Venture Studio (6): Trevor Owens: Entrepreneur, Super-Connector, Community Organizer

This is Episode (6) of Venture Studio

Welcome to this conversation with one of the most dynamic members of New York's tech community, the omnipresent and ubiquitous Trevor Owens who embodied the concept of "student entrepreneur" during his time at NYU. He has recently left school to launch two startups simultaneously. Enjoy.

Below is a short table of contents (with corresponding minutes) of our conversation.

:15          How a finance major @NYU got drawn into tech world? 

3:31       "I was taking every awesome opportunity I could & running with it"

3:39       Heard that Trevor Owens is leaving NYU... why, how, etc.? 

5:12        How his mentors, family, friends reacted to his decision

6:08       Trevor's thoughts on mentorship

7:38       Our discussion on team-building      

8:52       The story and business model of www.insidestartups.org

11:18      The story and business model of the Lean Startup Machine

12:47     Discussion of this Mobile Accelerator Model and his influences       

14:00    Trevor hiring interns. Has lots of projects going on right now    

Click Here: For Episode 7 of Venture Studio w/Jordy Leiser

                  

               

Venture Studio (2): Professor Evan Korth of HackNY

This is Episode (2) of Venture Studio

Get to know our guest, a huge figure in NYC's technology ecosystem, Professor Evan Korth. 

In this conversation we discuss HackNY at length, the role of the University in New York's technology ecosystem, some of Evan's student teams (including Diaspora!), NYU's Innovation Fund, and his passion for teaching, mentorship and NYC.

(This excellent piece was released today on TechCrunch about HackNY 2011)

Click for Venture Studio (3) w/ Mark Loranger of Square 1 Bank

                  

               

Some Reflections and Best Wishes for the New Year: Here Comes 2011!

As we officially launch the New Year today, a few thoughts occur to me that bear mentioning:

1) I would first like to thank all the readers of this blog for your kind encouragement, support, comments, valuable time and insights shared over the course of this past year. I wish you all the best for 2011 in both your entrepreneurial pursuits and personally. It has been terrific getting to know and learning from so many of you. Here's to another great year!

2) If you want to receive this blog via email in 2011 to make things easier, just click here. I'll also be sending out invites for readers to receive email updates within the next few days.

3) This year I'm looking forward to continuing my work on the following projects and activities:

• For those of you launching new businesses I'll definitely be continuing my Zero to One Series here.
• I'll continue to develop the crowdsourceable entrepreneur/venture maps which are part of what we're calling the Startup Genome Project. The goal of this project is to provide a powerful and rich resource for any entrepreneur in the world who wants to familiarize himself/herself with their entrepreneurial ecosystem and beyond. 
• I'll also be accelerating the Venture Studio Series with video interviews of the various dramatis personae of our incredible American entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• I'm really looking forward to working together with my newly elected colleague on the NY Tech Meetup Board, Evan Korth, to increase connections between our universities and the tech community here in NYC.
• Psyched to keep putting on great entrepreneurship events (and Happy Hours of course!) with the New York Venture Community.
• Working with the burgeoning entrepreneurial community at Columbia University through our ongoing Entrepreneur-Office-Hours, with Columbia Venture Community, and of course spinning-off excellent faculty spinoffs through my work at Columbia Tech Ventures.

4) Lastly, if you're looking for a dose of inspiration as you kick-off your year, see this video below in which Hans Rosling shows how the quality of life of humans worldwide has evolved/transformed and accelerated over the course of the past two centuries.

It occurred to me that Rosling's story is in many ways the story of entrepreneurship and innovation. We have and will continue to change the world for the better. That's certainly something to shoot for as the New Year arrives.

Attention NYC Students and Startups: Time to Gear-Up for HackNY October 2010!

I was talking to my friend and colleague Chris Wiggins today about the upcoming Hackathon. Chris, Evan Korth and Hilary Mason as you may know are the visionary founders of HackNY. If you haven't heard of it, it's perhaps one of the best opportunities for student hackers to dive into the startup scene and for startups to identify super-talented student hackers. Read all about it below and check out this awesome video to get a taste of what these hackathons are all about. Here's what you need to to do to apply:

ATTENTION ALL NYC-AREA STUDENTS AND STARTUPS:

hackNY is thrilled to announce the fall 2010 hackNY student hackathon October 9-10!

In April, more than 200 students from almost 40 NYC-area schools participated in the first ever NYC-area student hackathon. Some of NYC’s hottest startups presented their APIs, shared their datasets, and helped organize students into teams of coding monsters to work on projects of their own design. 24 hours of pizza, caffeine, and intense hacking later, teams demo’ed their code for appreciative judges from the NYC startup community. Winning teams presented at the New York Tech Meetup in front of an audience of hundreds of NYC area technologists, and several participants went on to join the 2010 class of hackNY Fellows, interning at NYC startups. For more about the Spring 2010 hackathon, see the FAQ or the movie by Eric Wu, official hackmeister of the Yahoo Developers Network.

The Fall hackNY hackathon will be October 9-10, back at NYU’s Courant Institute; we look forward to seeing what members of the NYC-area student hacking population will create!

Hackers: please hack on whatever you want but if you’re competing, we
are only accepting hacks based on APIs or datasets presented at the start of the hackathon.

STUDENTS: Register here.

STARTUPS: Apply here to present at the Fall 2010 hackNY hackathon. You will be asked for your startup’s name, a description of the API or dataset or other tech you’d like to demo, and availability to help organize teams among the student hacking population.

ABOUT HACKNY: hackNY is an initiative founded to federate and mentor the next generation of NYC tech all-stars. During the summer we organize the hackNY Fellows program, including internships with NYC-area startups as well as a lecture series and housing. During the school year we organize student hackathons to introduce students to fellow members of the hacking population and to the exciting startups in NYC where their skills are enthusiastically needed. For more information just email info@hackNY.org.

ABOUT HACKING: note that all hacking will be of the awesome variety, not the evil variety. Thanks.