The Morris Entrepreneurial Scene Heats Up

NJTechWeekly.com is on vacation. We have asked thought leaders from the New Jersey tech community to write about topics that are important to them. Our third contributor is John Carini. John is an entrepreneur and organizer of the Morris Meetup. He is also a mentor at TechLaunch and the CEO of Social Smart Software – a social media marketing and compliance software company. John lives in Morris County with his family and enjoys networking with like-minded entrepreneurs.

Just a few years ago I remember needing to travel over 2500 miles to Silicon Valley to meet like-minded entrepreneurs.

Later other areas began to become part of the startup scene like Austin, Texas and Boston, MA.

And even more recently New York (now dubbed Silicon Alley) became a major startup hub.  It was fantastic to not have to hop a plane to network with our counterparts.

And then startup activity came across the river to New Jersey and we could network fairly close to home.  

But I imagined being able to network just a few minutes from home. Now this is possible right here in Morris County.   

Although it has its share of big business, Morris had long been known as primarily a residential area. And although we have had several prominent entrepreneurs come out of the area, Morris had little in common with Silicon Valley.

But that all changed recently and the Morris county entrepreneurial scene has blossomed. 

The Morris Meetup, LaunchNJ and other organizations now have regular meetings for like minded entrepreneurs right here in Morris County. 

As the organizer of the Morris Meetup and with the support of Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU), we have been able to stage some large events with fantastic keynote speakers right here in Morris County.

For example on June 3rd we hosted author and MSNBC host Mike Michalowicz . He spoke to a packed house at FDU. [NJTechWeekly.com reported that meeting here.]

We also had the Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf – and just a few weeks after the event Yahoo announced its intention to acquire Flurry for over $200 Million.

And there are some future events coming up including one on September 10th with Jim Tousignant of the Scivantage Accelerator and another on October 7th with author Greg Slamowitz. Plus LaunchNJ also has some great events here in Morris county as well. 

When I look at the big picture, Morris County is a piece of the scene and N.J. is becoming an entrepreneurial hub.  There are events and organizations throughout the state like TechLaunch, NJ Tech Meetup, The Princeton Tech Meetup, Juice Tank , the Scivantage Incubator, Tiger Labs and much more.  

But I am proud to say the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well here in Morris, NJ!