NWEN’s Entrepreneur University is on Tuesday … cool!

After an expedited but thorough search, the board and search committee of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network is delighted to bring Daniel Rossi on board as our new Executive Director. Shannon Swift, current NWEN board chair, shared “We sought a unique combination of attributes for this key position: leadership, passion, entrepreneurial empathy, and positive relationships within the Seattle entrepreneurial community.

After just shy of 2-1/2 years, the Executive Director of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, Rebecca Lovell, has accepted the post of Chief Business Officer at GeekWire.

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently posted notice of a program that may be of interest to SBIR participants:

As part of the Obama Administration’s Startup America Initiative, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the “America’s Next Top Energy Innovator” challenge, which will give start-up companies the opportunity to license groundbreaking technologies developed by the national laboratories for $1,000 and build successful businesses. As part of this effort, the Department is reducing both the cost and paperwork requirements for start-up companies to obtain an option agreement to license some of the 15,000 patents and patent applications held by our 17 national laboratories.

On Monday, May 2, 2011, the Department will kick off the challenge by posting a streamlined template option agreement online for entrepreneurs to submit to laboratories. Entrepreneurs must identify the technology of interest and submit a business plan to be considered for the program. Participants will have until December 15 to make their submission to the laboratory.

To view the entire announcement, check out this link.

What an exciting end to NWEN Spring First Look at the Arctic Club Hotel today! After a half-hour of networking, each of the 12 contenders had only 5 minutes to pitch their business to a standing room-only crowd of over 60 investors.

With a record crowd of investors for Tuesday’s First Look Forum event, anticipation is building. The presentations at yesterday’s dress rehearsal were great, and the positive energy and collegiality — with entrepreneurs giving each other great suggestions even though they’re competing — was truly wonderful to see. Kudos to all the participants — as well as the coaches and pitch doctors, Connie Miller of Pivotal Presentations, the whole FLF committee, and Caitlin Goetze and Rebecca Lovell of NWEN.

Tuesday is really two different events: a pitch competition, and then a networking shmoozefest. There were plenty of great suggestions yesterday about final preparations for the competition: make sure to include a story and show people on your slides, don’t get too hung up in describing the problem or features, practice until it’s smooth but not stale, make sure to keep your authenticity — and take all the advice you get with a grain of salt, including this.

One thing I’d add is at this point, your mental state on Tuesday makes more difference than any last-minute tweaks to the presentation.

part 1 of the series discussed setting the goals for the meeting.

The votes are in and we have 20 teams moving on to the second round of the

The first five parts of the series (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) have gotten us close. Now it’s time for the final push. For impatient readers, here are the tips

• Go back over the section descriptions in the application form and double-check that you’re addressing the right questions in the right places.
  
• Do a section-by-section, line-by-line review
• Formatting and wording changes can often save you a half-dozen valuable lines, but don’t remove all the white space or emotion
  
• Make it look great. Have you included a logo?
• It won’t be perfect. Relax. Nobody else’s is either.

Read on for more …

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