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Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource has Moved!

The Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource has moved. Its new location is http://innovationsrochester.org/RER/. Look there for future updates, especially our calendar of local business events.

UR team refining camera-phone's heart

This Democrat & Chronicle Business Article describes the efforts of two University of Rochester researchers to develop what they believe is a breakthrough approach to imaging sensors. Their biggest challenge? Raising venture capital to penetrate an already crowded field.

One of our own gets some press!

Greg Tellex, founder of Empire Golf Getaways and a member of the August Group's Entrepreneurs SIG (the predecessor to Innovations Rochester), has managed to get some coverage on channel 13 (WHAM-TV). Service Wants To Start Up Golf Getaways With Ferry talks about how Greg is hoping to make use of the Fast Ferry to expand his business.

Small Business Meetup

The Rochester Small Business Meetup Group will be holding its monthly meeting on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. at:

Atlanta Bread Company
1663 E Henrietta Rd
Rochester, NY 14623
585-427-2930

Meetings are free and open to the public. Please come!

Need-to-Know about Intellectual Property

February 25, 2005 at 8:00 a.m.
Presentation by Thomas R. Fitzgerald

Sponsored by the Rochester Professional Consultants Network

Most consulting engagements generate intellectual property. Learn how ownership begins and how it may be transferred. You'll learn the differences between patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets as well as highlights of statutory protections. A typical consulting agreement will be reviewed ant key terms will be explained.

Tom FitzGerald is a member of the bar in New York and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. He's been in private practice in Rochester since 1992. Prior to 1992, he was inside counsel for several large corporations, including Texas Instruments, General Signal, GE, and Pitney Bowes. He helps his clients secure statutory and contract protection of their intellectual property.

Location: Brighton Town Hall
Open to the public; $8 for non-members; $5 for members, payable by cash or check at the door.

#1 in Rochester's Top 100 to Speak to the August Group

Manny Marcano, president of EMA Design Automation in Henrietta, will be presenting to the August Group at the Brighton Town Hall on February 16th at 10:00 a.m. EMA was selected as the Democrat & Chronicle's #1 company in its Top 100 fastest growing privately held companies in the greater Rochester metro area for 2004.

In this informal presentation, Manny will discuss EMA's growth, and history, as well as present the August Group with a unique proposition.

EMA is looking for August Group members that have the passion and drive to start a new business.

For more information contact John Baily with the August Group.

Miller resigns HTR incubator post

The Rochester Business Journal is reporting that High Technology of Rochester Inc. program director Alana Miller has resigned from the organization.

Workshop for Contractors

Forwarded by Mark Gydesen

The SUNY Brockport Small Business Development Center is pleased to be co-sponsoring a workshop with the Rochester Housing Authority. The 2005 Contractor's Workshop is designed to help small contractors improve and increase their business. Attendees will be able to learn about how the SBDC, Rochester Housing Authority, and US Small Business Administration can work with you to help your business succeed! There will also be presentations on HUD regulations and requirements for your business to obtain bonding.


The workshop is divided into several sessions over a 2 day period. Here's the breakdown!


2/26/05
Bidding and Estimating—8:30-10:50
HUD Regulations and Paperwork—11:00-11:50
Complimentary Lunch—12:00-12:50
Small Business Administration session—1:00-1:50


3/2/05
Bonding Overview—6:00-6:50
Small Business Development Center session—7:00-8:45


All of the workshops will be held at 675 West Main Street in Rochester (the Housing Authority’s office). You're more than welcome to attend all sessions, or only one or two if you would prefer. If this workshop sounds like something you might be interested in, please call Tom Hubert at the Rochester Housing Authority by February 16th. His phone number is 585-697-6167.


Best Wishes,
Rebekah


Rebekah Greene
Front Office Coordinator
SUNY Brockport Small Business Development Center
350 New Campus Drive
Morgan 3
Brockport, NY 14420
Phone: (585) 395-2334
Fax: (585) 395-2467
E-mail: sbdc@brockport.edu

Business Start Up Checklist

This Business Start Up Checklist at Business Know-How is a good reminder of steps you need to go through to start your business, but misses a few things such as retaining an attorney and an accountant. Combine it with my previous post for a more complete list and a timeline to use as a guide.

12 Months to Startup

Entrepreneur.com has an interesting article giving step-by-step instructions to start a new business. 12 Months to Startup not only suggests what to do each month, but also includes links to resources to help you through each step.

Study shows best places for small business

Study shows best places for small business - bizjournals.com lists the best cities and towns for small business, as rated by American City Business Journals. The highest ranking city in New York is ... (drum roll please!) ...

Poughkeepsie, NY!

The methodology that they used for ranking is based on four factors:

• Number of small businesses per 100,000 residents
• Change in the number of small businesses from 2000 to 2002
• Change in private-sector employment from 2000 to 2002
• Change in private-sector payrolls from 2000 to 2002

Top Ten States for Small Businesses in 2005

Here's a blog article that made it into the national media. SurePayroll Announces Top Ten States for Small Businesses in 2005 contains state rankings that were mentioned on the radio today, mostly because New York was not in the list. I tracked it down simply so I could find out where I should be starting my next business.

What do you think of these rankings?

Money

Looking for money? Greater Rochester Enterprise has put together a list of funding sources for small businesses that you should probably investigate. Some day we'll put together a table comparing their funding criteria, but for now you'll just have to do your own research.

Good luck!

Coming Soon to a Lab Near You

A Fairport High School student is named 'Junior Nobel' finalist in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search.

Bruce Brewington sounds like one talented kid. Read the article and see what the next generation is able to do!

What Makes a Good Opportunity?

An article at Inc.com called What Makes a Good Opportunity? has an interesting approach to looking at ideas for new buinesses that might be called the "Three M's approach" (not to be confused with 3M the company). The "Three M's" are Me, Market, and Money. All three are related, and if any of them are missing, it's likely the concept is not worth developing.

Model innovation "hot spot" for optics

This article says that the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, the Infotonics Technology Center Inc. and Greater Rochester Enterprise Inc. have named the Rochester, N.Y., region as a model innovation "hot spot" for optics.

I have a hard time figuring out how we can be a "hot spot" for optics. Sure we have the optics, but don't we need a little sunshine, too, in order to make a "hot spot"?

MSNBC - Buffalo a tough sell for women's startups

This article is mostly about women doing business in Buffalo, but it does expand to western New York, including this comment about Rochester:

This area's women-owned businesses had total sales of $1.9 billion in 1997, working out to $105,090 per business. That also ranked 59th out of 60. Only Rochester did worse.

In spite of what you might think, this article does have an optimistic conclusion.

Society of Reliability Engineers (Rochester, New York Chapter)

Forwarded by Anthony P. Caraglio

Since 2001, the Rochester Chapter of the Society of Reliability Engineers has been formed and membership has steadily grown to 44 members in 2004. It consists of group of Reliability interested people, who want to learn, share and deploy on the use of reliability tools. The chapter membership varies from certified black belts, certified reliability engineers, maintenance personnel, technicians, and other disciplines that are interested in reliability body of knowledge.

Monthly meetings feature guest speakers/members presenting a variety of topics (ex. Design of Experiments, Reliability Centered Maintenance, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, Reliability Testing Methods, Concurrent Engineering, Systems Thinking, Root Cause Analysis and other reliability tools/processes.

Some past activities included black belt training, summer picnic seminars, change management joint society meetings and community support programs.

We would like to encourage people to attend one of our monthly meetings and be part of a growing effort to enhance skills, learn new tools, and network with our diverse and multi-disciplined membership. Membership fee is $25.00/year.

For any further questions or information on organization and meetings, please contact:

Joe Wille, Vice President or Tony Caraglio, Program Director - sre_rochester@yahoo.com.

Writing Things Down

I once wrote an article for my Ducks In Order newsletter called The Power of Writing Things Down.

I mention this because it's an example of why you should be submitting articles to the Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource.

1. It's a way for people to become familiar with you without your having to meet them face-to-face. Face-to-face will always give you a higher quality connection, but successful marketing depends on multiple types of connections.


2. It's a more efficient use of your time than face-to-face meetings. Sure, it takes you longer to write something than it does to say it. But once you've written it down, it doesn't take any more of your time to communicate that same message to dozens or thousands of people.


3. It allows you to leverage your marketing activities. A good article written in a blog can easily become a PR piece in the newspaper and a brochure given out at trade shows. It can even become a chapter in a book or an article in a magazine.
   

The whole point of this is that you should be making use of every chance you get to let people know about yourself and your business, and the Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource is one such mechanism that is begging to be used!

P.S. I intend to make use of this idea myself, so don't be surprised to see a version of this note on my own blog and on several networking forums that I belong to!

U of R Patents New 'Pure Light' Technology

University of Rochester researchers have patented a new class of optical materials that efficiently create "pure polarized light," which uses far less energy than conventional flat-panel displays to produce the same images. The new technology promises brighter displays, longer battery life for portable devices like cell phones and laptops, and commercial avilability of 3-D displays.

You can read more about it in this University of Rochester Press Release.

Inventors - The Odds Are Against You

Inventors take note: According to Bob Shaver's article An Inventor's Chance of Success, your invention has a 2-3% chance of being successful. Success, by the way, is defined as either growing the invention into a successful single-product company, or licensing it to a larger company.

When you factor in the $5,000 to $10,000 it costs to obtain a patent, you need a $250,000 minimum profit projection before patenting becomes a worthwhile gamble.

Also, be prepared to wait 18 to 24 months before you receive your patent. That's the typical amount of time between starting the patent search and receiving the patent. Add in any additional time for marketing and selling your product or license.

Are you ready to take the plunge? Can you afford it?

Small Business Know-How Brown Bag Breakfast

Forwarded by Mark B. Gydesen

The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC) is presenting a "Small Business Know-How Brown Bag Breakfast" workshop on January 12, 2005. The workshop "Small Business Marketing Strategies" will run from 7:30-9:30 A.M. The workshop will be held at the FLCC’s Institute building, located at 4340 Lakeshore Drive in Canandaigua. Sponsored by the Small Business Development Centers at Finger Lakes Community College and SUNY Brockport, the workshop is designed to provide small business owners with essential skills and information. The workshop is free for Chamber of Commerce members, and just $5.00 per person for non-members. Pre-registration is required. Please call the SBDC at (585) 394-3500, ext. 7660 to register.

Rochester Most Entrepreneurial City in NY

According to Entrepreneur.com, Rochester ranks 25th in the list of Top 50 Entrepreneurial Cities in the nation. This makes it the most entrepreneurial in New York, ahead of Buffalo (at #33) and New York City (#46).

The rankings are based on the average number of new business licenses and DBA registrations, and the number of utility patents, issued in the Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

Lab for Social Computing

My discovery of this morning is RIT's Lab for Social Computing (LSC).

"The purpose of the LSC is to engage in research, technology development, and education related to social computing--the use of technology to facilitate social and collaborative activities."

This means blogs (like this one), message boards, webinars, wikis, and all those other tools that are popping up on the Internet that either a) help people collaborate toward common goals despite being on opposite sides of the world, or b) cause people to spend countless hours in front of their computer when they should be doing something constructive like watching reruns of Friends.

Towards this end, the LSC is hosting Seminar: Weblogs and Wikis and Friendsters (Oh, My!) on Friday, January 7th, in the Golisano College auditorium (70-1400) from 3-4:30pm.

Will I see you there?