Are you at an inflection point in your business and need help taking it to the next level? Are you an innovative, growth-oriented startup and could benefit from expert coaching and exposure to an investor audience? Look no further than NWEN’s signature coaching program and investment showcase: First Look Forum!

NWEN is the region’s home for innovative businesses in every growth sector in our economy, from web 2.0 to medical technology, clean tech to consumer products. By applying to NWEN’s First Look Forum you will have the chance to access the breadth and depth of coaches, advisors, investors and more—all dedicating their time and talents to help your business reach the next level of success.

It’s that time of year again! The spring 2012 NWEN First Look Forum will be held Tuesday, April 24, at the Arctic Club in Seattle. Our web site has all the details, including the dates (early bird application deadline of February 6 and the final deadline is February 27) and the all-important link to the application — a one-page executive summary. Early-bird applicants get an extra round of feedback from the committee, invitations to a reception on February 8, and are invited to a reception on February 8. So now’s a great time to get started!

For last spring’s FLF, I wrote a blog series called The Agile One-Pager, describing an iterative approach to writing the executive summary, and going from a brand new idea to a decent executive summary. Of course, there are many other approaches; but many participants told me that the ideas were helpful to them. So here are links to the first four parts, along with the key takeaways.

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Congratulations to the 20 companies who advanced to the second round of the First Look Forum! Hopefully by now you’re already scheduling your meetings with the coaches. We’ve got a great list of coaches, including some of the highest-profile investors and entrepreneurs in the Seattle area. From a startup’s perspective, it’s a huge opportunity — and potentially a little scary.

Back in fall 2009, I was in that situation with Qworky (”meetings that don’t suck”). We were delighted to make it into the second round, and through the luck of the draw one of our coaches was one of the angel investors on our shortlist of “people we really really want to meet”. Huzzah!

But then everybody’s schedule got busy and we didn’t prepare as thoroughly for the meeting as we had intended to. One of the other founders still hadn’t left their previous job, and the other had some conflicts, so I wound up doing the meeting by myself …

And I bombed.
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The applications for First Look Forum are in and several of the teams that submitted drafts right up to the deadline should sleep well tonight! We have received nearly 50 applications and the Committee will spend the week reading through them and ultimately selecting the 20 companies that will go on to the next round. Expect that announcement on February 28^th!

For those of you who aren

In the first four parts of the series (1, 2, 3, 4) we got to an initial version of an executive summary and begin iterating on it. Now we’re shifting into the home stretch. For impatient readers, here are the tips

• The one-line pitch should say what you do, who you do it for, and a bit about how
• Get last-minute polishing advice from new eyes.
• It won’t be perfect. Relax. Nobody else’s is either.

Read on for more …

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As we head into the homestretch with the First Look Forum, we wanted to give an opportunity for people to ask some last-minute questions and get some quick feedback. Email works, of course, but it’s soooooo 20th century. So we’re also going to be having a Twitter chat, on Wednesday February 16 at 7:30 p.m.

If you’ve never been to a Twitter chat before, you’re missing out on some good fun. It moves quickly, and with a lot of people talking at once it packs a lot of information into a short time. Whether or not you have a Twitter account, you can follow the discussion on the #nwen hashtag using TweetChat at http://tweetchat.com/room/nwen or use your favorite Twitter client.

Want to join in the conversation? You’ll need to have a Twitter account — you can sign up at http://twitter.com/signup. Twitter’s FAQ and Howcast’s How To Use Twitter video have more information to get you started.

If there are some topics you’d like to see discussed, feel free to leave them as comments here — or you can email to me at jon {at} achangeiscoming {dot} net. Or even better, you can tweet them to me — I’m @jdp23.

Read on for more background (originally from the ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference’s Getting started on Twitter page). See you on Twitter!

jon

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As you head into the next-to-last weekend before the First Look Forum’s February 21 deadline, it’s a good time to be sharpening and tightening what you’ve got.