Category: Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Best of Show: Chicago Global Food and Style Expo 2008

This year the Global Food and Style Expo did not have the FMI show co-located along with the All Things Organic, Fancy Food Show and the U.S. Food Export Showcase so it was a slightly smaller show with less foot traffic. But it was filled with innovative products and amazing entrepreneurial stories! it’s a shame most consumers do not have the opportunity to meet the creators of new products like this and hear their stories of passion and how those overcome distribution.

It gives me great pleasure to announce these items as best of show:

VinJus – A unique non-alcoholic grape juice drink! Not yet publicly launched, it is scheduled to be distributed shortly. It’s a unique drink. They describe it as:

NAPA VinJus™ – the perfect non-alcoholic aperitif! Refreshing virgin vineyard grape juice – created for your sophisticated palette as an alternative to soda, water or energy drinks. It’s unique balance of crisp, tart and sweet lingers with a hint of green apple, honeysuckle, wildflower and lavender.

Made in the beautiful Napa Valley from early picked varietals, such as Chardonnay and more, this delicious drink is but one single ingredient – mouth watering virgin vineyard grape juice and nothing more! Compared to wine it’s almost half the calories and compared to regular grape juice it’s about half the sugar! And it’s made by a GREEN company!!!

Lucy’s – Smart Cookies. Made with Love. Norfolk, Virginia based Dr. Lucy Gibney M.D. has a son with major food allergies. Lucy describes it best on their website.

Every crispy, crunchy, delicious Dr. Lucy’s cookie is baked without wheat, gluten, dairy milk, butter, eggs, casein, peanuts or tree nuts. But you’d never know it. They taste delicious! We use only high quality ingredients in our carefully controlled bakery to be sure our products meet our tight allergen testing criteria.

Lucy was amazed at the lack of food available to serve that market. Lucy turned to the kitchen in order to change that and once a few varieties were perfected she decided to solve the problem for others without her unique combination of talents. They weren’t even supposed to be at the show, they got added to new items section at the last minute. I’m glad they did, Lucy is a wonderful person and I know her niche product will succeed. Terry Starbucker is already a huge fan.

Blackwing Meats, Inc. – A variety of elk, buffalo, ostrich and other exotic organic meats as wide as I’ve ever seen! They get bonus point for having an highly functional e-commerce site to ship Roger Gerber’s creations directly to you. Even in the down economy Roger says 1st quarter sales were up 77% over the previous year. These items have momentum and the distribution to match it.

Bionade is a unique German based, non-alcoholic refreshment drink that is scheduled to be introduced in the United States later this year. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, but it is truly outstanding. In Germany the Elderberry is most popular, however I like the Herbs flavor the best (see picture here). If they are able to get shelf space and have an affordable price point, it could easily be a hit in the USA.

Leggio’s herb infused olive oil – Chef Joseph Leggio creates an “amazing” herb infused olive oil product. While there were others at the show with offerings in this vertical, none match the taste of Leggio’s. Joseph started experimenting with the concept several years ago. Then one day asked his wife to ask her dad, a wine maker, to bring over some bottling equipment for him to test with. Though she thought he was crazy, she did it anyway and his hunch paid off, his business is growing quite briskly and he claims to have some other innovative ideas up his sleeve, I can’t wait to see what they are.

Sheila B’s Popcorn (web site under development) – awesome butter flavor, ultra high pop rate, doesn’t dry out upon popping, no aftertaste like most popcorn has and best of all, not really more expensive than other popcorn on the market! Really nice folks too that taught me about the current state of agriculture.

BigHorn Extreme Foods – Peter Andrews has unique sausage offerings as well as tasty buffalo and elk burgers for restaurants and retail outlets.

WowBacon – Amazing clean cooking micro-wave bacon preparer. 6 years to perfect as an invention. Works extremely well the first few times you try it. Durability is a question.

Tre Bella Foods Organic – Gail Tiburzi’s organic Italian foods were inspired by her grandmother’s original recipes. It’s not everyday you meet a former investment banker turned food distributor, my time with Gail was all too short as she had a meeting. I told her to call me if she had time during the rest of the show to compare projects, I guess she was too busy taking orders as I never heard from her!

For those needing last minute Mother’s Day gift ideas, there you go!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Venture Capital Speed Dating – Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University

As part of Entrepreneurship Week at Stanford University, they are holding a Venture Capital Speed Dating event and mixer. This event looks like so much fun, I wish we had casual events like this here in Chicago, especially since Stanford encourages lifetime social interaction with the community and properly sees it’s role as larger than simply current students. They state “Events are open to all students, alumni, members of the greater Stanford community, and the general public.” Chicago university leaders, take note!

Venture Capital Speed Dating

Date:
Friday, February 29th

Time:
1:00-3:30 PM Student pitches
3:30-4:30 PM Mixer

Location:
Wallenberg Hall Learning Theater (Building 160)

For more detailed directions, please visit the Searchable Campus Map
Host:
Asia-Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society (ASES)

Student Application/VC Registration:
http://ases.stanford.edu/vc3/
No registration required for mixer

Cost:
Free

Overview:
Students, pitch your business ideas to Silicon Valley venture capitalists (VCs). Apply in advance for 3-4 opportunities to give three-minute pitches to VC pairs and receive three minutes of feedback. This portion of the event is closed to pre-registered students and VCs (see above for registration information).

At 3:30, the event opens to the public for a networking mixer. Come join us to meet entrepreneurial students and VCs. Event will end promptly at 4:30; continue networking at Arrillaga as you wait for the Innovation Tournament Showcase to begin.

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and Other Potholes

The Chicago Tribune has a nice user generated content piece where they allow readers to input pothole locations. It is an open thread that simply says: “Tell us: Where are the worst potholes? Potholes seem to be everywhere this winter, but who has the worst — the city or suburbs? Tell us where you’ve seen the biggest and deepest.”

What’s upsetting is that just like the mismanagement of the CTA for decades, many of the comments allude to years of neglect and mismanagement by the government of the City of Chicago. CBS put together a story on how to file a claim for damage. Why must everything become a crisis before anybody does anything about these things? Maybe the city and state will put in resources to fix the lack of easy access to entrepreneurial grants and angel investor tax incentives like Wisconson has next – while we still have an economy…

Here are a few answers Chicago Tribune readers gave (some make you laugh and cry at the same time):

Potholes on my entire way to work on Devon Avenue Between Northwest Hwy and Caldwell Ave. Noticed several vehicles with flat tires this morning causing a traffic jam

Westbound on North Ave, there are are at least 2 or 3 massive potholes just before and after Elston Ave. Stay out of the right hand lane

On Webster between Clybourn and Ashland. There is a fifty foot section with about 25 potholes

One more vote for Lincoln Ave. between Petersen and Devon — avoid at all costs if you care about your car

Central Road, from Milwaukee west to River Road. It is like driving a road in a third world county. Cars bob and weave into oncoming traffic. You can’t driver over 20 mph. Someone at county should be fired for letting a road deteriorate to this degree

Just as you get off LSD on to LaSalle North exit going south right lane is full of potholes

Park Ridge: Cumberland Avenue between Devon and Higgins

Worst — take your pick, LSD Irving Park Road to Foster. Second worst — Oak Street underpass northbound to LSD. Third worst. 47th underpass to LSD. Some of these above holes are a foot deep and several feet across

Cicero Ave and Lawrence, in the left hand turn lane on Cicero… it’s like an unavoidable abyss

On westbound Lake Street between Ashland and Western there are so many little potholes the drive seems like you are off-roading

Under the pass to get on Lake Shore Drive from Oak it’s been like that for over a year! Disgraceful! The CTA ride is awful and 311 doesn’t do anything about it! The drivers try to drive on the left side when possible as the busses bounce horribly!

Western bridge going over Belmont, southbound, west lane. They’ve been there for at least a month

Have you seen the pothole on the bridge at Division and Halsted… Big enough to make a person disappear

Westbound on Grand just east of Milwaukee Ave. The whole thing is one series of huge potholes

The pot hole at Archer & Cicero in the northbound lanes just cost me $550 in repairs – yeah lets spend some more $$ on the Olympics -idiots

Like others have said, Cicero between 21st and 51st is a landmine. It’s so bad, I saw a small car driving along and it just disappeared into a hole….lol

I CANT BELIEVE DALEY HAD ALL THAT MONEY TO USE TO TRY AND BRING THE OLYMPICS TO CHICAGO BUT DOEST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO FIX OUR STREETS. WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE ON 31ST BETWEEN PULASKI AND CICERO IT LOOKS LIKE MINES WENT OFF

Southbound on N. Clark Street, just north of Upper Wacker Drive, right lane swallowed my car. Still can’t find it

Right lanes of Ridge Road in Evanston. Very bad in both directions

The worst pothole is on the east edge of the southbound Fullerton entrance ramp to LSD. A close second are numerous potholes on Halstead between Chicago and Erie. You have to drive like you are going through an obstacle course

Almost all lanes of LaSalle Street between the Lake Shore Drive ramps and the intersection of LaSalle and Clark

4200 South Ashland. Even the CTA bus won’t go near it! And avoid at all costs Pershing Rd. between Halstead and Ashland

Bridgeport – 31st street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Halstead (especially under the viaduct near Canal St) and the ENTIRE 31st St ramp getting onto the inbound Ryan. I’ve already replaced two tires this year.

Try driving on Cicero Ave. anywhere near the Stevenson. Pot holes deep enough to strand tanks. Been this way for weeks.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Have We Entered The Era of The Functional Web?

The New York Times has an article on how the potential sale of Yahoo! to Microsoft could be bad for minnows, i.e. small Silicon Valley companies looking to be acquired. I think this is a short sighted viewpoint.

In the late 1990’s dot.com era, the web was slanted too much towards wall street involvement that led IPO’s that were questionable and in retrospect not advisable.

A force outside the web, namely Sarbanes-Oxley in the Enron aftermath, has made the IPO considerably more challenging to achieve and costly to navigate – even for highly legitimate ideas.

In the web 2.0 era, the slant often went way too far to the left in terms of engineering. Some ideas with little actual business purpose have received unwarranted acclaim and without artificial sources of acquisition, some might not even exist.

Before I go onto explain why that development might create an alignment that I’ll tentatively call the functional web, let me state that I think there are plenty of other companies out there that could emerge to pick up the slack such as Fox, Intuit, Apple or any of a number of traditional media companies who “get it”.

This web might emerge even if the Yahoo! acquisition does not take place. If the functional web emerges a place where engineering and business purpose mix in equally important parts instead of the excesses in one direction or another, who potentially gains and who potentially has something to lose?

Potential Gainers:

– Strong Internet business skill generalists with strong system architecture, product management and the ability to network with geeks and non-geeks alike and iterate from feedback will be in higher demand.

– Companies who would like to challenge the big three who would get an opening.

– People who understand how to create revenue models that could provide for great stand alone businesses.

– People pushing for Sarbanes-Oxley reform to reopen the IPO spiggot a tad. They will push even harder.

Potential Losers:

– Funding sources who either fund ideas in a me-too fashion or just because they’ve known the people since the dot.com era and/or those who can’t define and lead a path to monetization or bring strong execution partners to the table.

– Domain name squatters and sellers.

– Passive executive recruiters who will have to actually analyze comprehensive skill sets instead of simply poaching from a direct competitor.