Last night at the grand opening of Startup Hall in the “innovation district” emerging near the University of Washington campus, the crowd witnessed a new key component being added to the Seattle startup ecosystem. It’s an innovation tried in few other cities around the world. This new center of entrepreneurship is not just another coworking … Continue reading “(Another) Brick in the Seattle Startup Ecosystem”
Author: Michael "Luni" Libes
Luni is a serial entrepreneur who over the past two decades has helped build six start-ups, five of which he founded. His previous companies include Ground Truth (mobile market research and analysis), Medio Systems (mobile search and advertising), Mforma (mobile gaming and applications), 2WAY (enterprise collaboration systems), and Nimble (pen computing, PDAs, and early smartphones).
Luni is an Entrepreneur in Residence and Instructor at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Advisor to The HUB Seattle and the SURF Incubator, and advisor to a dozen startup companies.
Luni is author of "The Next Step: Guiding you from Idea to Startup"
Luni is a co-creator and organizer of #SocEnt Weekend, a hands-on, action-based, high-energy, 50 hour weekend event for teaching social entrepreneurship and creating impactful companies. http://socentweekend.org
Most recently, Luni is the founder of Fledge LLC, a “conscious company” incubator. Fledge helps create and accelerate companies meeting the needs of the large and growing number of consumers who are: environmentally conscious, energy conscious, health conscious, conscious of sustainability, of community, and even conscious of consumption itself.
Act Now to Support Crowdfunding in Washington State
Nearly two years after Washington D.C. passed the JOBS Act, which legalized crowdfunding of startup fund raising, the law goes unused, awaiting a final set of regulations from the SEC. With no end to that process in sight, we here in Washington state say it is time to make crowdfunding a reality. Luckily, securities are … Continue reading “Act Now to Support Crowdfunding in Washington State”
Good, Business, and Good Business
Here in the 20-teens, the roles of for-profit businesses, non-profit organizations, government, NGO’s, foundations, investors and philanthropists are beginning to blur together. We are quickly finding ourselves in a world where it is not only possible to do good while doing business, but expected. This is quite a change from the “Friedman Doctrine” that claimed … Continue reading “Good, Business, and Good Business”
Women and Startups
The news from PyCon rekindles a long-running discussion about the lack of women in tech startups. The description of the roomful of men, cracking fraternity-scale jokes without regard for the few women in the room brings back plenty of memories of other rooms full of men in my twenty years of tech startup life. Far … Continue reading “Women and Startups”
Startups Burst into Motion at Kinect Accelerator Demo Day
Thursday was the climactic final day for the first class of TechStars’ Kinect Accelerator, concluding not only with the standard on-stage pitches expected at a Demo Day, but also with a room full of actual, live, working demos. I was a mentor with the accelerator, and looking back across the full 13 weeks of the … Continue reading “Startups Burst into Motion at Kinect Accelerator Demo Day”