Founder Corps News

Hi team. I am sending this message out via email and also through our online community. Some of you have not registered on the site, so I will keep using email for the moment. Please continue to migrate over to the new platform. If you have lost the instructions for how to register, please email me and we will take care of it.

Now onto the news:

1. Our next get together is APRIL 26TH at 6:30pm at Deloitte’s Tech Venture Center. DP Venkatesh is taking the lead on organizing the program, which will center on Facebook as a platform. Our goal is to have the event unfold as our Google event did, with a panel discussion and then open it up for a broader discussion. I will circulate an Evite for this event in the next few days, but please make a note of the date.

2. The next event that we are supporting is being led on our side by Aneesh Chopra. Aneesh is looking for a few FC members to accompany him to this event and be mentors. Here’s what Aneesh has to say: “Bob Summers, a terrific entrepreneur from Blacksburg, VA has joined with the RBTC (tech council) to organize a “call to action” event featuring challenges and prizes for developers building the apps economy in healthcare, as we transition from a fee-for-service delivery model to one incentivized to deliver improved quality at lower cost. Learn more here - http://www.health2con.com/devchallenge/hokie-health-code-a-thon/. Thanks to the generosity of some of the leading tech firms in the country (Intel, Epic, the Advisory Board, 1901 Group, CIT and others), the event is free of charge for anyone to attend, and (indeed) will feature some of the hottest health tech firms in the Commonwealth. There will be thousands of dollars awarded in prize money for winning apps built over the 2-day event! I’ve seen the results first-hand – a previous code-a-thon in Georgetown was “won” by the MAYA Food Oasis team, and now they are under contract with a major pharmaceutical firm to bring their innovation to market! http://www.maya.com/the-feed/maya-design-wins-health-20-dc-code-a-thon.” If you are interested in helping out on this event, please contact Aneesh directly. His email is: apchopra@gmail.com.

3. Foster.ly continues to grow and develop. A number of us provided mentors for their last study hall, and it went really well. On May 12th Foster.ly is having another study hall, and they will be looking for us to provide some mentors again. Please let me know if you would like to help out on this. Additionally, that evening Foster.ly is having a party to raise money to support its continued infrastructure development, and the featured band at the event is Two Car Living Room (otherwise known as my and Jenn Trax’s band). I will send along the evite link for this event shortly.

4. Growing the organization. I am commencing interviews with candidates for the position of Program Manager, to assist me in managing FounderCorps and serving our mission. The big things I am looking for are someone who can work on a part time basis and help with the following:
a. Manage our events.
b. Create programming.
c. Manage our web prescience and media.
d. Manage finances.
e. Help me figure out how to grow the organization. Experience with grant writing and not for profit management would be helpful.
Any thoughts on candidates are welcome.

As always, if you have any questions please contact me. We’ll see you soon,

Jonathan

 
M&A Survey evaluates technology acquisitions from 2006 through 2011 to provide guidance for accelerating GWR’s economic development.
 
McLean, Virginia February 8, 2012 -- In support of the recently launched StartupVirginia and StartupDC initiatives to promote and accelerate regional entrepreneurship, FounderCorps, a not-for-profit organization promoting entrepreneurial and economic development in the Greater Washington Region, today released “Merger and Acquisition Trends in Silicon Valley and the Greater Washington Region: 2006 to 2011.” The report evaluates each M&A transaction occurring during the referenced period and identifies its relevant industry and location of acquirer (among other data), in order to identify correlations in activity that could guide business formation activities going forward.
 
The report was prepared by Jonathan Aberman, Co-Chair of StartupVirginia, President of FounderCorps, and Managing Director of Amplifier Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund operating in the GWR. The report provides significant insight into the frequency of exit transactions for each region, and uses the data to make a number of relevant conclusions: (i) where there is a high concentration of intra market transactions startup formation and growth is accelerated, (ii) Silicon Valley’s technology M&A market is driven by a relatively narrow range of industrial segments, while the GWR’s M&A market is significantly more diverse and (iii) the GWR M&A market has been surprisingly robust, even in comparison to Silicon Valley.
 
“With the GWR’s concentration of excellence in many market segments that create and use technology on a regular basis and a local industrial base that has many well capitalized companies that will soon need new sources of revenue, our entrepreneurs and business community should be linking up to take advantage of what already exists in the region,” notes Jonathan Aberman, President of FounderCorps. “By building technology startups that are desirable to the GWR’s local established companies, the GWR could rapidly find itself being rewarded for the one market behavior that really drives Silicon Valley: making companies that the community around them wants to own.”
 
“This report is a call to action to the CEOs of our largest companies in media, software, telecom, finance and our many other established market sectors” added Aberman. “We should be building emerging businesses that solve the technology problems of our business community. The way to grow our regional economic base is to accelerate the prevalence of intra market business exits.”
 
To request a copy of “Merger and Acquisition Trends Silicon Valley and the Greater Washington Region: 2006 to 2011” email info@startupva.org.
 
About FounderCorps
 
FounderCorps is an not- for- profit organization that is managed by experienced technology entrepreneurs for the benefit of entrepreneurs in Washington, DC, Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland. Its members are experienced technology entrepreneurs who have started, managed or exited successful technology businesses. FounderCorps promotes technology entrepreneurial development by actively partnering with existing organizations to create a supportive infrastructure for technology entrepreneurship. FounderCorps’ core mission is to promote a broader and deeper technology entrepreneurship community in the Greater Washington Region.
 
About the Startup America Partnership
 
The Startup America Partnership was launched at the White House in response to President Obama’s call to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. The Partnership is bringing together an alliance of major corporations, funders, service providers, mentors and advisors working to dramatically increase the prevalence and success of high-growth enterprises in the U.S. AOL co-founder Steve Case chairs the Partnership and the Kauffman and Case Foundations are founding partners. American Express OPEN, Dell Inc., Intuit Inc., and Microsoft are sponsors. The Partnership will identify, measure and report on the effectiveness of cross-sector collaboration in support of entrepreneurial ventures and its effect on job creation and growth. For more information on the Partnership and to register as a Startup America Firm today, visit www.startupamericapartnership.org and follow at www.twitter.com/startupamerica andwww.facebook.com/startupamerica
 
Contact: Jonathan Aberman, Co-Chair
 
StartupVirginia
 
703 260 1700
 
info@startupva.org 

 
In February 2011, a group of Entrepreneurs in the DC Area came together to start the FounderCorps.
FounderCorps is an organization that is managed by experienced technology entrepreneurs for the benefit of entrepreneurs in Washington, DC, Northern Virginia and suburban Maryland. Our members are experienced technology entrepreneurs who have started, managed or exited successful technology businesses. We share a common purpose – to promote a broader and deeper technology entrepreneurial community in our region.