For more info see these post:

Prelaunch of a network of entrepreneurs in Antofagasta (in Spanish)

A report of tonight’s activities with support from Leonardo Maldonado, Estuardo Robles, Bijoy Goswami, and Steve Golab

The entrepreneur has a different scenario.  Many times there are no structures that have been set up by anyone else, requiring the entrepreneur to set them up.  It takes discipline to set the directions that a startup will go. It takes discipline to get up in the morning, especially when demotivated because of present results, to go at it again. It takes discipline at the end of the day to somehow quiet the voices of undone task, doing one’s best to mentally walk away from work that needs to be completed for that day’s rest. It takes discipline to not allow success to go to one’s head, but instead, maintain a humble approach that keeps the entrepreneur’s eyes open for the next opportunity, or the next threat.

Either way, choosing the path of conformity or discipline, there is a choice that must be made, and a willingness to pay the price of that choice.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, people over the age of 35 made up 80 percent of the total entrepreneurship activity in 2009. That same year, the Kauffman Foundation conducted a survey of 549 startups operating in “high-growth” industries — including aerospace, defense, health care, and computer and electronics — and found that people over 55 are nearly twice as likely to launch startups in these industries.

via People Over 35 Have Recently Launched 80% Of Startups.

They are the people who say to themselves: I am humble enough to say I don't know how to make better/perfect happen on my own; I am curious and courageous enough to ask questions that might help make something closer to perfect; and finally I embrace the “glass half-full” optimism that the end result can always be improved, so let me act towards that objective.

via Why Some People Have More Luck Than Others.

May we all learn to create luck in our startups.

• Solve a Customer’s Real Problem: one that actually exist:  ”If you can’t see what John Brown needs through John Brown’s eyes, you can’t sell what John Brown buys”.
• Constantly Question and Modify Plans
• Hire the Best. one can never have too much talent.  you can only make 10-15 decisions a day. hire the right people to make more.
• Hire an Experienced Management Team. There’s no time for “learning on the job”.
• Stay Focused. It’s too easy to stray.
• Learn Something New Every Day….. your competitor is…  What did you learn today?
• Ultimately, You Must Make a Dollar.  Sooner is better than later.
• Build and Protect your Reputation…  you will be considered for many opportunities and never know it. Executive intelligence: cultivate it.
• Good Communications Skills: this will raise your chances of success. Listening is as important as talking (its not just about speaking). Get out of your office… and do “Walkabouts”.  Manager meetings on Monday 7:30 am. What happened last week? What happens this week? Now go communicate this to the rest of the company?  Listen to the unspoken.
• Great Company Culture.  This will solve attrition and retention issues. You can not create it, you must have it evolve.  Create risk compensation plans for all. Develop your own “bell” [e.g. for ringing when there's a sale].  Create an opportunity where people get to contribute beyond their direct responsibilities.
• Leadership…. the glue that holds it together.  Camelot Rules: “we’re in this together”. Situational Leadership Rules- don’t treat people all the same- they’re all different.
• Being Lucky Helps. Where opportunity means preparation.
• Successful business leaders recognize opportunities, pursue the right ones, overcome obstacles, manage potential risk.  People don’t trip on mountains, they trip on small rocks.

Great event today, and great closing keynote, with great wisdom.  Glad to get to participate today.

This and next week represent an exciting reconnection of my work with Chile.  For context, in 2003, I took an early version of what was to become the blueprint of Tech Ranch Austin to Chile.  I was convinced that I needed to open the next door of my life, in not just starting yet another tech startup, but instead, starting a platform, some might say a revolution , of startups working together.

Its exciting to see how these seeds have grown. Two really quick areas that I’ll mention here.  This next Thursday, Paige Brown, Founder and CEO of Tripeezy heads to Chile, as one of the winners of Startup Chile.  Startup Chile is a program where the government of Chile is investing money in her startup.

Secondly, three executives are coming from Chile- two from Antofagasta- where the major copper mines of the world area, and another long term colleague and friend coming from Santiago.  We’ll be talking about specific technologies that the executives from Antofagasta are looking for.  Moreover, we will explore ways to shape the innovation culture of Antofagasta in specific, and Chile more generally.

I am excited because the work that originally took me to Chile, including perhaps the simple concepts, and my naive understanding of these concepts and my work has now blossomed into a much bigger opportunity that includes many businesses and early stage entrepreneurs.  Feeling like a proto-entrepreneur for the Startup Chile program (before there was a program years ago) its exciting to see doors open where there were once walls and a bunch of dreams.

This story of yours suggests that you have guided yourself far afield from your business.

I always push the MLK saying  “Keep your eye on the Prize”.

I would suggest that you have drifted far from that Prize and you are now asking others time to join you in that pursuit.

You know what your Prize is, you have been pursuing it for years.

Does this seriously threaten that Prize?

How much time have you spent on this and how has it gotten you closer to the Prize?

Relax, tend your field, it is your Prize.  Don’t get distracted, it will only cause pain.

Good luck, Barry

I think that many of us as entrepreneurs, as we are passionately slaving towards a goal, loose sight of the prize that we’re working towards.  As an example, around the Tech Ranch Austin, recently I recognized that one of our entrepreneurs, who is passionate about serving persons that have diabetes, was talking about how to go get investors here, and investors there… yet had yet to just serve the constituency that he is passionate about.  He’s now has the first 10 diabetics that he is serving… and the business has taken on a whole new tone of possibilities.  It does not matter what the distraction is… anything that is not core to the business can distract you from the Prize (as it has me too). Keep your eye on the prize.  Build your business.  Create success for yourself, and those that you serve. And through doing this, you’ll be making the world a better place.

Recently, there’s been one meme that has gotten tweeted and talked about by quite a few people, that till now, I did not think had any connection to each other.

And what this meme represents is what I believe is the first shot in the next American Revolution.

No, I am not talking about some group trying to send someone to some new political office.  As you might know, I was (and still am) in support of the choice I made in supporting President Obama…. yet, there’s something much more fundamental happening… and this represents the start of something revolutionary.

To steal a phrase from John Robb: “an aware citizenry can defend itself“.  Up to this time, every time some issue has come up, there’s been a question of turning to the government for a solution.  Yet, given what’s happened in the Congress for so many years, whether a Republican or a Democrat in the Oval Office, the citizenry I believe has now come to learn that the government is in itself fundamentally broken.

And by broken, what do I mean?  From John Robb’s article:

• Median male incomes today are the same as they were in 1974 in the US (and likely all over the western world).  No progress has been made despite a doubling of productivity and massive top line GDP growth. Worse, given that female incomes aren’t on par with male incomes yet, the typical American family makes much less per hour worked than in 1974.
• All of the requirements for entry into the middle class are now private expenses.  From health care to a college education, if you can’t afford the minimum (let alone high quality versions), you aren’t allowed entry.  Worse, those expenses are spiraling out of control at rates many times the rate of inflation.  Nothing is being done to address this.
• The system is geared to make us fail.  Not only has outsourcing/off-shoring just started (everything that can be moved offshore to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity in wage disparities between western and workers in developing countries will be) we are being laden with un-repayable debt. To wit: there’s been NO job growth in the last decade (despite tens of millions in population growth) and total debt from all sources is still near ALL time historical highs.

Whethere the  mishandling of healthcare reform,  security theater in the airports, or spending billions on companies that shouldn’t be bailed out, or trillions on a war that should have never been started, Americans are starting to speak out in a way that we’ve not done for a long while.  And recognize its the aware populace that’s been taking care of business. The genie is out of the bottle.

Although I might not be happy about the waste by our government, as an entrepreneur, and an American, I’m excited that some of my fellow Americans are waking up and starting the process that will reform, dare I say revolutionize this country again.   It is time to take up web browser, account ledger, and social network and remake our country.  There’s too much at stake, for “every revolution begins with the power of an idea” and this is an idea who’s time has come.

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

What’s happened for me is that as a Founding Partner of the Tech Ranch, I need time both as a Maker (getting things done for the Ranch and our portfolio companies)  and a Manager (involved with the Tech Ranch community).  Having those moments to work in without interruptions really makes a difference- say to review a spreadsheet, or respond to a strategic plan, or even to just handle email… As Paul points out:

Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’s schedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.

This year, as one of my new years resolutions in order to grow the Tech Ranch I am going to have to spend more time on a Maker’s Schedule.  I am sure that it will take some time to work out this type of schedule, and at first, I am sure that its going to feel different for some members of our community…. but I see spending more time in a Maker’s Schedule essential for me to build our community.  Its not just about building out the Tech Ranch, but about creating situations that end up long term making the community itself stronger through seeing that our companies get to move farther and faster.  All I ask, in echoing Paul’s words, is that everyone understand the need that we / I have in spending more time as a Maker. I will still be available for meetings, and am really interested in interacting with the community in depth (as I always have been and always will be).  Spending more time on just getting things done is essential for 2010′s growth.  In order to create more hours to be a Maker, I’ll be setting up office hours. And I am open to other ideas as well.  Please let me know if you have other ideas that I should pursue.  Through this I am looking forward to serving our community farther than I could in 2009, and I am hoping that we together can take many of the Tech Ranch companies to a whole new level together.

As I make this transition to setting aside more time as a Maker, I ask for your patience with how I start to manage my schedule, and I hope you see what I am aiming for in bringing our community much farther than before.  Thank you for the support in 2009; Its now time to grow and strengthen our community together in 2010.

Do you have an idea for the next insanely great product or service? Are you having a hard time figuring out how you can step away from your current gig to launch your venture? Have you launched your venture and are now trying to scale it? Are you looking for the right team to make your venture pop? Do you need up to $100,000 in pro-bono services and expertise? If so, read on.  Tech Ranch Austin is excited to announce our next program for emerging technology entrepreneurs: Tech Ranch Venture Forth. The Venture Forth Program is all about accelerating venture success with a goal of getting your idea to the market as quickly as possible – testing and correcting along the way.

This program is the next generation of our successful Employee to Entrepreneur seminars.  But this time, we have kicked it up with up to $100k in free services and access to experts for each startup in the program.  The next Venture Forth program starts in late October and your venture could be generating revenue before the end of 2009!  We’d love for you to join us or share this information with someone who is itching to get their startup accelerated.

You can read the details, watch a video from Kevin and Jonas, and sign up for one of the 15 available slots here: http://techranchaustin.com/ventureforth

If you have questions, comments or ideas, please respond directly to us directly either through the comments or via email at info@techranchaustin.com

Best of luck in your venture!

Complementary currency is, as the name suggest, a monetary system for conducting business between individuals that can live along side a nation backed currency system (e.g. the US Dollar).  Complementary currency systems allow individuals to conduct trade / business without having to use money backed by a central government.  That is, as an example, I could do business with a graphic artist who in turn does business with an engineer with in turn does business back with me.  Instead of just “bartering” between us, the complementary currency system allows me (like when using dollars) to not have to intimately know who I am doing business with, for the currency (whether dollars or complementary currency) tracks the transaction.

It seems, that with the current economic conditions that the US and the world has been facing that there is even greater interest than before in this method of conducting business by a more general crowd than I had previously found when I was looking into complementary currency in 2006/7.  This article by Kevin Kelleher on the Gigaom blogging network speaks to how a wider crowd of individuals might be looking to use complementary currency in the coming year(s).   Kevin writes:

[Chris Anderson, writer of The Long Tail,] imagined this excess ability expanding as unemployed workers engage in labors of love for free, if only to do something valuable with their time and/or advertise their skills.

…

I wonder what kind of creativity could be unleashed by workers who, though deprived of a steady paycheck, are freed from such tedious tasks. Some could come up with new ideas that help vault the web to a more advanced stage. Others may make micro-contributions that are equally powerful in aggregate. Such creativity could then foster an entirely new generation of startups, which would eventually lure away some of those who had remained at steady jobs all along.

I believe that complementary currency has the chance of expanding something that ends up being much more resilient than just filling the gap in an under-employed market.  I believe that we could see the rise of not just a reputation system that tracks who did what, but a deepening of the currency system in general, where we have an environment that makes it possible for more former employees become entrepreneurs, exploring their capabilities, talents, and passions… ending up not just looking for a job for when the economy recovers, but in establishing themselves in businesses that the traditional monetary cost of capital would have been a barrier to them before.

So, for the Austinites following my blog- what became of this local complementary currency system?  Although it did not take off in the direction that we all expected, there is notable work being done here locally… led by one of the guys that taught me about it in the first place- Tom Brown.  Tom and Rich Vazquez are writing about these concepts at the Open Source Currency Blog, and have a full blown complementary currency system running at the Austin Time Exchange.  In fact, they just had a meeting talking about the “Next Economy”.

Its uncertain about what will be happening with the US and world economies- but it is good to know that there are alternatives that are being explored for entrepreneurs here in Austin.  Keep me appraised of what you are seeing out there as well, and I will do the same through this blog.

HOUSE WINE

408 Josephine
Austin 78704-1017
+1.512.322.5210

Here is a map.  This location is very close to the Barton Springs / Lamar intersection.  They have wine and beer inexpensively priced.  Moreover, if you have a good recent war story (whether the outcome was good, or if it created a lot of scar tissue for you) I will buy you your first drink.  (Ok, so I am only going to do this for the first 10 good entrepreneurial-scar-tissue-stories, as we comisserate together.  )  Catch me via twitter if you have any questions, or post a comment here.  I look forward to catching up with you then.

Q. What is your advice to entrepreneurs seeking funding or growth opportunities if the credit and capital markets continue on their current course?

A. My advice is that they melt wax into their ears and go forward. If they are waiting for wonderful credit and capital markets, they probably aren’t entrepreneurs. They’re much more likely to be consultants and bankers looking to quickly flip a company.

It feels like a great time to be an entrepreneur. I am sorry to see so many other people in the world upset about financial doom and gloom.  Maybe at some point I will change my song…. but for now, I am glad to be building a company, and helping other entrepreneurs build their companies.  Yes, all of us entrepreneurs have to be somewhat more conservative right now than we might be during boom-times, but it is a GREAT time to start a company.  If you have been displaced from your previous job, or have the general entrepreneurial itch that you have not been scratching, and you have the entrepreneur jean (not the consultant or banker gene described above) build it now.  Sure, calculate it out… but realize that right now, entrepreneurial businesses will be the first to recover and thrive from the present credit crisis. Damn the torpedos, full steam ahead!

Enterprise Tribes: Supporting Emerging Tech Startups In the Age of Web 2.0

Failure to receive support early enough in the startup cycle is a challenge that has kept many promising technologies from ever making it to the market. Venture capital and angel investment have their place, but most financial capital cannot invest in high-risk ventures at the earliest stages. The fate of the typical entrepreneur has been to build his business through sweat, credit cards and friends-and-family investments. But now, social networking technologies are making increasing amounts of social capital available – significantly reducing financial costs faced by entrepreneurs. Mr. Koym shares stories of startups that use social capital in place of cash and the principles that benefit emerging technologies companies – whether bootstrapped or investor-backed.

One page abstract:  for Track 5:  Business & Economic Development

The sad truth standing in the way of getting many promising technologies to market is that most startup support programs don’t work early enough in the startup cycle to be significant at the times of entrepreneurs’ greatest need.  Venture capital and angel investment certainly have their place, but most financial capital cannot invest in high risk at the earliest stages. Until recently, the typical entrepreneur stood alone in building his business through his own sweat, credit card and the cash offered up by friends and family. However, social networking technologies now are creating opportunities to significantly reduce the financial cost of building a business, by making social capital more widely and easily accessible.  In this speech, Mr. Koym will share examples of startups that are leveraging social capital in lieu of financial capital and the principles that work for companies in the emerging technologies arena.

As a technology visionary, including predicting and ushering in web based eCommerce in 1994 and building the startup company that subsequently leading Dell Computer Corporation’s billion dollar eCommerce site in 1996; Predicting the usage of Linux in embedded devices in 2002, subsequently leading the deployment of this startup’s products across Schlumberger’s world wide network; Mr. Koym now is charting where social networking technologies are opening up opportunities to change the face of entrepreneurship, culminating in four conceptual shifts that he sees will drive change across the five domains of the individual, the corporation, the enterprise tribe, on demand services, and governments.

The Four Conceptual Shifts that Mr. Koym is predicting will show up in the following ways:
1.    Superempowerment of the individual, where individuals exchange the mythical stability of a corporate job for the stability of self-employment, producing an entrepreneurial mindset that creates a truly resilient workforce.
2.    New open corporate structures that allow much greater flexibility by coordinating many outside players in an open, yet not vulnerable, value chain
3.    The rise of the Enterprise Tribe- a presently emerging social structure where entrepreneurs connect and support each other much in ways resembling America’s agrarian past
4.    A “Chinese menu” of on demand, robust, Internet delivered services, organized by vendors large and small
5.    Governments that become agile, and in many times, partially replaced by grass-roots community efforts organized through social networks.

A simple demonstration of this insight can be found in my friend Felipe Contreras Haye’s statement:

Hemos venido a hacer una invitación a varios establecimientos educacionales a sumarse junto a nosotros a un proyecto de Innovación Educativa basada en los principios (NO EN LAS HERRAMIENTAS) de la Web 2.0. (emphasis added by Kevin)

For my friends that don’t read Spanish, I will translate, adding my understanding and interpretation to his statement- “We are sending invitations to various educational establishments around a innovative education based on the principles of Web 2.0, not the tools of Web 2.0. ”

This is a profound insight… why ? Many times the focus of entrepreneurs that I work with in the US, especially because of our technological prowess- we sometimes are drawn to think that technology is driving the dynamic growth of the Internet. Hardly. The social disposition of Internet users drives the net… and education should be directed at the social underpinnings and changing users perceptions of the net- not just training individuals on tools. Tools will change, within 6 months. The ability to “see” opportunities and how to respond to them in the world will stand, no matter what changes in the domain of technology. This need to “see” opportunities and not be blinded by shinny-object technology is essential for all entrepreneurs.

Just like the Internet was not “just like TV, but better”, the shift that is coming is not “just like Web 2.0 but better”.  A fundamental shift is occurring.  Do you see it?

Activities on the Internet are shifting from (1) broadcast to (2) Web 2.0 conversations to (3) cooperation (taking action together).  Greater than at any point in the history of the Internet cooperative behaviors are taking place- where people are not just talking with each other, but an even greater amount of collective action is happening…. and in this, what is significant is not the large system collective action (as an example, political campaigns like the Obama campaign) but the small scale activities.  What is unique about these new small scale activities, compared to grass roots activities of the past?  This is not just grass roots happening, but the fact that these small scale activities are producing real business impact.  Small groups of entrepreneurs around the world are connecting together, getting real work done, and creating better economic outcomes.

For myself, I have been doing this round the world with working with software developers world-wide- and other business people both in Austin as well as at considerable distance.  Constraints- whether they be financial,  skills, or resource limitations are being more easily overcome than at any point in the history of the world.  Cooperation, not just conversation is the new, coming language of the Internet.  We see this already in open source software projects and in the remix of certain parts of the music industry… but cooperation is not going to stop there.  Although risk abound, a new language and new practices for cooperating world-wide is emerging.  We’ll keep around Web 2.0 just like we have kept around our old TV’s… but it is time to make space for the cooperation-economy, and realize that it is not going to be “just like Web 2.0 but  better.”

“…the most significant factor was the state of a nation’s Social Technology. The rule of law, the existance of property rights, a well organized banking system, economic transparency, a lack of corruption, and other social and institutional factors played a far greater role in determining national economic success than did any other category of factors. Even countries with few resources and incompetent governments did reasonably well if they had a strong, well-developed Social Technologies. On the flip side, no countries with poor Social Technologies performed well, no matter how well endowed they were with resources or how disciplined their macroeconomic policies were.”

What community leaders of all stripes (local, state, government) should see in this statement is that the opportunity for using social networking technologies can have an even more profound effect for amplifying more general social technologies for supporting entrepreneurs. Clearly community leaders that embrace the adoption of these new tools for supporting their entrepreneurs will win. The entrepreneurs (and communities!) whose leaders ignore these trends will lose out.

Thank you to my colleague Greg Hennessy for bringing Beinhocker’s work to my attention.

As you have heard here at this blog, the shift towards the superempowered individual and the attitudinal shift towards work will drive entrepreneurs to create businesses that follow their passions.  No matter where the economy takes the US in the short term, this long term outlook of aligning individuals with their passions in their work bodes well for the future.

What is needed most, though, are structures to support these entrepreneurs.  In the coming days and weeks I will be blogging about new initiatives that we will be doing to create large scale efforts of supporting entrepreneurs.  Get in contact (through email or comments on this blog) if you are interested in being a part of these efforts in your community.

“O.K., but how are loosely organized workers going to replace and compete with companies like Dell? Can hundreds of I-build/support-PCs-in-my-bedroom companies make it in Austin? What other things are these people going to do?”

This is a good question, and there is no simple answer. No, I am not recommending that a number of loosely connected entrepreneurs try to go head to head in the computer assembly business with Dell. What is needed, is creating whole new types of connections and organizations of companies, to create and release whole new levels of value through innovation. A very timely article just came in from Fast Company, called The World’s Most Innovative Companies:

[P&G created the] Connect Develop program, which allows outside developers to get their concepts and designs into P&G’s product pipeline. An applicator developed by Cardinal Health (now Catalent), for example, helped P&G launch Olay Regenerist Eye Derma-Pods, now its top-selling skin-care item. Today, 42% of P&G products have an externally sourced component. And this giant is growing: Revenues rose 8%, to $78 billion, last fiscal year, while profits climbed 14%, to $11 billion.

P&G is showing that it has learned the need for leveraging a knowledge ecology around its business- they are leveraging the brains outside of their corporate walls…. with profits climbing.

The opportunity for entrepreneurs in the future is not just in “sourcing of components” but also the sourcing of new ideas, and creating even higher value add activities than what they might have previously done at former employers. Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to talk with a P&G executive- who is actively exploring how to enhance P&G’s marketing programs- by identifying companies that are (1) sourcing of ideas, (2) placements of advertising or (3) media outlets… with one unique strategy: engage companies that are one or two of these types, but not companies that are trying to be all three (which by the way, allows smaller companies to play a part in P&G’s go-forward marketing strategies).  For the sake of this blog post, the key thing to glean from this article is that what I am talking about- moving to ecology strategies of organizing work- is already happening. This article about P&G confirms that this is already happening.
As a community (whether that community is Austin, or Texas, or the US, or the world), we need to support the timely transition from employee/former employee to entrepreneur, and supporting companies like Dell transition from command-and-control strategies to “ecology” strategies as quickly and smoothly as possible.  No, this won’t be easy, but the reality of massive layoffs are not creating many other choices…. but in the end, it is my belief that this transition will lead to healthier workplaces, with more direct control over one’s own work, resulting in people actually doing what they love.

First and foremost, I recognize that this is a business decision, that Dell is making in order to survive…. Yet recognize, how is it that Dell has had to make such a drastic decision- when there could have been other options previous to this choice?

What options? This is where the opportunity to transition from a “knowledge economy to a knowledge ecology” is happening… if not by strategists at Dell, certainly by some of the disaffected workers that are losing their jobs today. Some number of these former employees are going to recognize the false illusion of the stability of the “job” of the past, and start transitioning to becoming entrepreneurs- making their own employment. And in the end, this will benefit both Dell and Dell’s former employers- for the ecology of work will become much more resilient…. (right now, as an example, 900 workers hitting the unemployment lines at the exact same time. This will make finding the next job for each one of them very, very difficult. Moreover, many of these workers will not have yet developed the skills to become entrepreneurs yet )

And to the former employees that just lost their jobs… make sure that you wake up when you read the word opportunity in the line above “We believe we have a $3 billion opportunity to drive both productivity and efficiency“. When a former employer looks at cutting your job as an opportunity, it is time to change your outlook on the idea of a job.
What needs to happen is we, the Austin community, need to start working together at a level that we have not done before- and fight the recession that we are in head on. I am hopeful, that although this economic downturn will be very hard on the workers that are displaced, that through the shattering of the idea of long term employment, better entrepreneurial outcomes will come for all.

Moreover, it is time to stop coddling companies like Dell. From the article above:

Dell also received almost $280 million in incentives from the state of North Carolina to build the plant, which is not operating at full capacity.

This is a shame…. If you remember that over 50% of the jobs created in the US last year were created in firms of 10 people or less. It is time that US economic policies start promoting our entrepreneurs to create resilient business ecologies. $280 million dollars would have gone a long way to create opportunity for entrepreneurs, whether through the programs that we are doing through Bootstrap Austin or Door64 here in Central Texas. 900 people lost their jobs today. Let’s do something to ensure that we support our entrepreneurs into the future to create resilience in our job marketplace, and to fight this recession that we are in.

To take advantage of the conceptual shifts that I have written about my forthcoming book, a number of Austin entrepreneur support organizations are meeting together at the University of Texas’ IC2 Institute. I will be facilitating the session, following the design of some of the meetings that we used while I was in Chile- focused on facilitating dialogue between entrepreneurs. Here is a map to the location.

Please sign up here and join us in making Austin’s community of entrepreneurs stronger.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

We are seeing a new class of worker emerge. This worker is taking advantage of Conceptual Shift #1- the Superempowerment of the Individual. Passion is what is driving “superempowerment”. It is also what is driving a massive shift in how work is being done- and this will force a major change among individuals and companies into the future.

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