The Week that Was! Dennis Bone, Vidyo, Three Meetups, and TEDxHoboken
(One of the frequent comments by our readers is that it often takes too long for NJTechWeekly.com to fully cover a conference or meeting we attend. So here is a short recap of where we went and what we did last week, until a more in-depth story can be produced. We’ll try this out for a while to see if you like it.)
Monday, June 24: NJTechWeekly.com met with Dennis Bone, Director of the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship at Montclair State University. Bone, who was former president and CEO of Verizon New Jersey, talked about the future plans for the brand new entrepreneurship center at the University. One key takeaway: he expects the entrepreneurship program to look a lot like the makeup of the university, with women and minorities represented as well as projects that span all of the majors the university offers.
Tuesday, June 25: NJTechWeeekly.com interviewed Vidyo CFO David Kaminsky, who won the NJTC CFO Hall of Fame Award recently. Kaminsky updated us on what has been happening at the growth-stage startup, which received an additional 17.1 million investment in April, covered here. Key takeaways: Vidyo’s business is broad and is into both the enterprise and home markets. The company has also had its share of exciting wins recently. For example, working through one of its distributors, the company is connecting some 20,000 scientists from more than 113 countries and 600 universities at CERN, (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).
Thursday, June 27: We traveled to Princeton to cover the Princeton Tech Meetup and asked for volunteers to write up two additional meetings that were taking place at the same time. The Princeton Tech Meetup featured a talk on Lean UX (user experience) by one of the authors of the primary book on the subject: Josh Seiden Author of Lean UX –Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience.
Seiden gave some concrete examples about how real world companies like PayPal have reorganized their workgroups to accommodate lean UX principals.
We received an exciting review of Scarlet Startups, Lean Startup Machine Newark and Brick City Tech’s joint meetup at Rutger’s Business School Newark, Thursday, written by N.J. startup entrepreneur Mark Annett. The featured speaker Mark Peter Davis wrote The Fundraising Rules, a book that offers a clear explanation about VC fundraising. He provided an abbreviated version of his ten rules that everyone seeking VC funding should know.
Finally, still on Thursday, the New Jersey Entrepreneurs and Tech Startups meetup at JuiceTank in Somerset was packed full of startup presentations and a keynote by Yodle’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer (CPMO), Louis Gagnon. NJ startups Meddle and Revelstone pitched, and Scott Barnett of Bizyhood spoke about the beta launch of his venture. Gagnon addressed the challenges of helping a highly fragmented business sector and hyper localized businesses to achieve measurable ROI on their limited marketing spend, according to Joe Charles who reported on the event for NJTechWeekly.com.
Friday, June 28: On Friday, NJTechWeekly.com watched a simulcast of some of the TEDxHoboken talks that were relevant to our tech audience. We hope to provide some coverage of these in the near future.
