Joe Tagliente, Gopinion

Tucker Crater, All Campus Delivery

Matt Boyes-Watson, an alumni of the Entrepreneurial Alliance

Shaquan Huntt, Support My Rise

Jonathan Kalin, The Better Announcements

Congrats to Joe and Gift!

and

Thank you to all our student entrepreneurs who worked hard all year long to make Saturday a success!!

To view their platforms and support their ideas: http://colby.launcht.com/

Photography by Jack Cohen

The Technology Growth Prize includes:

-Individual coaching from MTI to connect them to resources needed to bring their new product or service to market.

-Up to $2,500 in services from Maine Business Incubation System (MeBIS), or any of the University of Maine’s commercialization accelerator programs and technology laboratories.

- A two-hour coaching session to discuss future funding options with some or all of the following:

• Joe Migliaccio, MTI’s Director of Business Ventures (MTI offers grants and loans)
• Don Gooding, Maine Angels Vice Chairman and Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development Executive Director (Maine Angels offers equity investments, while MCED provides coaching to entrepreneurs including coaching on developing a pitch to equity investors)
• Investment professional from Small Enterprise Growth Fund (SEGF offers equity investments)
• Coaching from Blackstone Accelerates Growth

The Maine Technology Institute (MTI) is an industry-led, publicly-funded, nonprofit corporation that offers early-stage capital and commercialization assistance in the form of competitive grants, loans and equity investment for the research, development and application of technologies that create new products, processes and services, generating high-quality jobs across Maine.

The Maine Technology Institute was established by the Maine State Legislature in 1999. MTI, working with partners across the state, “shall encourage, promote, stimulate and support research and development activity leading to the commercialization of new products and services in the State’s technology-intensive industrial sectors to enhance the competitive position of those sectors and increase the likelihood that one or more of the sectors will support clusters of industrial activity and to create new jobs for Maine people.” MTI is one element of the State’s economic development strategy to contribute to the long-term development of a statewide research, development and product deployment infrastructure.

Every $1 of MTI funds received generates an additional $14 in non-MTI funding. MTI funded has been critical to their commercial success.

To date, MTI has funded nearly 2000 technology projects in Maine with an investment of $142 million.  Of those companies funded 37% have commercialized.  MTI’s current portfolio is $94 million.

Thank you for your generous support MTI!!

EA Application 2012

Submit to vyfeng@colby.edu by Oct. 28th.

The best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. See what they get right.

A few years back, I interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. I learned that the “best of the best” tend to share the following eight core beliefs.

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.

Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of “troops” to order about, demonize competitors as “enemies,” and treat customers as “territory” to be conquered.

Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers … and even competitors.

2. A company is a community, not a machine.

Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by “pulling levers” and “steering the ship.”

Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.

3. Management is service, not control.

Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they’re told. They’re hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the “wait and see what the boss says” mentality.

Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.

4. My employees are my peers, not my children.

Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can’t be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.

Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.

5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.

Average bosses see fear–of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege–as a crucial way to motivate people.  As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.

Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they’ll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization’s goals, truly enjoy what they’re doing and (of course) know they’ll share in the rewards.

6. Change equals growth, not pain.

Average bosses see change as both complicated and threatening, something to be endured only when a firm is in desperate shape. They subconsciously torpedo change … until it’s too late.

Extraordinary bosses see change as an inevitable part of life. While they don’t value change for its own sake, they know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.

7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.

Average bosses adhere to the old IT-centric view that technology is primarily a way to strengthen management control and increase predictability. They install centralized computer systems that dehumanize and antagonize employees.

Extraordinary bosses see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. They adapt their back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.

8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.

Average bosses buy into the notion that work is, at best, a necessary evil. They fully expect employees to resent having to work, and therefore tend to subconsciously define themselves as oppressors and their employees as victims. Everyone then behaves accordingly.

Extraordinary bosses see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.

Workshop: Business Law
Presenter(s): Jeffrey D. Bears, Esq.
Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, LLP
Date: Thursday, October 25
Time: 7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.
Location: Lovejoy 205

Description: Please join us for an in-person presentation by Colby alumnus, Jeff Bears, of Gunderson Dettmer’s Corporate & Intellectual Property Group in Boston. His presentation will cover broad business law issues that start-up companies must consider in forming and running a company. Topics to be discussed include the different types of entities that can be formed, where to form a company, raising capital, typical documents you sign and intellectual property considerations.

COLBY STUDENTS: >> Please RSVP in the COLBY CAREERLINK system (RSVPs are critical; if attendance it low, workshops will be cancelled.)

After an intense competition, this year’s winner is

Matt Boyes-Watson, the CEO of RentPrefs

For more information, please visit

http://www.rentprefs.com/

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/colbystudentin-business_2012-04-22.html