nuance intelligence

While I more fully organize my thoughts from the overwhelmsion of the energy of 1,200 buzzing brains at last week’s Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP), I came across my photos of the topics from what many people find to be the most interesting day of the conference, Day 3.

After two days of an over-stuffed, mind-numbing agenda full of heady topics and full-tilt hobnobbing, roughly a third of the group returns for a day with the agenda collectively created by the participants.  This process, called Open Space, was expertly facilitated by Jerry Michalski, and the session draws out the topics people want to discuss.  From tightly huddled six-person intensives to ranging 40-person explorations, the day exemplifies the open source spirit of the community, a yin to the bustling yang of the previous 48 hours.  The next three photos are images of the wall of topics that got discussed.  Since each person had already presented their idea by standing up on a stage and speaking to the topic for something like 45 seconds, you’ll just get a snapshot of each discussion.  For the full benefit, well, you had to be there.  Nonetheless, this should provide a peek into what’s on the mind of the most collaborative third of the thought leaders at the edge of impact investing.

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Tonight, the Angel Capital Summit finished the first of three review cycles for the largest annual angel investing conference between New York and San Francisco.  We’ll save the deeper analysis for later, but here is some aggregate data on the ~70 companies that reached the semi-finals, from the 190+ which applied to one of 30 partner groups: Continue reading

The Angel Capital Summit (ACS) is scheduled for November 17th, with last week’s call for presenters, and an application deadline on October 15th.  The ACS runs on a more-or-less traditional pitch format, with 40 organizations pitching in a day.  Dozens of partner organizations nominate businesses into the semi-final judging round (run on Business Catapult services) that identifies the 40 organizations who will pitch live at the event.

Setting aside the vagaries of what social entrpreneurism is and isn’t (we discuss that at the dedicated meetup), the ACS is encouraging both non-profit and for-profit mission-driven organizations to apply for the opportunity to present their enterprise at the event.

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In addition to the fact that Denver has now twice been identified as the major metro area best poised for economic recovery (tip to newbie tweeter Adam Rentschler), there’s some pretty exciting progressive economic activity happening up and down the Front Range.

Coming up on July 9th is the Responsible Economy Roundtable, hosted by Richard Eidlin and his new firm, Progress Group.   Our firms share a goal, which is to catalyze support for social entrepreneurs, which Eidlin describes as “triple bottom line (financial, social and environmental) businesses that use market-based strategies to advance a social mission, while generating revenue.”

“The Roundtable is dedicated to supporting the next generation of Denver-area social entrepreneurs from underserved communities, who have the talent and vision, but lack the necessary resources to scale their idea. The goal is to connect these innovative people and their good ideas to business leaders and civic organizations with resources. A particular objective is to deepen the involvement of the private sector.”

We’re not only totally aligned, but fully participating in the Roundtable, as well as the greater movement. This session fits into an ongoing discussion in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins and points in-between.  This fall and winter, the Local Capital Summit and Angel Capital Summit are both poised to maintain the momentum.  Both events are run by our long-term colleagues, and without stealing their thunder, we know you’ll learn about new tools, collaborations and opportunities at each event, which will build toward a more vibrant and sustainable economy in Colorado.

Care to play? Join us on July 9th.

The only thing we have to fear is…. doing nothing.

The yin of entrepreneurism is a steady dose of optimism.  Without it, we’d just take a 40-hour a week executive gig and slowly rot our brains.

This optimism is going to be in full force this week at the Angel Capital Summit.   As I wrote in my Colorado Biz column on angel investing this month,

Some businesses are responding [to the credit crisis] by getting small, reducing risk, laying off staff and hoarding cash. Others are anticipating a better future and ignoring today’s awful financial news in favor of the promise of tomorrow. Technophiles are promising productivity gains from new tools while “free-range” thinkers have gone completely off the reservation, and are designing new currency systems.

So it’s character-building time. A real entrepreneur has the courage and the drive to leap across the proverbial chasm and create a new fortune.  The shifts are happening to allow once-in-a-lifetime wealth creation as the old system dies and a new one is born.

Join us in Denver on Friday to learn how and where the money will flow, which businesses will thrive, and how to spot the previously unseen differentiating factors, a process we are calling evolutionary risk management.

It’s time to choose wheter you are going down with the economic Titanic or hop on a lifeboat and start rowing.

It has been an exciting few weeks, with many high-end networking events in Boulder around sustainability, investing and clean tech.  While the financial crisis remains in full swing, many investors, entrepreneurs and thought leaders are looking to the future and charting the course for the next phase in the Boulder / Colorado / U.S. economy.

Trustworthy sources are telling us about multiple 8- and 9-figure funds being raised for clean tech and sustainability investing, as well as rumors of keen interest in that space from private equity.  The rumor of Kleiner Perkins posting a one-man team at NREL to help spin out investable clean tech companies is confirmed as well — we met him this week.  Vague inquiries are coming from as far away as Tel Aviv and Sau Paolo.

Or, as my partner Kevin Johansen is saying these days, “recession my ass!”

Leading Boulder Web2.0 companies are even hosting a job fair to bring more technical talent into town, although there are also rumors of layoffs at weaker firms.  It’s going to be a mixed bag in that space, and the wheat will quickly be separated from the chaff.

If you want to escape the doom and gloom for a day, and join a more prosperous and optimistic future, look no further than the Angel Capital Summit, November 21, in Denver. Highlights include:

• Anita Burke’s presentation on how to run a business in a world of Peak Everything (including capital, it seems).
• 40 of Colorado’s strongest entrepreneurial growth-oriented businesses presenting investment opportunities.
• A TOWN HALL discussion called Disrupting the Recession, where a diverse group of thought leaders will talk directly with conference attendees about how we can all come together to build an Entrepreneurial Renaissance in Colorado.
• Surprise visit from one of Colorado’s favorite political leaders.

I’d love to know what you think about all this.  The TOWN HALL is still evolving, and your input will help make it better.

Please join us on November 21st in downtown Denver for this community gathering during a unique moment in history.

I wrote last week about transcending (and including) the current financial crisis.  The inspiration for that piece was partially grounded in a column I had written for Colorado Biz magaine, which runs today.  Assuming (as I did in the blog post) that the world continues to operate after the bailout and election, some US economic sectors will be stronger than others.  And all signs indicate — and even the New York Times, in a relative comparison of city-by-city economies (pw req’d) corroborate — that a strong entrepreneurial trend is sweeping Colorado.

The trend is based on what many entreprenurial thought leaders — from investors to serial entrepreneurs to the lawyers and PR pros who live through the cycles — recognize as sectors that will thrive, even during a predictably rough national economic period.  These sectors are technology (and in Colorado, especially IT and web 2.0), energy and other CleanTech / GreenTech / Sustainability companies.

In the CoBiz column, I propose a few potential results of the current Wall St. banking crisis:

Many investing “truths” have forever changed. The question is: which ones? We suspect — and a quick query of investors this week has quasi-confirmed — that core investing principles are intact, but the situational realities as to who will be an interesting funding candidate are likely to be quite different.

Intuition suggests that fewer wealthy people will be making investments, but with the investment banking sector suddenly and irreversibly (lets’ check that assumption in a few months) extinct, more money and talent could focus on growth sectors like green tech.

It’s also possible that money will re-localize. Investors will want their money to be a bit more tied to tangible nearby investments as a backlash to the ideological bankruptcy of radical derivatives. Further, as investors take a deep stock of their values, the evolution toward a more holistic investing approach will amplify.

But that’s all speculation.  What’s real is that on November 21st, forty of the strongest Colorado start-up businesses will present to hundreds of venture capitalists and angel investors at the annual Angel Capital Summit.  And at the end of that day, we will present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to “not only learn about but participate in the co-creation the future of our regional business ecology.”

With Anita Burke telling us all how to measure sustainable business practices at lunch, and the as-yet-uncomfirmed special appearance by one of Colorado’s favorite political leaders open the day, it promises to be an exciting “first day of the rest of your career” type of experience.

Hope to see you there.

Over at the Business Catapult blog, we just wrote about the detailed and confusing report from the Small Business Administration (SBA) on angel investing.

One conclusion is that there are at least two major categories of angels — professional, accredited angels who number roughly 5,000 nationally and made just shy of 1,000 investments in 2006; and casual, unaccredited angels, who may number as many as 600,000 nationally, and could account for $20 billion injected into the US entrepreneurial economy.

In short, nobody does a good job tracking this data, because the activity is so distributed.  And while contradictions continue, we have yet to see any more comprehensive report.

Care to learn more?

At Business Catapult, we’re powering the Angel Capital Summit.

As I wrote at the Business Catapult Blog,

As supporting partners, Business Catapult provides our entire suite of tools, and provide many new features to what would otherwise be a typical investor fair.  For instance:

• Investors can review deals prior to the conference, and participate in a collective intelligence process that identifies the best companies to present.
• Entrepreneurs use our Benchmark Survey as one component of the nomination process, and are able to refine their plan, based on the results of the business logic we build into the Benchmark Report.
• Trusted Advisors can contribute to the deal screening process, and gain an insight into the strongest new companies in the region.
• Organizations, including Business Schools, Small Business Development Center (SBDCs), incubators, angel investor networks and entrepreneurial meetup groups can each organize a group on the system, nominate their entrepreneurs and, after the conference is open, see the entirety of the pool of entrepreneurs who nominated themselves.

Entrepreneurs can apply now.  Investors can learn about unusual benefits.  Coloradans can look forward to what we’re calling an Entrepreneurial Renaissance, for as usual, the independently minded (seen the polls?) folks in the Centennial State are thinking differently.