An Entrepreneur's Thoughts -- in a plane ride bite size snack!
While flying to Dallas, I sat beside a serial entrepreneur! He shared some interesting points with me that were impactful in his quest for entrepreneur success -- of which he has had at least 3 successful exits!
Here's what I drew as I talked to him!
Infographic: Power of Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship
I love this Infographic of the Silicon Valley ranking of cities for entrepreneurship!!!
The top 5 scores were:
- Menlo Park,
- Mountain View,
- Palo Alto,
- Sunnyvale,
- Redwood City
Did you see that there is a geographic dominance of Northern California? The top 4 Silicon Valley cities in the MIT rankings possess 20 times the average start-up quality as California's median city!!!! WOW!
I love Entrepreneurs! We love Entrepreneurs!
Entrepreneurs are the soul of global innovation!!
And today, start-ups are rocking our world.
According to CB Insight, over $4.6B has been invested by VCs into Cloud Computing over the last year, representing a 113% YOY funding growth! And this year in particular has been incredible.
- Q1 2014 was the biggest funding quarter over the last 5 years
I am on the plane right now heading to San Fran and Silicon Valley to spend time with our most valued natural resource: The Start-Up. And with Silicon Valley is driving 42% of the cloud deals this year, the adventure of listening, helping, and announcing is my favorite part of my role!!
Hope to see you there!
Entrepreneur Fire! SmartCamp comes to Dallas, y'all! Visual Content and Conversion WON the Day!
The very first SmartCamp Dallas event was held recently, and there were PHENOMENAL startups competing to be a finalist in the event. Two startups stood out from all the rest: ImageVision and Digital Certainty!
Congratulations to ImageVision, the judges' choice and winner of SmartCamp Dallas! And congratulations to Digital Certainty, the people's choice award winner!
By using image recognition and machine learning technology, ImageVision built a search system that helps web and social media companies monetize their visual content and automate the recognition and tagging of images and videos. Customers can tap into their visual search system using ImageVision's web APIs.
Think of ImageVision as the watchdog for large web companies that deal with tens of thousands of images. ImageVision allows them to monitor and manage all those images and videos!
Digital Certainty's solution designed to increase the conversion rate of your marketing plan. Turning web and mobile visitors into paying customers - faster than anyone else - is their goal!
Lastly, congratulations to the Dallas team! Nice job on your first SmartCamp event!
Ecosystem Interview: Bobbie Carlton, Mass Innovation Nights
I had the pleasure of doing an influence roundtable up in Boston with key people who influence the Entrepreneur and Start-Up Space in the Greater Boston area.
Mass innovation nights are so innovative that I wanted to share how this effort helps shape the ecosystem in this region that focuses on Healthcare, Energy, and Bio innovations.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yIBo6m3E4&feature=youtu.be]