EnterpriseStart program (week 1)

Posted by Ronan on Oct 25, 2008 in startup, technology | 2 comments

Over the next 6 weeks I’m going to blog my experience of the EnterpriseSTART programme run in LIT. Well week one is over and here is a brief summary.

Donncha Hughes introduced the program, the EAC and what we should expect to have at the end of the course. After the introduction we did a short exercise – explain your idea to your neighbour and get them to share it with the group. This really makes you focus on what you have and how to communicate it effectively .. i.e. it ensures you have a good pitch that other people can understand in 30 seconds.

Jerry Moloney from Enterprise Ireland gave a talk about EI in the Shannon area and how it funds entrepreneurs – ok – so I’ve seen/heard this presentation in various forms and with having quite a bit of interaction with EI in the past year there wasn’t much new material here (for me anyway). For others I’d say it was a valuable presentation.

Our TTO kept asking us – who is your team? who would you like to have onboard? At first we thought we could do this by ourselves and dismissed the question on occasions. Over time it became clear we couldn’t do it alone and so we started to identify our weakness and find someone to fix it. Graham Royce gave a good presentation on the entrepreneur and re-iterated this sentiment with a really good example. Sir Fredrick Henry Royce. Royce was an engineer with an idea to make cars (better). He teamed up with Rolls, a guy with loads of money, and Claremont who was the business brains behind what became the luxury car manufacturer Rolls-Royce. Royce couldn’t have done it alone – he needed people around him to make his idea into a commercial one. It made me think – does the combination of money, business and engineers make a winning team ? I hope so.

The presentations from Gramham on the competitive advantage and opportunity really struck a chord, especially after a conversation I had with Shane from Mobanode (a cool company based in the Enterprise Acceleration Center) this week (more on that conversation at a later stage). Opportunity is everywhere and comes in many different guises – you just have to look and grasp it. If you take an opportunity and your fortunate to get your company up and running – maintaining advantage is a never ending process – one of many processes that entrepreneurs must do concurrently.
The day was wrapped up with an interesting case study presented by Brian Kelly from Calibration Technology.

To be honest, I was a little unsure what to expect, who I’d meet and what I’d take away from the EnterpriseStart program and yes it’s only week one but I’m looking forward to week2. The program has even turned up a couple of interesting people that could utilise/complement our technology.