I am honored to be presenting at this year’s Nano Technology Summit in Dallas, Texas- called NanoTX with a number of Nobel Laureates and other technology experts. Following is info on the speech that I will be giving. Please make sure to call me or twitter me if you happen to be at the event.
Enterprise Tribes: Supporting Emerging Tech Startups In the Age of Web 2.0
Failure to receive support early enough in the startup cycle is a challenge that has kept many promising technologies from ever making it to the market. Venture capital and angel investment have their place, but most financial capital cannot invest in high-risk ventures at the earliest stages. The fate of the typical entrepreneur has been to build his business through sweat, credit cards and friends-and-family investments. But now, social networking technologies are making increasing amounts of social capital available – significantly reducing financial costs faced by entrepreneurs. Mr. Koym shares stories of startups that use social capital in place of cash and the principles that benefit emerging technologies companies – whether bootstrapped or investor-backed.
One page abstract: for Track 5: Business & Economic Development
The sad truth standing in the way of getting many promising technologies to market is that most startup support programs don’t work early enough in the startup cycle to be significant at the times of entrepreneurs’ greatest need. Venture capital and angel investment certainly have their place, but most financial capital cannot invest in high risk at the earliest stages. Until recently, the typical entrepreneur stood alone in building his business through his own sweat, credit card and the cash offered up by friends and family. However, social networking technologies now are creating opportunities to significantly reduce the financial cost of building a business, by making social capital more widely and easily accessible. In this speech, Mr. Koym will share examples of startups that are leveraging social capital in lieu of financial capital and the principles that work for companies in the emerging technologies arena.
As a technology visionary, including predicting and ushering in web based eCommerce in 1994 and building the startup company that subsequently leading Dell Computer Corporation’s billion dollar eCommerce site in 1996; Predicting the usage of Linux in embedded devices in 2002, subsequently leading the deployment of this startup’s products across Schlumberger’s world wide network; Mr. Koym now is charting where social networking technologies are opening up opportunities to change the face of entrepreneurship, culminating in four conceptual shifts that he sees will drive change across the five domains of the individual, the corporation, the enterprise tribe, on demand services, and governments.
The Four Conceptual Shifts that Mr. Koym is predicting will show up in the following ways:
1. Superempowerment of the individual, where individuals exchange the mythical stability of a corporate job for the stability of self-employment, producing an entrepreneurial mindset that creates a truly resilient workforce.
2. New open corporate structures that allow much greater flexibility by coordinating many outside players in an open, yet not vulnerable, value chain
3. The rise of the Enterprise Tribe- a presently emerging social structure where entrepreneurs connect and support each other much in ways resembling America’s agrarian past
4. A “Chinese menu” of on demand, robust, Internet delivered services, organized by vendors large and small
5. Governments that become agile, and in many times, partially replaced by grass-roots community efforts organized through social networks.