This was evident at the Twiistup pre-event company pitch last week at UCLA.  Francisco Francisco Dao came up with the idea of letting 10 companies that weren’t selected for Twiistup to do a presentation the night before to a group of people and let the audience pick one company to win the final slot at Twiistup.  I I’ll put up the video when they post it on their website. Most people suck at presenting to big groups.  It’s It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence

This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons .” I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. BCG, Bain, LEK – they’re all great), a few years at a start-up or a few years somewhere like Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple.  8221; I

Let me just start this thing and see where it goes and I’ll go back to school.” 8221; I went to UCLA and we’ll see where things go. They kind of sold this opportunity and this project to me and then I ended-up buying it. So I Ended-up saying “You know, let’s really go all-in. Roy Rubin was a student trying to make extra money on the side when he founded Varien, the company that went on to launch Magento, an ecommerce platform that enables billions of dollars in online sales. He came to Mixergy to talk about why Varien grew (it had

was recently interviewed for an article that appeared in Fast Company titled, “ Why you should start a business in LA .” 8221;  If you’re interested in the topic it’s worth a read, but I thought I’d elaborate on the topic since it comes up all the time. We have universities like CalTech, UCLA, USC and many more.  We Los Angeles.  People People either love it our hate it.  All

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. Tell me a bit about your background. Like many product managers, my background is fairly eclectic. That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. From there, I became the first non-founder employee at an e-commerce startup called BITSource, which was the first electronic software distributor delivering electronic volume software licenses to corporations. Visible networking is turning into a really great opportunity to get to know people better, get to meet new people, and have some interesting conversations.

In a conference on March 24, UCLA/CNSI launched a “technology incubator” – the first of its kind for UC – in conjunction with UCLA’s Office of Intellectual Property and Industry Sponsored Research (OIP-ISR). The event, held in the CNSI auditorium, brought together faculty entrepreneurs, representatives of industry startups and venture capital firms. The UCLA on-campus technology incubator will be housed in the CNSI building and will offer four to five separate startup projects access to a total of 1,000 square feet of flexible lab space for 18 to 24 months.

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Saturday, November 15, 2008 -- CAST-LA/ CEA-UCLA Entrepreneur Lecture Series. In Co-host with the Startups and Entrepreneurs Association of UCLA. Speakers: 1. John Dilts, President, Maverick Angels 2. Alex Schneider, Director, Ventura Venture Tech Center.

People talk a lot how an area creates an environment conducive to startups and high tech entrepreneurship. One huge factor in “startup creation” here is the presence of at least two, highly ranked MBA programs in Los Angeles. UCLA Anderson is ranked by U.S. News & World Report at #11, and USC Marshall is ranked by U.S. News & World Report at #21–and although not as prominent in terms of reputation as places like Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton–I run across an immense number of entrepreneurs others who went to either school.

In the recent surge in interest in the clean technology and energy investment area, we're constantly surprised by the number of startups in the area focused on some aspect of the industry. Recently, we learned about Solarmer Energy , a spinout of UCLA, which is developing flexible solar panels, and caught up with Woolas Hsieh , President and Founder of the firm and Dina Lozofsky , VP, Corporate Development at the firm to hear more about its emerging technology. Let's Let's start on the technology side--can you tell us about the technology, and its origins? Dina