
Minneapolis named top “Technopolis”
Some interesting tidbits on Minneapolis in the latest eprairie newsletter, including Popular Science’s proclamation as the top “Technopolis”.
UW-Whitewater’s Literate Cities Study ranked Minneapolis #1… (Madison was #4). Take a look at their data sources, here. (I wonder what the yellow pages tells them, exactly. I never use it, frankly. The web is much faster).
I also have my doubts on the value of newspaper circulation data, now.