The University of California, Berkeley announced the appointment of Dr. Richard Swart as Director of Research overseeing the policies, best practices and innovation in entrepreneurial finance, including crowdfunding. The Program for Innovation in Entrepreneurial and Social Finance, directed under the College of Engineering’s Fung Institute, seeks to examine the evolution of crowdfunding and other social-finance… Read More »
Author: funginstitute
PRIVACY & THE INTERNET ECONOMY – BIG DATA THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Over the past 10 years, Internet ad revenue has grown by 7X, from approximately $1.5B to now $10B annually. A major driver of this growth is a “behind the scenes” network of cookie collection companies, data exchanges, and data analytics that lead to customer data collection and highly targeted digital advertising – in short, Big… Read More »
A New Startup Financing Model and the Passionate Voices Behind It
Entrepreneurship at Elite Universities
What is the story behind Fung’s Crowdfunding research program?
In April 2012 Sherwood “Woodie” Neis along with his good friend, Jason Best launched Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA), a consulting company that advises U.S. and international entrepreneurs, investors, business groups and government agencies. At that time, Best was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the university’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership,… Read More »
STORYTELLING FOR ENGINEERING LEADERS
As engineers and engineering leaders, we often forget the important role of “storytelling” in our work. Usually, this takes the form of a myopic focus on our technology capabilities or markets served. What we forget is that it won’t matter unless the concept is meaningful to people. And stories are the medium that humans understand… Read More »
How are CET and other programs both in and outside of UC Berkeley encouraging student entrepreneurship?
(Cal students working on a startup at the school’s SkyDeck accelerator.) UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (CET) recently brought together a bunch of startups, including VIRES, for a pitch contest before a panel of judges comprised of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and university faculty. Also in the mix were Chinese teams from the Tsinghua-Berkeley… Read More »
IT SEEMS THAT SILICON VALLEY INNOVATION MODELS DON’T WORK EVERYWHERE ELSE
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak in Copenhagen at Denmark Technical University on the topic of engineering leadership and the culture of innovation. Topics included the ways that innovation goes wrong and how important it is for firms to diversify away from the business models that have worked in the firm’s past. One of… Read More »
HOW MIXBOOK’S FOUNDERS TRANSLATED ENGINEERING SMARTS TO ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS
We are now in our 8th year of of Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. Please join me in recognizing Andrew Laffoon and Aryk Grosz – alumni from our first year who proved 50 investors wrong and founded Mixbook directly from their CET course. Mixbook is the first of many firms launched from the CET.… Read More »