Turning the Light On Entrepreneur Week: The Speakers Continued

As if yesterday’s list didn’t suffice, here are three more speakers who have helped define the faces of their businesses, their cities, and even their countries. Now, they gather in New Orleans because they, like many others, have been inspired by the city’s enormous potential as a new hub of innovation and creativity.


Speech by The Honorable Mitch Landrieu, Tuesday, March 23
The newest Mayor of New Orleans, Landrieu recently made history and further added to the city’s momentum when he was elected with 66% of the citywide vote, an unprecedented result for a typically hotly contested seat. Already, he has taken direct action to promote New Orleans’s entrepreneurial movement, forming a jobs task force that includes the best and brightest of New Orleans and putting an emphasized focus on economic development in the region. Hearing Landrieu speak will be a special opportunity to observe the great potential for New Orleans as an innovative business hub.


Keynote Speech by Jim Coulter, Friday, March 26
Jim Coulter is a Founding Partner of TPG Capital, Inc. TPG Capital, Inc. (also known as the Texas Pacific Group) is a leading global private equity firm with 15 offices around the world and assets under management in excess of $50 billion. Coulter has served on numerous corporate and charitable Boards including the Stanford Board of Trustees, Lenovo Group International, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, IMS Health, J Crew Group, Inc., Neiman Marcus Group and Common Sense Media. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The keynote will kick off the Coulter Challenge, a day of intense action that will mark the culmination of New Orleans Entrepreneur Week. Even if you can’t make it, we will be streaming this live, so you can visit noew.org to tune in!


Speech by General Wesley Clark, Friday, March 26
General Clark serves as Chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic consulting firm; Chairman of investment bank Rodman & Renshaw; Co-Chairman of Growth Energy; senior fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations; Director of International Crisis Group; Chairman of City Year Little Rock; as well as numerous corporate boards. General Clark has authored three books and serves as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative's Energy & Climate Change Advisory Board, and ACORE's Advisory Board. He is a retired four-star general who graduated first in his class at West Point and was a Rhodes Scholar. His impressive military accomplishments, which include serving in Vietnam and saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing, have earned him numerous prestigious accolades.


Also, as we move yet another day nearer to the start of Entrepreneur Week, here’s a great article from BusinessWeek discussing the entrepreneurial fervor that is gripping business school campuses nationwide.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Soars on B-School Campuses

New Orleans is adeptly crafting its niche as a city that offers a collaborative, stimulating environment conducive to entrepreneurial action. Now, with the help of an ever-growing team of inspired, intelligent, and innovative students and business leaders, we’ll ensure that the success stories continue to accumulate and the nation sees the revitalized, re-energized New Orleans.

Tomorrow we continue our series with the Entrepreneur Week sponsors, without whose generous assistance this event would not be possible!

IT’S ON IN NOLA!

Turning the Light On Entrepreneur Week: The Speakers

As the best and brightest gather to foster an inventive entrepreneurial culture in New Orleans, they will be encouraged by the words of some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders. These are men and women whose innovation, innate knack for spotting and seizing opportunities, and ability to lead—regardless of setting, from billion-dollar businesses to pioneering policy institutes and professional sports franchises—have propelled them to the forefront of their respective fields. They imbue us with a sense of action as well as a desire to create lasting impact through the translation of great ideas to an even better reality. And luckily, all share a common interest in seeing the “New” New Orleans thrive, setting an example for the rest of the nation to follow. All week, their voices will be heard. Their words will represent the principles that form the foundations of Entrepreneur Week. Most importantly, their ideas will inspire us to action.

Welcome Speech by Walter Isaacson, Monday, March 22
Walter Isaacson is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute based in Washington, D.C. Through its renown seminars, conferences, and leadership development initiatives, the Aspen Institute seeks to promote enlightened leadership, as well as the pursuit of common ground and deeper understanding. In addition to being the author of several critically acclaimed biographies, Isaacson has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of Time Magazine.


Speech by Dr. Scott Cowen, Monday, March 22
The Idea Village welcomes Dr. Scott S. Cowen, Tulane University's 14th President, to round out the speeches on Monday. Dr. Cowen has been largely responsible for reviving and redefining New Orleans at the educational level, turning Katrina into a catalyst for innovative renewal. He spearheaded one of the largest university fundraising efforts in the history of Louisiana and has guided the implementation of innovative academic and research program initiatives at Tulane University, as well as an increased focus on community outreach. He also holds joint appointments as the Seymour S Goodman Memorial Professor of Business in Tulane's A.B. Freeman School of Business and Professor of Economics in the School of Liberal Arts.


Speech by Mark Cuban, Monday, March 22
Mark Cuban is an American entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. The founder and owner of several extremely successful businesses, Cuban embodies the entrepreneurial vitality that is now burgeoning in New Orleans.


Check back in tomorrow as we continue with the speaker series! And remember:

IT’S ON IN NOLA!

Turning the Light On

You’re ready. We’re ready. The energy is flowing; the excitement is brewing; the sun has made a dashing appearance, marking the start of a beautiful New Orleans spring. As we all dreamily await this year’s highly-anticipated Entrepreneur Week—which will bring together some of the nation’s best and brightest entrepreneurs, students, and business leaders to make a lasting impact and celebrate entrepreneurship, New Orleans -style—we’ve decided to provide you with a blog series that will highlight what it’s all about.

Every day over the week leading up to NOEW, we’ll present you with some exciting aspect of this year’s event, from the speakers and events to the sponsors and all of the great experiences you’ll have in New Orleans. So for those whose nerves have begun to fray out of anticipation, you can rest easy and imagine you’re already here. Stay tuned and, as always, remember:

IT’S ON IN NOLA!

And the Countdown Begins!

Friday marked the official unveiling of New Orleans Entrepreneur Week 2010. And, in case you missed it, what a start it was!

While local entrepreneurs Bayou Brew, Big Easy Blends, and Jack and Jake's served up their respective specialties—delicious iced teas and margaritas-in-a-pouch complemented the office’s wide selection of fresh fruit and vegetables—many of the entrepreneurs and business leaders driving New Orleans’s innovative economic resurgence united to celebrate the introduction of this year’s event, which promises to help define New Orleans as one of the most progressive and promising business hubs in the nation. Successful New Orleans Entrepreneurial Challenge alumni, such as Naked Pizza (who are now taking their product national with the support of Mark Cuban!), joined other innovators and local business leaders for the press conference, where the participating organizations and week’s activities were announced.

Also, as many of the nation’s most innovative entrepreneurial minds prepare to gather in New Orleans for Entrepreneur Week 2010, here’s an interesting article that will help explain why they should be—and why they are—coming.
http://www.fastcompany.com/article/why-you-should-start-a-company-in-new-orleans-0

It's Official: New Orleans Entrepreneur Week 2010

Over the past weeks, the Idea Village team has been busily grinding away at the immense task of ensuring that this year’s New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, “The Jazz Fest of Entrepreneurship,” continues to build on the momentum provided by New Orleans’s recent historic achievements. An indescribable energy has taken hold of the office, as everyone works together to ensure that this year’s NOEW dazzles even more than events in years past. Already, the nation’s brightest and most entrepreneurial minds have committed their time and minds to tackle the up-and-coming Entrepreneur Class of 2010’s most pressing challenges. From March 20-27, they will congregate in New Orleans to provide strategic resources to start-ups, celebrate the city’s progress, and further establish New Orleans as a nationally significant center for innovation and entrepreneurship.



Join us on Friday, March 5, at 3pm, at the Idea Village Office in the IP, at 515 Girod Street, for the official unveiling of this year’s event, during which the participants and the line-up of events will be announced.

And don’t forget: IT’S ON IN NOLA!

Peer Investment Model for Entrepreneurs Tested in New Orleans, San Francisco and Mumbai

As the Saints come marching in from their historic victory, and with Mardi Gras and New Orleans Entrepreneur Week just around the corner, the reasons to celebrate in New Orleans are piling up! Amidst this festive frenzy, The Idea Village is participating in history of its own. First Light Ventures is partnering with The Idea Village and its Entrepreneur Challenge Class of 2010 to launch Village Capital, a novel idea in the venture financing field that offers a new way to go about financing early-stage entrepreneurs.

The Idea Village -- which shares the role of testing the concept with other incubators in Mumbai, San Francisco, and Denver -- is an opportune launching environment because it provides a tightly-knit community of entrepreneurs in a city that attracting national attention as a focal point for bright young minds and as a catalyst for new ideas.

Instead of distributing the money directly to individual entrepreneurs, Village Capital provides a peer-selected investment and line-of-credit fund, which allows the entrepreneurs to organize the use of the funds amongst themselves. Together, the group of entrepreneurs decides both how to allocate the funds and who they should go to.

The concept behind Village Capital is grounded in the premise that the most informed, effective, and efficient distribution could come from the entrepreneurs themselves. After all, not only do they share knowledge about each other's businesses, but they also understand the intricacies of running a budding business and can thus more accurately analyze both the needs and the potential of their peers. In addition to gaining access to additional funding, Village Capital forces the entrepreneurs to sit on the other side of the investor's table, examining the proposals of their peers and thus furthering their own understanding of how to succeed in securing investment.

Watch First Light's Investment Analyst, Ross Baird, discuss the concept behind Village Capital:

Interviewing the Investors Behind Village Capital from Teju Ravilochan on Vimeo.

First on deck for the cohort of entrepreneurs to assess was Kyle Berner’s of Feelgoodz pitch to the group for $100,000 in short-term working capital. The pitch was a true entrepreneurial moment – the group was expecting to allocate the money later in the spring, but Kyle needed the money as soon as possible to finance growth as Feelgoodz expands to Whole Foods stores nationwide. Convincing the group to make the investment in his company sooner rather than later, Kyle secured the needed capital which he will repay within 6 months for the IVEC class to reinvest in another team member business.

Feeling that buzz of energy and innovation in New Orleans? The city’s entrepreneurs certainly are!

Entrepreneurs Play in NOLA

PlayNOLA, one of the Idea Village’s Entrepreneur Challenge alumni and winner of the 504ward business plan competition, was recently featured in an article in Black MBA Magazine. The start-up, which organizes sports leagues for young professionals in New Orleans, is helping to reverse the city’s brain drain by providing a fun and easy way for these professionals to connect with their peers (but don’t think that means that things can’t get competitive!) Check out the article here:

Black MBA Magazine Article:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/NBMQ0409/#/58

It’s always great to see New Orleans’s entrepreneurs being recognized for their success!

In other news, this year’s New Orleans Entrepreneur Week website is officially up-and-running! For those of you eagerly awaiting this year’s events, this will provide you with a sneak preview. Details and events will be posted on the site - stay tuned!

New Orleans Entrepreneur Week 2010:
http://www.noew.org/