State College Startup Weekend Site Now Online
May 30, 2008
Startup Weekend was holding off until July to officially announce the event, but the investigative crew over at ISTbuilding.com discovered the weekend’s site shortly after it was launched. :) Further information, the announcement on the main StartupWeekend.com site, and the ticket purchase system are expected to go live in July.
State College Startup Weekend site
Chicken and Egg
May 23, 2008
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published an interesting article, Facebook Ignites Entrepreneurial Spirit at Harvard. The article discusses the Havard students who have been inspired by Mark Zuckerberg’s runaway success with Facebook and have attempted to mirror his efforts. As you would expect, the article indicates a handful of startups have been working to follow in Facebook’s footsteps, with varying degrees of success. The article also mentions that Harvard has seen spiking interest in various entrepreneurial contests and events on campus. Harvard has even gone as far as to relax its policies around allowing student-run ventures to operate in its dormitories.
Recent days have also seen several interesting blog posts by David Adewumi emerge on the Penn State student-run site ISTBuilding.com. The first generated a lot of discussion regarding how the Penn State community compares to the typical university bastions of startups and entrepreneurship. The post which follows this proceeds to highlight some of the successes this past year has seen.
The blog posts complement the focus of the WSJ article, in that they raise the discussion of what is required to continue growing Penn State’s entrepreneurship community.
David includes a good list of the recent successes:
1. Several Penn State companies have launched within the past few years and are on their way to being successful.
2. In the last year, the formal entrepreneurial community has had a big boost via Lion Launch Pad, Blue Lion Networks, Invention 2 Venture, Ideablob, Ideapitch, and a few news-worthy events for Penn State co-founded teams.
3. In the past few months, the informal entrepreneurial community has had a big boost via blogs like IST Building, Matt Maisel, PSU startups, and get togethers, like the one we had at the Indian Pavilion. With ideas like one Varun has been tossing around about informal TED gatherings to watch and discuss the videos, I’m sure this will only grow in the next months.
4. Next year will kick off with not one, but two, major startup events for the community. (Startup Weekend and Invention2Venture)
Forward progress such as these will only help to continue to provide inspiration for the community. It is also fantastic to see the passion evident in the discussion generated as a result of David’s posts. Moving forward, it will be important to focus that passion on finding additional ways to build out the community, like assisting in building ventures from fledgling innovative concepts, connecting ventures and aspiring entrepreneurs, organizing informal meetups, and attracting more events for the community to rally around.
Make no mistake - the past year has seen a strengthening culture shift with Penn State growing more entrepreneurial. It will be a slow process moving forward even so. More can always be done, though, so harness the energy shown in the blog comments and channel it into finding new ways to grow the community!
State College leading Startup Weekend vote!
May 5, 2008
State College, PA, is now the leading venue for Startup Weekend. Currently, it has 394 votes compared with its next nearest contender Columbus with 352. Great job everyone, spreading the word via Facebook groups, blogs, and word of mouth!
This is truly a demonstration of the power of the Penn State entrepreneurship community to get the word out - this success, along with the fantastic support of ideas on IdeaBlob. We need to find additional ways to leverage this to further promote PSU entrepreneurs!
Interest Grows in Happy Valley Startup Weekend
April 30, 2008
Thanks to a growing show of support from Penn Staters, including a Facebook group and posts on student-run blogs, State College has moved into 7th place on Startup Weekend’s City Vote page. It’s fantastic to see such interest from the Happy Valley community! Currently, State College has received 90 votes, placing it ahead of the apparent 80 vote mark where it would receive consideration.
Startup Weekend in Happy Valley
April 28, 2008
Have you heard of Startup Weekend?
Here’s how the organizers describe it:
“Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.”
The organizers have recently started taking suggestions for where to hold the next events. Sounds like a fantastic opportunity to involve the Penn State/State College entrepreneurial community! State College has been suggested for their list - vote now to bring Startup Weekend to Happy Valley!
EDIT: According to Ray, current Startup Weekend leader, “We try to get about 80 or so people voting for the area and then start finding people in the area to help us coordinate the event.” We should be able to find at least 80 interested people, I think!
Go2Athlete on TV
January 2, 2008
Go2Athlete, one of the companies working out of the Lion Launch Pad, was featured on WTAJ News in December.
Here’s the clip on YouTube:
