briangorbett.com | my life blurred by pixels

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startup america challenge + free mentoring

As I travel around, it is amazing to find out just how many startups still do not know about BizSpark. I spoke at the Startup Illinois 1st Anniversary event a couple days ago in Chicago and had so many emails after the event asking for more information on this “amazing program for tech startups called BizSpark”.

Well, there is a friendly regional competition going on with the Microsoft Regions and Startup America that will give all you tech startups access to BizSpark among other great benefits. If you are a tech startup, go sign up for Startup America with this link to show how the Central US has just as many high-quality, high-potential startups! You have until February 14th at 12pm ET until the competition ends.

Also, I am raising the ante a bit. For all those startups that sign-up, I will offer an hour (or so) of mentoring time that will enable you to learn more about BizSpark, how to scale your startup in the cloud, why Windows Phone rocks the party, or how to get access to other Microsoft resources to help you gain an advantage in the market. If you are in the Chicagoland area, this can be in person or we can take it virtually with a great little startup called Ohours. The challenge is on!

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Excelerate Labs Gets BizSpark Plus

In case you didn’t hear the big announcement yesterday about BizSpark Plus, check it out here. The bigger announcement is that our very own Excelerate Labs will be participating in the BizSpark Plus program just in time for applicants to start applying.

Also, today, Excelerate graduate and BizSpark company Buzz Referrals just announced their series a funding with investors including the first investment from the Invest Illinois Venture Fund.

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I Loved Her First

Thank you, Southwest Airlines’ stewardess. Thank you for asking me if everything was okay tonight on my flight to San Francisco. I realize that it was probably not usual for a 38-year-old man who was trained to kill in the army to spend 4 hours on your flight desperately fighting back tears that were streaming down his face. I realize that grown men, socially, are expected to maintain their manly persona. I am sorry. I loved her first.

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Meet Ben Milne, Founder of Dwolla

I had a chance to sit down with Ben Milne of Dwolla (http://dwolla.com) at Chicago Ideas Week, an amazing BizSpark company changing the way consumers and merchants think about transactions. Dwolla also has a rich API for developers to take advantage of their fast and secure payment processing system.

Ben is also speaking at ThincIowa and I am excited to sit down with him here to talk about their rich API and how developers can take advantage of it.

Heading to ThincIowa

Chris Bernard and Brian Gorbett from Microsoft BizSpark are heading to Des Moines, Iowa to represent BizSpark and talk to entrepreneurs from both startups and large corporations. Should be an interesting mix.

Unfortunately, because of a flight cancellation, we arrived later than we wanted to but still did not miss any of the great speakers. Being entrepreneurial themselves, they took advantage of the HD camera in their Windows Phone to shoot them heading into the conference

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StartupWeekend Chicago

If you were given 54 hours to build a businesses, what would you create?

That’s the question 60 Chicago students and community members faced for the the 2011 Startup Weekend challenge. The event brought together developers, graphics designers, business people, and big thinkers together to build a web or mobile application that could function as a viable business post-event. At the end of the startup marathon, one team walks away with $2,000 to further their idea and a community of supportive mentors.
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ThinkChicago Students Visit Microsoft

There are many perks of being a Microsoft employee – great health benefits ( 100% covered .. yeah, its awesome), flying everywhere to meet with fascinating startups, working with the smartest people in the world and with the most forward-thinking innovative company in the world. But most importantly to me, the best perk that comes with working at Microsoft is the opportunity to give back to our community on a consistent basis.

Yesterday myself and a few other Microsoft employees had the honor of meeting with eight of the brightest students the Midwest has to offer as a part of the ThinkChicago initiative. The program selected a handful of the regions brightest college seniors to come to Chicago during CIW, attend Tedx Midwest and learn about job opportunities at some of Chicago’s most esteemed businesses like Groupon, Google, Grubhub, and Microsoft.
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BizSpark Spotlight: Innovative Exams

As all of Chicago focuses their attention on innovation, we thought we would turn our spotlight on some of our very own local BizSpark innovators.

Meet Innovative Exams – a Chicago-based startup revolutionizing assessment through their remote proctoring technology.
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Tech & Web Spotlight: LifeLens

There was one group of speakers at CIW’s Tech & Web MegaTalk that stood out a bit.

They weren’t media moguls, or designers, or founders of the next mobile marketplace.

But within two minutes of starting their speech, the soft-spoken and seemingly unknown speakers had the audience on the edge of their seats and their fellow speakers wide-eyed with amazement. Meet Lifelens, winners of Microsoft’s 2011 Imagine Cup challenge.
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5 Reasons The Midwest Is Primed For Startup Success

There must have been something in the air yesterday because as I looked around at the buzzing crowd, networking and dreaming outloud, I saw that everyone, both old and young, looked so ready, so eager. For what, I can’t say definitively but I can guess that just like me Chicago Ideas Week had made them excited and almost frantically anxious to learn, build and create.

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