Great article in Entrepreneur Magazine about the #DCTech startup scene. Great job representing us @perrelli, @corbett3000 and others
Things started to perk up again a couple of years ago, says Jonathon Perrelli, a longtime entrepreneur who is managing director of Fortify Ventures, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm that runs The Fort accelerator. "There's been a big shift from ties to t-shirts," he says, explaining that many of today's founders were latent entrepreneurs working within the confines of government contracts. While it can be tough to leave their cushy government posts for the world of startups, many are doing so, either because they're disenchanted with bureaucracy, need a change from cubicle life or, having built a decent nest egg, can finally afford to make that leap.
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We were at Day of Fosterly on Saturday for a mini-SXSW of sorts for the DC Area, Day of Fosterly. I had a great time catching up with friends from the Fort, Startup America, 10 Pearls and meeting a bunch of new people.
One of my favorite parts of the day was the talk by former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra. He presented some facts and figures on how important the startup economy is to the United States, how important the JOBS Act bill is for the startup economy and highlighted some of the industries that he thinks are worth focusing on in the coming years as technology evolves. I snapped photos of his slides, although the room was dark and so they wont be that readable. Will give you a quick summary of my mental notes:
Slide 1 - New Firms at the Heart of a Growing Economy
The coolest thing from this slide is the factoid:
"if Americans allocate 1% of their investment portfolio to startups, total VC market ~ $30bn."
Aneesh was talking about how important the crowd-sourced funding allowance by the JOBS Act will be in helping small companies gain new access to capital Kickstarter-style.
Aneesh also said that while our region (I think he was referring to DC) has the highest concentration of science and tech workers in the country, we trail in benchmarks on entrepreneurs per capita. That's something that I am sure StartupAmerica partnerships is hoping to change.
Slide 2 - Smarter Manufacturing
Aneesh then outlined a few areas where he thinks the most growth opportunities are in the startup space.
His first area of high potential is smart manufacturing. This slide highlights a few case studies about how small/new entrepreneurs were able to bid on huge contracts for a large product manufacturing firm by circumventing R&D and prototyping costs via cloud based modeling and simulation tools. The company in question wanted to replace metal cargo pallats with plastic ones but the buyer wasn't ready to commit until it saw working demos. The demos needed a significant amount of capital to produce, leading to the usual chicken-egg scenario. The inventors gained access to tools that enabled them to demo models of the plastic alternatives to their eventual buyer, who after being thoroughly convinced of the product, proceeded to make an order of $2.5 MM, before a single mould was cast.
It's a great story and demonstrates the value of public-private partnerships in helping small entrepreneurs learn about and gain access to resources to help them control costs and develop technology at an early stage that normally would require significant capital investment.
Slide 3 - Modernizing the Electric Grid
I don't have much to say about this slide other than the fact that Aneesh mentioned Simple Energy, which gamifies and socializes the whole experience of trying to save money on energy bills. I thought that was cool and I might be compelled to try it in my building in Chicago.
Slide 4 - Value Based Care Innovation
When it comes to the key growth area, I think this one will be the golden goose. Aneesh said he believes that the solutions to America's health care provision crisis will come from entrepreneurs in the private sector and not likely from the government. This slide maps out the ecosystem of what those solutions might look like. I'm not an expert on the business of health care but I know that the killer apps for helping people to stay healthy, track their health records and interact with doctors have yet to be built.
Though I'm not convinced the private sector will SOLVE our health care woes, I can totally agree with the idea that innovation in software and processes that reduce all the amazing inefficiencies in the health care system in spite of what the government may or may not accomplish by way of health care reform.
Slide 5 - A Personalized Learning System
(sorry this one is very blurry)
Basically we're talking here about innovation in education - something which there hasn't been much of at least at the federal level. That might be why some candidates in the Republican Primary were calling for the dissolution of the Department of Education.
Slide 6 - Digital Civic Infrastructure
This is a great one for the people in the room, many of whom probably work on projects related to the federal government. As the federal government and more state and local governments move towards Open Data standards, the door is wide open for development of apps that make accessing and making use of that data easier. The goal here is to make government more transparent and reduce inefficiencies in the delivery of public services. There was no explicit mention of The Sunlight Foundation but I think there ought to have been. Also, none of this is possible without connectivity which is why the National Wireless Initiative includes a $7bn fund to build out a nationwide, interoperable, secure broadband network.
Slide 7 - STEM for all
rly,
Shout out to STEM (Science, technology, engineering, math). All of these innovations requires the fuel of people who can invent, innovate and iterate. And for that, Aneesh said that companies in this sector should take forward looking steps to draw smart people into the STEM fields. Hearing that makes me thankful that I picked the nerdiest major I could when I was an undergrad, "Science, Technology and International Affairs". 12 years ago no one seemed to understand the point of that degree.
I also learned about the SummerQAMP initiative which was designed to encourage tech companies to hire at-risk youth to work on software QA as entry-level positions.
We are just about to welcome our summer 2012 interns who will be working on tons of stuff from data analysis to marketing to figuring out how we're going to make a splash at the summer Republican and Democratic National Conventions.
Other highlights from #fosterly
Saw a really interesting three minute presentation of NodeXL and social network analysis by Bennett Resnick. He mapped out the social connections of the people and businesses in the DC Startup Community. I never used NodeXL (because there is no Mac version) but I plan to now.
I learned about slugging, which I knew must have existed but had never seen with my own eyes. Startup Giimme is beta-testing a new app to help drivers find slugs and slugs find drivers in what will probably be a great disruptor of the HOV lane industry (and associated ticketing fees).
Met up again with the folks from Microsoft who continue to aggressively market Bizspark as an alternative development platform for startups. Ashish, one of their senior tech evangelists gave a short demo of Windows 8 and announced a giveaway for a Windows tablet which he referred to as a "fully functioning PC and not just some toy you can control your TV with". Them's fighting words.
Met Raymond Rahbar, CEO of the just launched UberOffices in Rosslyn. UberOffices is a brand new co-working space that opened for business last week. Finally someone is thinking about Virginia entrepreneurs who don't want to commute into DC just to find a desk to work on.
Met Congressman Jim Moran (VA-8) who gave a short talk on the entrepreneurs economy and asked people to come and advise him on better ways to support the work of the startup community. Interestingly enough, I had met Bruce Shuttleworth (Moran's opponent in the Democratic primary) just hours earlier and talked a bit about polling and reaching hard-to-reach voters. Was interesting to see the contrast between the two congressional candidates and marks the first time I've met a candidate and his opponent on the same day.
Other coverage of Day of Fosterly:
Bisnow
InTheCapital - curated tweets by resident tweet curators
