If you have noticed the design and layout of solar panels around, you would have thought a minute or two about its aesthetics. Though not too bad, the dark colored cells could be a put off. Scientists have now decided to add some color to them. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Germany are working on a new type of photovoltaic using thin film technology to give some color to the panels.
Once upon a time, there was a website designed to crowdfund small, creative projects—a garage band’s new self-recorded album; a short film; a dance video. That website was called Kickstarter.
Then, along came Tim Schafer and Double Fine Adventure, the video game now known as Broken Age, which transformed the site into an indie video game crowdfunding platform overnight. Kickstarter termed it the “Blockbuster Effect.”
Well, not just a video game funding platform, but these days many of the biggest projects—from the Ouya to Star Citizen to Torment: Tides of Numenera—are video games or video game accessories. And these projects all have, at least in part, Schafer and his game to thank. Broken Age was the catalyst, the trailblazer, the portent of things to come.
And now, despite the $3.3 million the game raised on Kickstarter (and the additional $1.2 million Double Fine raised for its second Kickstarter game, Massive Chalice) Broken Age is out of money.
There are so many things we have to teach our children but one that is often overlooked in today’s world is teaching kids about money. Unless your child has a large trust fund in their name or some other financial windfall heading there way they will need to learn about personal finance. The earlier you start teaching children about financial matters the better. During the most impressionable years of their lives, young people will formulate an opinion about money that will likely stick with them throughout adulthood. With that being said, it’s important to be straightforward with kids. They need to know the value of a dollar and you’re their best teacher.
Use everyday activities to teach lessons about money.
Take your children to the grocery store. Teach them how to find the best deals by watching for sales, comparing prices, and using coupons. Purchase a small calculator for your child and work on adding and subtracting while you shop. This is especially helpful for elementary aged children who are learning to differentiate between a dollar bill and a hundred dollar bill.
Below is the transcript of the full interview I conducted with Dr. Richard Sudek, Director of Chapman University’s Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics. The center is nationally recognized as a leader in the field and Chapman has produced a number of notable entrepreneurs, including our client, Frank Delgadillo, creator of the Ambiguous and Comune action wear lines.
Excerpts from this interview appeared in Impact (formerly Caypen) magazine in both their online and print editions.
Q: Can you give us some background on the Leatherby Center and what you do here?
Sudek: I’m the Director of the Leatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics.
PM: What is your background?
Sudek: I had my own computer company, built starting with $250 and sold it, so I’m not your typical academic. What I’m really trying to do is change the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in OrangeCounty. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is poorly connected from my perception. We’d like Chapman to be involved in helping connect it. We’d like Chapman to be the place where entrepreneurs, inventors and investors meet and collaborate.
Most of our energy is outward facing rather inward facing.
One of the things to point out is that Chapman one of the best kept secrets here in OrangeCounty. We’re a top 50 business school. We have a Nobel prize winner in economics. Our entrepreneurship program is ranked 13th by BusinessWeek. Because I wanted to cross connect the university, we built this thing called ESUN, Entrepreneur Student University Network. Originally it was designed to be small, so we started with the local schools; Cal Tech. USC, UCLA, Loyola, Pepperdyne, UCI, Fullerton and Claremont McKenna to try to cross connect our centers which we’re starting to do.
The thing that really launched this is we created this competition called California Dreaming. And we brought in other schools such as Oklahoma, BYU, Berkeley and Hawaii, etc and created a $100,000 business plan competition that we have in April. Next year it will be a $200,000. It’s going actually be two different competitions a business plan competition and fast pitch competition. Microsemi will be the anchor sponsor, as they were last year. The idea is to get students in front of investors, not just to win cash. I brought in VCs and angels from the bay area and local VCs and angels.
One of the teams, BYU, who won the competition, got some equity funding from this in late April. So that’s the idea is to get students connected to that.
PM: So you’re trying to build the hub for this kind of activity here?
Sudek: Yes. Now this reaches outward across different states so the idea is the help students in general although focused on Chapman, OrangeCounty, Southern California, going out from there.
Continue reading “Dr. Richard Sudek Interview | Peter Mehit”
College is a step toward adulthood for many, but the transition from bachelor’s degree to entrepreneur can feel a bit jarring. Keeping your chin up, a stiff upper-lip and other empty clichés everyone says to you can’t really prepare you for one really important truth: There isn’t a curriculum for adulthood. Knowing this, here are a few changes to expect when you take your first steps away from college and into starting you own business.
1. Attendance is always mandatory.
In college, you may have ditched class or ducked out early and still managed to pass. This isn’t going to fly in the startup world. Rain or shine, young treps need to show up and do so in a punctual fashion. Not only will it keep you in the loop of the day-to-day activities but will also set a good example for employees.
2. Scheduling isn’t set in stone.
Your Friday morning biology lab is finally over. What a relief. While you may be thanking your lucky stars you don’t have to roll out of bed after a crazy night to go and dissect a frog, don’t get too excited. Adult life and entrepreneurship means you’re beholden to a schedule of necessity rather than attendance sheets. As a young trep, you are the harbinger of your own success, meaning you sometimes will need to ask yourself to come in on a Saturday.
3. Free time isn’t free.
Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as “free time” in the world of startups. During college you may have had huge breaks between class or long holidays but startup reality is quite different. While most of your friends are working at finding a nine-to-five job and attending happy hour, you are slaving away at your business plan or putting out fires at your company. And that’s just the reality of being an entrepreneur — sacrificing free time in exchange for freedom.
via 10 Lessons College Won’t Teach You — But Entrepreneurship Will | Entrepreneur.com.
The El Reno EF-5 Tornado that killed three storm chasers surprised them by changing from the typical northeast track to a southerly track, trapping them.
There are literally dozens of videos of this tornado, but I’ve posted the ones that communicate the instantaneous threat those following these storms found themselves in.
Adding to the mix were scores of amateur chasers and hundreds of regular citizens, who left the relative safety of their homes because they mistook the advice of a weatherman who advised a portion of the viewers to head south. Hundreds clogged the roads, making retreat impossible for those at the front of the line.
Continue reading “El Reno was a Killing Field | YouTube Videos”
Last Friday, we had the honor to speak with a room full of entrepreneurs in Surgut, Siberia via teleconference. The conference was set up by Michelle Skiljian of the Inland Empire Women’s Center and Dr. Tapie Rhom, an IT professor at CSUSB along with the help of many others. We filed into the tele-learning center at Cal State San Bernardino for a 7:00pm start. The tele bridge started late because the participants on the Russian end had to fight a snow storm to get to the venue. The crowd was slow to build but after about twenty minutes there were fifty or so participants involved in the conversation with about 15 Southern California business owners.
They aren’t all that different than us, except they have higher expectations for what America does for it’s start up nation. Most of their questions centered on sources of capital (with an interesting sidebar about support for parolees), the kinds of businesses we start here and, in particular, the kinds of businesses women are getting into. The Russian audience was majority women and the only three business owners that spoke were women. They explained the split of business owners in Russia 85-15% male, with the majority of women owning care giving or service businesses.
Continue reading “Speaking With Russian Entrepreneurs | Peter Mehit”
Do you ever feel like you don’t quite deserve your success or aren’t fully qualified to do what you do? That common feeling is what psychologists call the “impostor syndrome,” a phenomenon where successful people feel like frauds waiting for someone to realize that they’re unfit for their leadership roles.
“Millions of people, from entrepreneurs to celebrities, have a hard time internalizing their accomplishments,” says Valerie Young, an expert on impostor syndrome and, author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women (Crown Business, 2011).
The impostor syndrome is especially common among people who become successful quickly or early, and among outsiders, such as women in male-dominated industries. “They explain away their success as luck or timing,” Young says. “They feel this sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
That fear is stressful, and often leads people to hold back instead of pushing for bigger clients or more challenging opportunities.
Most of the people who feel like impostors are actually exceptionally capable. It’s their self-image that’s off. “Feeling like an impostor is different than being an impostor,” Young says. “Feelings aren’t facts.”
Dispatches From The Front 