I’ve just penned a long post over at the DigitalCircle blog about taking ideas to the next stage. I’ve covered this before here and here.
The post is focussing on some of the initiatives which are out there in the province for doing just that. Again, I’d mentioned this before here and here.
I find it both amusing and exciting that there is increased opportunity for people to get their ideas realised. It’s like an XFactor for ideas rather than singers which, on the face of it, might be a better model than a Dragon’s Den (which let’s face it, both are getting very tired). It also smacks of Cambrian House which espoused crowd-sourcing as it’s primary model of innovation and market research. (The problem being that crowds tend to be stupid rather than smart). So while it failed, it wasn’t necessarily all bad.
This all shows that there is a market for helping people with vision get stuff done. And isn’t that what venture capital is meant to be all about. We have a poor VC network in Northern Ireland in terms of both quality and quantity. The very best tend to be entrenched in businesses they understand very well and that, for all the frustration it might cause post-Web 2.0 entrepreneurs is perfectly reasonable as it would be folly to expect an investor to put money into a venture they didn’t understand. That said – unless we start to see VCs with a little experience in the tech world, we’re not going to be able to change things.
On top of the schemes I mention on the DC blog, there’s something else planned for next summer which, at the moment, is still in stealth mode (insofar as not very much has been done for it but there’s energy, ideas and time).
Hey thanks for linking us up on the DigitalCircle site! It’s been great to see the response to the “App School” Nice article all round. Need to register to comment tho?
Anyway, I’m really thinking lately of how to either rock or subvert the academic boat to give tech students the knowledge and skills they need to realise their ideas… would love help out if there was any kind of digital circle initiative, like starting up code4pizza?
I can honestly say money is the only thing stopping me from changing the world. Get me some money, and everything will be fantastic.
You mentioned this to me last week and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. If you need any help in the future with this, I’m interested in helping.
Hi Dave – I’ve removed the need to register but I’d still LIKE people to Register.
Hi Andy – If it really mattered to you, then you’d eat 11 p noodles and sleep on someone’s floor.
Hi Errol – I will keep you in mind. I think there’s a lot of “good” that we can do considering that some of us have been around the block a few times.