w3w3.com

School Raising Building Fund... Ayurveda a full medical practice

Kourtney Nelson - Alandi Ayurveda, solutions to healthcare crisis
1366_ 3/21/13 - We've been discussing some of the issues with our healthcare system, one of which is the shortage of doctors, and ballooning healthcare costs. We are talking with Kourtney Nelson, Dean of Alandi Ayurveda, a school in Boulder. In a brief overview Kourtney tells us, Ayurveda, "is a holistic medicine developed in India 5000 years ago. It's a full medical practice. Ayurveda looks at the root cause of disease and imbalance in the body instead of just treating conditions. That's a different mind-set. Western medicine doesn't look at a disease until it's in a pathological state. Holistic medicine looks at it as you're coming out of balance, several stages before it comes into a pathological range. So we're looking for optimal wellness - vs. being below a pathological marker. We'll interpret blood tests differently and catch things at an earlier stage and help to work on them - or help to reverse or minimize the damage of a chronic condition. Alandi Ayurveda is the first school in the U.S. that offers a four year advanced level training. Once the national standards have been established for practice level and the national exams for practitioners ar established, the graduates of our program will qualify to be Ayurvedic Doctors - so they'll be the first Ayurvedic Doctors in the U.S. that have been trained here. It is really exciting, to be able to build our school and to increase the number of well trained Ayurvedic physicians out there. That way we can also expand our offering such as clinic in the community and some of the modalities. Currently we do have a clinic at our school and we offer a sliding scale. So we're able to see lots of different people from all ends of the economic spectrum - which is one way we can give back to the community. We'd like to expand that and give more and also be able to provide other classes to the community like cooking classes, simple kitchen herbs and other things people can use to take care of their health. Kourtney believes that western / allopathic medicine and alternative medicine, such as Ayurveda work well together and believes this will be the future of medicine for our country. It's a matter of having a bigger tool box and knowing when you need the hammer or the chisel - they both operate very differently. Having more access and more well trained Ayurvedic physicians, and other modalities, providing more preventative care options, will help decrease the shortage of doctors we're seeing now and also decrease the national cost of healthcare. The Alandi Ayurveda Gurukula is raising money to expand the school, looking for a new location and to establish a larger presence in the community.
RELATED LINKS: Alandi Ayurveda || Donate || Course Descriptions || PodCast Directory || KEYWORDS: Kourtney Nelson, Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Medicine, Doctors, Physicians, Practitioners, Holistic Medicine, India, Allopathic Medicine, Boulder, Doctors, Physicians, Practitioners, Healthcare, Alandi Ayurveda Gurukula, bytes=11796984
LISTEN TO: Kourtney Nelson, Dean, Alandi Ayurveda

Powered by Podbean.com

Crash Course: Bootstrapping

Bill Flagg, Bootstrapping, SFC Crash Course
1357_ 2/28/13 Bill Flagg is an angel partner in four boot-strapped, built-for-life, internet-based companies (PosterBrain, SnapEngage, StickerGiant, and SurveyGizmo). This community of businesses, The Felix Fun, delivers value to over 20,000 customers, with the help of 100 co-workers, generating $15 million in revenue per year, and growing. Prior to this Bill Flagg helped build RegOnline which he sold in 2007. As part of the Silicon Flatirons Center, Crash Course Series for Entrepreneurs, Bill spoke about his experience in bootstrapping his company. Bill tells us he started bootstrapping in high school and then college - he didn't know he could get someone to actually give him money to go out and start a business. So it was really out of his own naiveté that he became a bootstrapper. Bill was co-owner of RegOnline, which was sold to The Active Network in 2007 (he hopes to never sell another great company). In 2008, Bill started The Felix Fun to be an angel partner in helping other entrepreneurs grow great companies and thrive through organic growth. He's always had this thought in mind, 'is this extra dollar going to provide more than a dollar of value to my customers?' Because, if it wasn't going to return the value, then he knew he couldn't sustain the business. That really is the premise he uses in building and helping to build companies he works with over the last 20+ years. There are different strategies that he employs, one is, , using your capital in the most efficient way. When bootstrapping there isn't that much capital - that forces the question very acutely. The second is to really know who your core customers are. Bill says, "A lot of businesses..." Listen for more...
RELATED LINKS: Crash Course, Bootstrapping || The Felix Fun || Bill Flagg Blog || Software Channel || 2012 Software Chnl || KEYWORDS: Bill Flagg, Bootstrapping, The Felix Fun, RegOnline, PosterBrain, SnapEngage, StickerGiant, SurveyGizmo, World Champion, Olympian, SFC Crash Course, Brad Bernthal, > bytes=6946798
LISTEN TO: Bill Flagg, Bootstrapping, SFC Crash Course

Powered by Podbean.com

New knowledge generates new direction

Rick Duke & Kevin Smith, Venture Capital Money
1349_ 2/13/13 - Part 2: As the companies we work with learn, the models sometimes change and new knowledge generates new directions. What we've learned working on the CID4 model is that there are great technologies in the state of Colorado. There are incredible entrepreneurs trying to get those technologies out. The one thing we are short of, as many people are, is investment capital. If we had more investment capital to put to work through CID4 we would, but we are limited. So we branched out and created a class of client that we work with. Which would be a company that takes advantage of our consulting service, for no charge as well as some of the programs we run as opposed to getting direct capital investment that we talked about earlier. Those programs include office hour programs which we conduct at both Boulder and Fitzsimmons, where individuals can come in an have one-on-one consultations with subject matter experts. We also do a lot of work on business plan development and make introductions to potential financing sources. In our view, the model that CID4 started with trying to provide active hands-on management, now we're continuing to expand on that, but also not invest but providing guidance. Rick Duke is very active in helping to raise finances, but there's a lot of confusion about what venture capitalists are doing today and what they're not. Dr. Duke said, "Venture capital changed dramatically around 2008-09 and I think there was an expectation it was going to come back in a relatively short period of time. And I think it surprised all of us when we haven't seen the return of venture capital at the level that it was in the late 90s and early 2000 period. Most notably for Colorado, at least in the life sciences area, we don't see much in the way of that initial lead VC firm that we had and enjoyed during that early 2000 period. That has really forced us to go out to the coast to look for venture capital money for our client companies. Or, actually to look at some of the angel investors and angel investor groups that have been forming recently here in Colorado.." .Listen for much more...
RELATED LINKS: CID4 || CU Technology Transfer Office || CBSA || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || KEYWORDS: Rick Duke, Kevin Smith, CID4, Colorado Institute for Drug, Device and Diagnostic Development, Colorado Life Science Industry, Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant program, CU Technology Transfer Office, Proof of Concept > bytes=8753217
LISTEN TO: Richard Duke & Kevin Smith, CID4

Powered by Podbean.com

Supporting Colorado Life Science Industry

Rick Duke & Kevin Smith, CID4 Investing
Supporting the Colorado Life Science Industry...
1346_ 2/7/13 - Larry sat down to get an update from Kevin Smith, President & CEO and Richard (Rick) Duke, Ph.D., Founder & CSO - CID4 [Colorado Institute for Drug, Device and Diagnostic Development] a 501-C3 non-profit organization, launched back in 2009 with a mission to support the growth of the Colorado Life Science Industry both in terms of numbers of companies and numbers of jobs. Kevin explained, "Over the period of time since we started operations we work with companies, both to invest in and provide active management, to help guide them through the valley of death, when they're running out of cash but before they can actually access larger amounts of investment capital. So far we've invested in six companies - put $2 million to work. Those companies have created 65 direct jobs and they've attracted $20 million in investment capital into their businesses and used to grow their businesses here in Colorado." Rick said, "I think what sets us apart from other types of organizations like this is that we provide active management to our portfolio companies or project companies for that matter." A lot of that technology is early spin outs out of the University of Colorado or other research institutions where you've got a faculty member who is an entrepreneur and inventor, but doesn't necessarily have the experience in starting a company, or managing the operations, or developing a business plan, or product development plan. This is where CID4 often takes a fairly active role. Getting the company off the ground. Initiating operations and literally pitching the company to both angel investors and venture capital investors - with the goal of graduating them, raising a significant amount of capital to where they can now move out on their own." It's important to understand that CID4 is a not-for-profit company and what that means is the money that they invest in a portfolio company, if there is a return on that investment, rather than that traditionally being shared with the management of the venture capital firm, in fact, in our situation, that money goes back into technology development. This is unique from a number of... Listen for more...
RELATED LINKS: CID4 || CU Technology Transfer Office || CBSA || CU TTO Channel || TTO Blog || KEYWORDS: Rick Duke, Kevin Smith, CID4, Colorado Institute for Drug, Device and Diagnostic Development, Colorado Life Science Industry, Investments, CU Technology Transfer Office, bytes=5738060
LISTEN TO: Richard Duke & Kevin Smith
Colorado Institute for Drug, Device and Diagnostic Development

Powered by Podbean.com

Developing future opportunities

Venture capitalists looking into the newest
1340_ 1/23/13 - The line between the digital and physical worlds has blurred. We are talking with two of the young men who watch that line, understand and encourage development and bet their futures on what it all means. We're here at the Defrag / blur 2012 Conferences talking with Seth Levine and Ryan McIntyre from Foundry Group. The two conferences are really loaded with some high powered stuff everything from devices that enable [non-invasive] brain-computer interaction to 3D printers and gaming with helicopters that are controlled wirelessly and nearly intuitively, by wrist action. We're looking for an overview and we think Ryan and Seth can help us with that in terms of what the Foundry Group is looking at today. Ryan tells us they have a handful of investment themes they like to explore in the investing process. Here at Defrag and blur Foundry Group has had a number of their portfolio companies represented within those themes. Defrag came out of conversations around how technology was evolving in the enterprise and the inter-connection of computers, glue applications, protocol applications - these are some of the themes we talked about. And blur really came out of our interest in the evolution of human-computer interaction. So the notion that the ways we interact with computers and computer systems is undergoing a massive, seismic shift right now. So your keyboard and mouse, windows gooey - is behind us. You know, we have new touch screen interaction with our pads and our tablets, just the way we interact with and even what we recognize with computers is undergoing this seismic shift and changes. The exhibits and companies that are here really represent that. That's why we're here and deeply interested in what's going on in the world of human-computer interaction. Seth explained that last year's blur [2011] was exactly that. Ryan said, "That's the evolution of the core idea, that it's expanded the footprint. It’s the notion of how we interact with the computer in the real world. It really allows us to take the digital world and push it out into the physical world. That's a fascinating development that really expands the kind of things we can talk about in computer interaction and digital life and blur..." ...listen for more ...
RELATED LINKS: Foundry Group || Defrag 1 Site, 2 Shows 3 Days || Defrag/blur Info || Blur Conference Photos || Defrag Conference Photos || KEYWORDS: Ryan McIntyre, Seth Levine, Foundry Group, Venture Capitalist, DefragCon 2012, blur, Software, Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces, Glue Applications, Protocol Applications > bytes=3783265
LISTEN TO: Seth Levine & Ryan McIntyre, Foundry Group

Powered by Podbean.com

Mid October Denver Startup Week

These are non-profit organizations that lend money to small businesses
1290_ 10/3/12 - We are talking about Jump Start 2012, with Paul Washington, Executive Director in the Office of Economic Development for the City and County of Denver. This is part 2 of this discussion. Paul said, "- In mid October during Denver Startup Week, OED will publish their capital matrix where we have identified all of the investors that have done business or provided capital to Denver based businesses over the last five year period. This matrix has over 100 capital sources, which will be a great tool for the small business community. That's at the venture capital level, angel capital and mezzanine, senior debt financing, it spans the whole gambit of the balance sheet. Additionally Denver OED will identify what they term as their 'big league gazelles'. These are the highest billed companies in Denver that we feel deserve special attention and focus. One of the things we've been learning at the VC roundtable, as well as trips to Silicon Valley, is that it's important for a region to celebrate the successes that have been had for venture backed companies." Paul spoke of a business lending program, but there is one other initiative that they are focused on, to be unveiled in early 2013. This program is called the CDFI Initiative. CDFI = Community Development Financial Institution. These are non-profit organizations that lend money to small businesses, many times when banks cannot. And banks are finding it increasingly harder to lend to the small business community because of the various regulations that have come out since the down turn in 2008 at the federal level...Listen for more details...
RELATED LINKS: Denver OED || JumpStart 2012 Denver || Greenprint Denver || Entrepreneurs || KEYWORDS: Paul Washington, Denver, Office of Economic Development, Jump Start 2012, Business Retention, Small Business Advocacy, Business Recruitment, Sustainable Neighborhood Development, Business Lending, Workforce Development, Key Strategic Projects, bytes=6260927
LISTEN TO: Paul Washington, Executive Director, OED, City & County Denver

Powered by Podbean.com

The Boulder Thesis

Startup Communities and Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
1287_ 10/2/12 - What does a Startup Community Ecosystem look like? Ask our prolific author and Colorado based VC Brad Feld. Ok, you don't have to, we did. Now you can listen to him. Then you have to read this book. And after digesting all his great advice, one last step, or maybe the first step... "Do it!  Don't wait for permission. Don't wait to talk to someone. Do go to startup events, meetups, tech talks everything you can find and commit to that for at least six months."
      We began, that is w3w3® Media, 14+ years ago on terrestrial radio and one of our earliest interviews was Brad Feld, a relative newcomer to the Boulder area - already making a name for himself. We've watched him and his wife Amy build their home here, making this community - that's the entrepreneurial, technology (even the arts, the university) and VC communities better and stronger. He's been a champion for the community as a whole and now he's working on the young emerging entrepreneurs, his newest book, "Startup Communities - Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City".
      Brad said he's used a lot of the ideas that he's been involved in and participated in, in Boulder, since he moved here in the mid-90s, to form the framework for the book, which we called the "Boulder Thesis". They worked hard on defining on what any city in the world should do if they want to create a long-term, healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem. The key parts of the Boulder Thesis are these four components. The first is the startup community has to be lead by entrepreneurs. We separate the world into leaders and feeders. They're both important, but they're different. In the context of startup communities, the only people that can be effective leaders are the entrepreneurs. If you have the other people involved in the startup community, the feeders playing the role of leader, it doesn't work. So government can't be the leader, university can't be the leader, investors, venture capitalists, big business, those can't be the leaders. The Second is those entrepreneurs have to take a long-term view. Brad likes to say, "It's generational, at least 20 years. You can't start and build a sustainable startup community in two or three years." We're in a cycle where startups are exciting, a lot of people get involved in startups, and that's fine. But if you really want to build, in your city, a long term startup community, you have to be in it for a long time. The Third part of the Boulder Thesis is, you have to be inclusive of anyone who wants to engage at any level. This is leaders and feeders, individuals who want to get involved - it's anyone new, who moves to town, anyone who wants to be involved can and should be - Then you're way ahead of the game. The last part is you have to have a series of activities and events that have a regular cadence and rhythm to them. Things like TechStars an accelerator for 90 days, you're doing something that engages the entire entrepreneurial stack. The essence of it is this idea that... Well, listen to Brad he will tell you so much more - read his book and you'll learn so much more. Get started now!
RELATED LINKS: Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City || Brad Feld Blog || Brad Presenting, SFC Crash Course || Foundry Group || Do More Faster Book || Economy Builders || Venture Capital Channel || KEYWORDS: Brad Feld, Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City, Foundry Group, Venture Capital, Amy Feld, Boulder Thesis, bytes=8827196
LISTEN TO: Brad Feld, Author, Startup Communities, Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

Powered by Podbean.com

Psychiatry and Neurology have been struggling for years

Building a successful company by using the latest software
1285_ 9/27/12 - Today Larry is interviewing John Kelley, Chairman and CEO, of CereScan. This exciting company is working on ideas that will help tons of people in ways never dreamt of before. Psychiatry and Neurology have been struggling for years with the dilemma of how to accurately diagnose patients with chronic brain disorders. This is particularly challenging when there are multiple symptoms and potentially more than one causation in the patient's brain. CereScan is an exciting new business here in Denver that's in the business of helping patients and doctors sort out the problems that patients might be experiencing with brain disorders. We combine imaging and diagnostics and giving a treating doctor the best possible information in the world, to help their patients. CereScan is just now beginning to gain acceptance with medical professionals dealing with chronic and potentially debilitating disease. Today, CereScan is shedding new light on neurological conditions such as Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, and mild Traumatic Brain Injury. Larry asked, why would someone need a brain scan and diagnostic evaluation at CereScan? John said, "The brain is a very complicated organ and as we've seen with the NFL or the military, it's really hard to start figuring out what's really wrong in the brain. Whether it's children who experience a problem at birth or people in car accidents or people who are experiencing things like ADD and Bipolar ...Listen for much more...
RELATED LINKS: CereScan || CereScan Blog|| Brain Forensics || TiE Rockies || PodCast Directory || KEYWORDS: John Kelley, CereScan, Brain, Psychiatry, Neurology, Chronic Brain Disorders, Brain Imaging, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, Attention Deficit Disorder, ADD, Bipolar, NFL, Military, bytes=6068665
LISTEN TO: John Kelley, Chairman & CEO, CereScan

Powered by Podbean.com

City of Denver Business Plan Competition

Jump Start 2012 is Denver's economic development strategy
1283_ 9/25/12 - We first met at a very powerful meeting here in Denver, Colorado. We'll talk about that, and Jump Start 2012, with Paul Washington, Executive Director in the Office of Economic Development for the City and County of Denver. As an overview, Jump Start 2012 is the City of Denver's economic development strategy for this year. Based on seven pillars of economic development 1. Business Retention, 2. Small Business Advocacy, 3. Business Recruitment, 4. Sustainable Neighborhood Development, 5. Business Lending, 6. Workforce Development and 7. Key Strategic Projects. Now, in each one of these pillars, there are a number of key initiatives and numerous milestones that need to be achieved in order to meet the strategic initiative. As part of the Small Business Advocacy focus, Paul tells us, they want to make sure they are doing everything to bring attention to the small business community in Denver. The reason this is important is because small businesses represent a huge percentage of Denver's workforce and employment base. As an economic development agency OED wants to make sure they do everything they can to support small business and bring positive attention to our entrepreneurs and then that will lead to more attraction to capital which will result in more employment opportunities, insuring that economic development will remain strong in Denver. One of these initiatives is ...Listen for more…
RELATED LINKS: Denver OED || JumpStart 2012 Denver || Greenprint Denver || Entrepreneurs || KEYWORDS: Paul Washington, Denver, Office of Economic Development, Jump Start 2012, Business Retention, Small Business Advocacy, Business Recruitment, Sustainable Neighborhood Development, Business Lending, Workforce Development, Key Strategic Projects > bytes=7085142
LISTEN TO:Paul Washington, OED, City & County of Denver

Powered by Podbean.com

Northern Colorado SBDC Network, "The Launch"

Great news for entrepreneurs in northern Colorado
1268_ 8/29/12 - Great news for entrepreneurs in northern Colorado, specifically in the aero space sector - SBDC Network is partnering with a new organization, The Estes Institute; this group is doing some amazing things in Estes Park; the Colorado SBDC Network with enthusiastic business support from the likes of the Stanley Hotel and others. The Colorado SBDC is working diligently to assist any businesses that have been adversely affected by these tragic events. They are working with their Centers and many resource partners building a network of solutions to help get. In addition they put on special events and Kelly Manning, State Director, is here to talk about the Estes Institute. "So SBDC is partnering with this new organization, Estes Institute, and it's going to be hubbed out of Estes Park, and in particular out of the Stanley Hotel. The first event that we're putting on up there is called 'The Launch' - kind of a cool name considering that the event is for the aerospace and aviation industry. It's going to be an investor conference, a three day program, October 30th thru November 1st, at the Stanley Hotel. Keynote speaker is Norm Augustine retired chairman of Lockheed Martin, and he will be a huge draw for Colorado. There will be training programs, pitches, investors, to help Colorado small businesses and mid-size businesses who want to do business or get deals done in the aviation / aerospace industry. Attendees will be there obviously to look for investors, so we're inviting investors not only nationally, but internationally. It will be an 'invite only' event. So it's going to be a smaller event that businesses will actually apply to attend this conference. What we want to do is make sure we show these investors that we have solid companies that they'll want to do deals with. Aside from those deals...get the details...
Related Links: Colorado SBDC || SBDC Business Recovery Intake Form || In the News Archives || Stanley Hotel || Keywords: Kelly Manning, Colorado, SBDC, Small Business Development Center Network, Stanley Hotel, SBA, Estes Institute, Financial Support - bytes=4754184
LISTEN TO: Kelly Manning, State Director, SBDC Network

Powered by Podbean.com