Scenes from an afternoon at The Collider Cup

The semester is over! Time for an all-star pitch competition at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, run by Melissa Glass.

Along with cojudges Stephen Torres from UCB, Luke Kowalski of Oracle, and Peter Nachbaur from Keen IO, I was honored to judge the afternoon Fall Showcase at UC Berkeley. 

We heard and gave feedback on all-star business pitches from teams from various classes with distinct approaches:

Technology Entrepreneurship, and the Management of Technology Innovation Program with Naeem Zafar, 

Product Management with Ken Sandy,

and finally, some familiar-to-me teams (hi, Acuity & CoffeeX!) from the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp with Gigi Wang.

Some highlights:

  • A venture using CRISPR technology to solve an unsustainable aquaculture practice -- feeding farmed salmon with fish oil that is too high in unhealthy Omega acids.
  • A peer-to-peer investing tool to tap into the most successful fund managers who happen to be regular joes. 

Judging the all-star Collider Cup at UC Berkeley

Excited to be a pitch judge for this all-star event at UC Berkeley next week!!

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The Collider Cup is Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology's all-star showcase of the best student teams from Fall 2017.

Teams pitch to panels of professors, investors and industry experts as they vie to win the grand prize, the Collider Cup!

Thanks to Gigi Wang for the invite.

#startups #venture #ColliderCup #UCBerkeley 

"A practical, empathetic and effective mentor"

Thanks Jeff Abbott, VC and founder of the Global Scaling Academy, for this fab recommendation at LinkedIn!

"She’s a practical, empathetic and effective mentor whose broad experience and constructive feedback allow her teams go on to perform in the top tier, while also improving the overall program she is a part of."

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Building a multidisciplinary engineering program for scale

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...you need to systematize the curriculum and delivery.

Here's a day of Challenge Lab training led by Ken Singer at UC Berkeley, to get a set of potential instructors for 2018 on the same page.

 

This was a really fun day! Got to connect with my fellow European Innovation Academy mentors Tommaso Di Bartolo, Mike Kyriacou & Stephen D. Torres, among other new friends & colleagues.

A delegation from Finland was also there, because this multidisciplinary Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology class in the engineering school is being built for scale. Really cool to see it happening and take part. 

TBT, adapting a novel for the screen

Remembering the screen adaptation I did of an action comedy novel by Jennifer Lawler...

The main characters in this enduring ensemble story are star-crossed lovers who also happen to be mercenaries — and 17th century English scholars. Think the good-humored violence of RED with a younger group.

The Mercenary's Tale, screen adaptation of the novel Not Quite a Hero. We spent two years (1990-2) adapting the story to the screen format. 

The Mercenary's Tale, screen adaptation of the novel Not Quite a Hero. We spent two years (1990-2) adapting the story to the screen format.

 

Here's what a 379 page 20 year old manuscript looks like. After I read the funny, classic love story for the first time in 1987/88 I couldn't forget it...

Always looking for an illustrator to convert the script into a graphic novel for iPad, btw.

We rewrite the screenplay every now and again. It's renamed COY MISTRESS. And Jennifer found a place for those Greek sailors she loves so much!

Learn more about Jennifer Lawler.

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Named "one of the best mentors" at 2017 accelerators

This is music to my ears!

Thanks to

  • academic advisor Selvi Kannan in Management & Innovation at Victoria University, Australia

  • Gigi Wang, director of UC Berkeley's Sutardja Center for Technology & Entrepreneurship

for passing on the feedback they received from their startup teams (both students and experienced professionals) at accelerators where I was pleased to mentor this summer.

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TBT, '80s Meatpacking District fashion, society, film production

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Remembering an arty, downtown jet-set of the late '80s....at the first fashion show of an emerging Houston designer, featuring the granddaughter of a woman who was married to Howard Hughes.

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Here's what the New York Times reported about a later event by the same emerging designer.

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And here’s what Cathy Horyn wrote in The Washington Post about what she called the “first show” of B. Moody (but clearly it wasn’t the first show, 👆that was, in 1987.)

Joining StartersHub Istanbul as a mentor & advisor

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So pleased to share that I've joined StartersHub as a mentor and adviser.

Based in Istanbul, StartersHub is a world-class entrepreneurship platform acting as a catalyst in Turkey and the EMEA region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. StartersHub offers startups funding, mentorship, networking and strategic partnership support as well as an inspiring work place at the heart of Istanbul's business district.

StartersHub also runs industry-specific programs with strategic partners in Financial Technologies, Gaming, Life Sciences, Internet of Things and Big Data. 

A few photos from my quick trip to Istanbul and the StartersHub office this summer:

TBT, the concept of a global niche as your home court advantage no matter where you are

I sent this to my mailing list in 2011....about a concept I'd been revolving since 2009: The home court advantage.

Hey there. 

You’ve heard of a home court advantage. A place where you’re ideally suited to operate, where you control the environment and have all the connections. 

How about if you’re not feeling like you have that advantage? In the digital age, you can get it.

Now it’s a floating sense of the perfect place for you to live and operate. You are the best person to create it for yourself since it’s customized to both your strengths -- and your disadvantages.

Tara and I’ve spent a total of 24 years living abroad so much of our mindset (and our solutions to the pains of situation mismatch) spring from that world-flung displaced experience. 

But everything we’re talking about here at Global Niche pertains to people like you who face your own particular situation mismatch. Somehow the dominant culture in your life doesn’t support your inclinations or aims. 

To get you oriented, I rooted through the records to find where all this Global Niche talk started.

...it was back in 2009.

I was asked to contribute a post for a major American writers’ publication about how my expatriatism positively impacted my publishing career. Great opportunity for an invisible expat in Istanbul like me.

As I began to describe in “Publishing and the Digital World Citizen” how being oceans away from employers and readers and colleagues led to me to seize whatever gate-jumping opportunities I could, it dawned on me. 

Finding a solution to my problem *leap-frogged* me over many in my field (as well as professional peers in my physical surroundings). In fact, I was now in better shape to face the future than most people who were smack in the middle of the industry (that dreaded comfort zone).

So embrace your discomfort, because it’s the key to your home court advantage.

Your ideal playing field is your Global Niche. 

Here's a vision of it from 2013:

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Judging at the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Summer 2017

It was so much fun to mentor & judge the tech startups at Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (BMOE) at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology. 120 global participants gathered at UC Berkeley for a one week immersive experience into entrepreneurship, team-building, mentorship, and more.

Here's the team I & my fellow judge chose as the winner of our 40-person cohort: BrainyT, an AI-for-manufacturing going to market in Brazil.

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I also ran into familiar faces from last month's extreme accelerator in Europe, the European Innovation Academy #eia2017italy: participant & UCB student Bailey Farren, and fellow EIA chief mentors UCB faculty Stephen Torres and Pamela Day, who also was a judge at BMOE!

Looking forward to Harika Kalluri's upcoming interview with me and Pamela for the Berkeley Point Of View. We yakked Harika's ear off about tech investing, product building, and the empowering spirit of entrepreneurship.

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A few snaps from some of the seven venture pitches my fellow judge Kal Deutsch (managing partner and founding investor of The Batchery, a Bay Area-based global incubator for seed stage startups) and I judged.

Good job to these teams from Berkeley, Denmark, Brazil & Hong Kong:

  • BrainyT, the AI for small manufacturers
  • SoWa the wireless professional speakers
  • A Slice of Reality interactive media system
  • the ed-tech play for lesson plans Athena
  • CoffeeX, a connected coffee kiosk
  • Candle Sense electric candle for memory boosting
  • LedoAds, the marketplace for space ads

Thanks to UCBerkeley's entrepreneurship faculty Gigi Wang, the director of BMOE, for including me in her awesome program!

Photo: Gigi Wang

Photo: Gigi Wang

Congrats to BrainyT for making it into the top 3 startups at BMOE Summer 2017!

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Thanks to Harika Kalluri for the interview! You can read it at the Sutardja Center site here.

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