Showing posts with label MELISSA HARRIS. Show all posts

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Semester 'abroad' at 1871 could keep tech talent in Illinois

During an appearance with Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday, 1871 Chief Executive Howard Tullman floated one of the best solutions I've heard in a long time for stemming the exodus of technology talent to the coasts.

Tullman wants to create a semester "abroad" program in Chicago for junior year engineering and computer science students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"People down there don't get what's going on in Chicago right now," Tullman said.
And why is it so important that they do?

The University of Illinois has one of the finest computer science and computer engineering programs in the country.

Alumni from that school co-founded YouTube (Steve Chen), PayPal (Max Levchin), Netscape (Marc Andreessen) and Yelp (Jeremy Stoppelman).

Andreessen deserves special mention. With Eric Bina, he created the first easy-to-use web browser, called Mosaic, at the university.

Then Andreessen moved to Silicon Valley — as did everyone else except Bina, who lives in Singapore.

Tullman proposes that Chicago recruit these innovators early by transferring their classes for a semester to 1871, the tech-focused co-working center in the Merchandise Mart. There, in addition to taking courses from U. of I. professors, they would be exposed to peers and funders, and receive additional mentoring.

"It's going to take a lot of work," Tullman said. "Dealing with faculty and changing the curriculum, it's roughly the same as moving a cemetery."

I called the dean of the engineering school.

"I'm aware that conversations have taken place, but I have not heard directly from 1871 about this idea," Andreas Cangellaris said. "But this is an exciting idea. Many of the students would be intrigued enough to consider it. ... And I think most of our faculty members would want to take advantage of this presence in Chicago to pursue their own interests.

Faculty such as Ranjitha Kumar, who has her Ph.D. from Stanford. She is the chief scientist of Apropose, a startup that recently announced nearly $1.9 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates and Andreessen Horowitz, co-founded by — you guessed it — Marc Andreessen.

They are two of the best venture capital firms in the country.

Kumar, 28, is new to U. of I., having arrived a month ago. She deferred her appointment for a year to launch Apropose with fellow Stanford Ph.D. student Arvind Satyanarayan, Stanford undergraduate Maxine Lim and Stanford Ph.D. Jerry Talton, Apropose's CEO.

Where did Talton get his undergraduate and master's degrees? U. of I.

And where is Apropose based? Mountain View, Calif.

Apropose's product is in development. Kumar says it will help people use data to design more-effective websites.

She had never heard of 1871. She Googled it while we were on the phone.

So what's it going to take to build connections between U. of I. and Chicago?

"What it takes is a commitment from all of the partners to accommodate the added costs," Cangellaris said. "As you know, we are a public institution. Our budget is constrained in ways that a private institution does not need to worry about. ... But I see no reason why we can't come together and figure out how to make this work out."

I noticed that U. of I.'s engineering school does not have a donor's name attached to it.
So for those with the means and will to make this program happen, please insert your name in the blank space:

The _____ College of Engineering. Now how does that sound?

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Melissa Harris Tribune 1871 to launch incubator for female entrepreneurs

1871 to launch incubator for female entrepreneurs

Startups to be funded by Google, Motorola Mobility and Lefkofsky Family Foundation

1871 is launhcing an incubator for female entrepreneurs. (James Janega/Chicago Tribune / March 11, 2014)

Melissa Harris Chicago Confidential

March 11, 2014

1871, the city's leading tech startup center, will announce Tuesday a dedicated incubator for female entrepreneurs, funded by Google, Motorola Mobility and the Lefkofsky Family Foundation, which is run by Liz Lefkofsky, the wife of Groupon's chief executive.

Women face hurdles in the tech startup world, in which they are underrepresented among leaders and often feel marginalized by a male-dominated culture. There have been more discussions in the entrepreneur community in Chicago and nationwide about recruiting and nurturing female talent. The 1871 incubator would be the first of its kind in Chicago.

Howard Tullman, 1871's chief executive, did not disclose the size of the corporate and philanthropic donations. Instead, he said this and other "verticals" to come at 1871 will operate on $500,000 to $1 million in annual funding. Future incubators will be dedicated to financial technology, education technology, hospitality and product/gadget designers, he said in an interview.

"What we have found at 1871 is that if we embrace specific verticals and natural areas of growth, we can help our companies achieve much more than they might have on their own," Tullman said in a news release. "Critical mass creates an environment of support, shared experiences and cross-pollination that significantly accelerates the development of powerful ideas."

The full complement of resources that will be directed at these 10 to 15 women-owned startups, which has been dubbed 1871 FEMtech, has not been spelled out. But Tullman said it will involve a dedicated space within 1871, a full-time staffer/mentor, midday programming to suit mothers' schedules and "something around child care or day care."

Tullman expects that 1871 will begin accepting applications for the program in June, and it will start in the fall. 1871 hopes the program will draw participants from around the world.

"This initiative is critical to the success of Chicago's tech infrastructure," said Genevieve Thiers, founder of SitterCity. "We have enormous untapped female talent in this market and nationwide that could be tapped with some simple changes in the way that we support and train our female entrepreneurs. I look forward to seeing that talent unleashed."

The incubator will be part of Google's #40Forward initiative, which argues that women-led tech companies achieve higher returns and, when venture-backed, bring in more revenue than male-led peers. Yet women are still underrepresented in the tech community and receive only 4 percent of venture capital, according to Google's website.

"The current accelerator models are not attracting and advancing enough women-led startups, and 1871's new program will help reach these women," Bridgette Beam, global manager of Google for Entrepreneurs, said in a news release.

While any effort to improve those numbers is laudable, Google is committing only $1 million to these 40 organizations, while the company was worth more than $407 billion as of Monday. Still, Tullman argued that these startups will be able to tap into "Google's marketing arm as well," providing a soft benefit and public exposure that no budget can capture.

"There are accelerators, incubators and co-working spaces," Tullman said. "An accelerator takes an economic interest in its member businesses. We will not be doing that. On the other hand, we'll be supplying far more support and resources to these groups in the way of special tutoring and mentoring than any traditional sort of co-working space."

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Harris: 'Ones to Watch' in Chicago business in 2014

Tribune looks at the movers and shakers who will be on the scene in the year ahead

Howard Tullman

CEO, 1871

Why we're watching: 1871 is the city's most prominent co-working space for technology entrepreneurs. Its mission is to offer services — affordable rent, access to industry leaders and potential funders — that accelerate the growth of businesses.

Ultimately, these companies are supposed to outgrow the co-working space and graduate. And in 1871's first 19 months, 26 companies have graduated and about 240 remain.

Tullman, 1871's new chief executive, declared late last year that its graduation rate was not good enough, and that it would be "up or out" for the companies at the Merchandise Mart-based site.

"We're not just a hobby," Tullman said in November. "We're not a place for people to go to feel good about attempting to be an entrepreneur. We're about people committed to building businesses."

It will be fascinating to watch how Tullman goes about weeding and sharpening the operations of 1871 and its resident businesses.

"There are over 900 business incubators nationwide, and the typical life span of a company in a business incubator is two years," said Brian Langham, an audit partner at Plante Moran who specializes in advising startups. "So you look at 1871, it's clearly approaching that 2-year life cycle. So Howard has … to address how to get these companies out of the incubation stage, which isn't supposed to happen in perpetuity."

Tullman officially started in his post Monday. The next day, he announced the hiring of a chief operating officer, Tom Alexander, a communications aide to Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Before that, Tullman traveled to Israel, where he visited other incubators to lay the groundwork "for some kind of exchange" program for entrepreneurs, he said.

"They have similar issues," Tullman said of a young incubator he visited in Tel Aviv. "They have a rule about how long a company can stay and how much of a commitment they have to make. And there's a lot of sentiment that if I don't sort of control the population in a different way, it will affect the outcome and energy of the place."

Tullman doesn't yet have an office in 1871, and he needs to hire financial and information technology staff. This wasn't done before, Tullman said, because 1871's founders were "so unsure whether it was going to even be viable" that they launched with the leanest staff possible.

Viability is now assured. What remains to be seen is how Tullman maneuvers 1871 through its adolescence.

Melissa Harris can be reached at mmharris@tribune.com or 312-222-4582. Twitter @chiconfidential. E-newsletter at tinyletter.com/MelissaHarris.

Thursday, September 05, 2013

TRIBUNE'S MELISSA HARRIS WRITES ABOUT VEHCON

Mileage tracker

Serial Chicago entrepreneur Howard Tullman this week joined the board of Atlanta-based startup Vehcon, which makes an app that helps track a vehicle odometer reading and then shares that data with insurance companies and repair shops — with the driver's permission.

"The more you know about the mileage, the more you know about the risks of insuring that car," Tullman said. Insurance companies "are all trying this solution where they give you this device and it measures your usage for 30 days, and then we give you a discount if you're a safe driver."

Vehcon CEO Fred Blumer "thinks that'll never be adopted in bulk," Tullman said. "So they've built an iPhone application that permits you to just take an authenticated photograph of your odometer reading and send it in once a month."

Motorists on usage-based insurance plans would then get discounts on their premiums for driving less, as well as reminders and digital coupons for regular maintenance, such as oil changes.

Tullman also is thinking far into the future, pointing out that if electric cars take off, revenue from gas taxes would plummet. And those dollars pay for road improvements.

"One of the things is going be: Could Illinois be one of the first states that starts tracking usage of the vehicles, rather than taxing based on the amount of gas you buy?" Tullman asked. "It's the only way we're going to transfer to cars that are more efficient without the state losing all of this revenue."