Year’s-end message from Patrick Gill and Peter Olins

Now is traditionally a time to look back at progress made, and to look forward to the challenges and opportunities ahead.

We need your help!

We are currently seeking outside funding (government, foundation, and private) to expand both the scope of the project and its geographical reach.  To help us do this we need input and endorsement from our members, supporters and friends.

Please take a few minutes (typically five minutes) to respond to our Survey

While we can’t promise to be all things to all people, we respect the needs and desires of the group.  As soon as we get sufficient input, we will report the conclusions to the group and invite you to a strategy meeting to help guide our progress.

Wishing everyone a healthy, prosperous and meaningful new year.  Thanks,  Peter + Patrick.

Looking back

Since April 2008 we have held monthly Meetups with typically 70-100 attendees.  Our Meetup membership has grown to 780, and we have had presentations from over 80 companies and new ventures.  We have also held workshops, on Sweat-Equity and Social Media. 

Thank you to our presenters, our Meetup participants, our volunteers, and our sponsors! 

We think that we have made significant progress in creating a community in which the power of relationships and “collaborative advantage” is becoming more evident.  We designed the Network as pilot project to test a set of ideas that we believe can result in a dramatic shift in the success of multiple ventures: creating a space in which we bring together a large number of diverse people, with a shared commitment to collaborating and building relationships. Therefore, we welcome your input on both the progress that we have made, as well as the validity of the model.

Looking forward

What’s next for the Northern Colorado Entrepreneurs Network?

We believe that we have only scratched the surface of what our fledgling nonprofit can contribute to our local community, the region, and the State.  There are several areas that we believe need to be developed.  What do you think?

1.     Not just a Meetup…   We will continue to hold Meetups, but realize that this format has its limitations, so we intend to move beyond the informal feedback and coaching of monthly network events.  In addition to the Meetup we want to offer more ongoing, intensive support, both specific to a given venture, as well as more workshops to address general needs and interests of our members.

2.     Subgroups…   While we value the cross-fertilization that takes place by bringing together people of diverse backgrounds, there would be power in having spin-off subgroups for different technologies and areas of business, where some of the issues can be addressed in more technical depth.

3.     Move beyond entrepreneurship…  While our pilot phase has focused on entrepreneurship, we think that it will be important to expand the mission to include innovation and sustainability (i.e. the triple bottom line).  In other words, we see innovation as the driver, entrepreneurship as the vehicle and sustainability as an attractive route.

4.     Diversity…  While we have actively sought to involve people from a highly diverse range of professions, levels of experience, and geographical locations, some people who find the Meetup format too dilute, and are looking for a more intensive activity.

5.     Tools…  While face-to-face interactions remain the gold standard, we also need to build a more effective website in order to better serve the different needs of our members, and to bridge geographical barriers.

6.     Funding…  While there are loans available for small business “sure-bets”, plus investment funds for a handful of companies that have well-defined potential for dramatic growth, there are few options for finding seed funding for risky early-stage ventures.  We will continue to emphasize creative, non-monetary approaches such as sweat-equity and early-stage donation of time and services, but there is also still a strong need for seed funding ($5-50K range).  A stretch-goal for 2010 would be to establish an investment fund devoted to the needs of our members.

7.     Organizational sustainability…  We need to become operationally and financially self-sustaining.

What do you think?

If you got this far, please don’t forget to respond to the  Survey!