Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource

Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource has Moved!

2005-03-24T14:36:00.000-05:00

The Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource has moved. Its new location is http://innovationsrochester.org/RER/. Look there for future updates, especially our calendar of local business events.

UR team refining camera-phone's heart

2005-03-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

This Democrat & Chronicle Business Article describes the efforts of two University of Rochester researchers to develop what they believe is a breakthrough approach to imaging sensors. Their biggest challenge? Raising venture capital to penetrate an already crowded field.

One of our own gets some press!

2005-02-23T13:44:00.000-05:00

Greg Tellex, founder of Empire Golf Getaways and a member of the August Group's Entrepreneurs SIG (the predecessor to Innovations Rochester), has managed to get some coverage on channel 13 (WHAM-TV). Service Wants To Start Up Golf Getaways With Ferry talks about how Greg is hoping to make use of the Fast Ferry to expand his business.

Small Business Meetup

2005-02-12T16:25:00.000-05:00

The Rochester Small Business Meetup Group will be holding its monthly meeting on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. at:

Atlanta Bread Company
1663 E Henrietta Rd
Rochester, NY 14623
585-427-2930

Meetings are free and open to the public. Please come!

Need-to-Know about Intellectual Property

2005-02-12T15:55:00.000-05:00

February 25, 2005 at 8:00 a.m.
Presentation by Thomas R. Fitzgerald

Sponsored by the Rochester Professional Consultants Network

Most consulting engagements generate intellectual property. Learn how ownership begins and how it may be transferred. You'll learn the differences between patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets as well as highlights of statutory protections. A typical consulting agreement will be reviewed ant key terms will be explained.

Tom FitzGerald is a member of the bar in New York and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. He's been in private practice in Rochester since 1992. Prior to 1992, he was inside counsel for several large corporations, including Texas Instruments, General Signal, GE, and Pitney Bowes. He helps his clients secure statutory and contract protection of their intellectual property.

Location: Brighton Town Hall
Open to the public; $8 for non-members; $5 for members, payable by cash or check at the door.

#1 in Rochester's Top 100 to Speak to the August Group

2005-02-12T15:41:00.000-05:00

Manny Marcano, president of EMA Design Automation in Henrietta, will be presenting to the August Group at the Brighton Town Hall on February 16th at 10:00 a.m. EMA was selected as the Democrat & Chronicle's #1 company in its Top 100 fastest growing privately held companies in the greater Rochester metro area for 2004.

In this informal presentation, Manny will discuss EMA's growth, and history, as well as present the August Group with a unique proposition.

EMA is looking for August Group members that have the passion and drive to start a new business.

For more information contact John Baily with the August Group.

Miller resigns HTR incubator post

2005-02-11T16:06:00.000-05:00

The Rochester Business Journal is reporting that High Technology of Rochester Inc. program director Alana Miller has resigned from the organization.

Workshop for Contractors

2005-02-11T14:57:00.000-05:00

Forwarded by Mark Gydesen

The SUNY Brockport Small Business Development Center is pleased to be co-sponsoring a workshop with the Rochester Housing Authority. The 2005 Contractor's Workshop is designed to help small contractors improve and increase their business. Attendees will be able to learn about how the SBDC, Rochester Housing Authority, and US Small Business Administration can work with you to help your business succeed! There will also be presentations on HUD regulations and requirements for your business to obtain bonding.

The workshop is divided into several sessions over a 2 day period. Here's the breakdown!

2/26/05
Bidding and Estimating—8:30-10:50
HUD Regulations and Paperwork—11:00-11:50
Complimentary Lunch—12:00-12:50
Small Business Administration session—1:00-1:50

3/2/05
Bonding Overview—6:00-6:50
Small Business Development Center session—7:00-8:45

All of the workshops will be held at 675 West Main Street in Rochester (the Housing Authority’s office). You're more than welcome to attend all sessions, or only one or two if you would prefer. If this workshop sounds like something you might be interested in, please call Tom Hubert at the Rochester Housing Authority by February 16th. His phone number is 585-697-6167.

Best Wishes,
Rebekah

Rebekah Greene
Front Office Coordinator
SUNY Brockport Small Business Development Center
350 New Campus Drive
Morgan 3
Brockport, NY 14420
Phone: (585) 395-2334
Fax: (585) 395-2467
E-mail: sbdc@brockport.edu

Business Start Up Checklist

2005-02-08T23:15:00.000-05:00

This Business Start Up Checklist at Business Know-How is a good reminder of steps you need to go through to start your business, but misses a few things such as retaining an attorney and an accountant. Combine it with my previous post for a more complete list and a timeline to use as a guide.

12 Months to Startup

2005-02-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

Entrepreneur.com has an interesting article giving step-by-step instructions to start a new business. 12 Months to Startup not only suggests what to do each month, but also includes links to resources to help you through each step.

Study shows best places for small business

2005-02-07T13:59:00.000-05:00

Study shows best places for small business - bizjournals.com lists the best cities and towns for small business, as rated by American City Business Journals. The highest ranking city in New York is ... (drum roll please!) ...

Poughkeepsie, NY!

The methodology that they used for ranking is based on four factors:

Number of small businesses per 100,000 residents
Change in the number of small businesses from 2000 to 2002
Change in private-sector employment from 2000 to 2002
Change in private-sector payrolls from 2000 to 2002

Think Rochester will have better luck next year?

Top Ten States for Small Businesses in 2005

2005-02-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a blog article that made it into the national media. SurePayroll Announces Top Ten States for Small Businesses in 2005 contains state rankings that were mentioned on the radio today, mostly because New York was not in the list. I tracked it down simply so I could find out where I should be starting my next business.

What do you think of these rankings?

Money

2005-02-05T08:54:00.000-05:00

Looking for money? Greater Rochester Enterprise has put together a list of funding sources for small businesses that you should probably investigate. Some day we'll put together a table comparing their funding criteria, but for now you'll just have to do your own research.

Good luck!

Coming Soon to a Lab Near You

2005-01-27T17:22:00.000-05:00

A Fairport High School student is named 'Junior Nobel' finalist in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search.

Bruce Brewington sounds like one talented kid. Read the article and see what the next generation is able to do!

What Makes a Good Opportunity?

2005-01-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

An article at Inc.com called What Makes a Good Opportunity? has an interesting approach to looking at ideas for new buinesses that might be called the "Three M's approach" (not to be confused with 3M the company). The "Three M's" are Me, Market, and Money. All three are related, and if any of them are missing, it's likely the concept is not worth developing.

Model innovation "hot spot" for optics

2005-01-24T19:25:00.000-05:00

This article says that the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, the Infotonics Technology Center Inc. and Greater Rochester Enterprise Inc. have named the Rochester, N.Y., region as a model innovation "hot spot" for optics.

I have a hard time figuring out how we can be a "hot spot" for optics. Sure we have the optics, but don't we need a little sunshine, too, in order to make a "hot spot"?

MSNBC - Buffalo a tough sell for women's startups

2005-01-24T18:52:00.000-05:00

This article is mostly about women doing business in Buffalo, but it does expand to western New York, including this comment about Rochester:

This area's women-owned businesses had total sales of $1.9 billion in 1997, working out to $105,090 per business. That also ranked 59th out of 60. Only Rochester did worse.

In spite of what you might think, this article does have an optimistic conclusion.

Society of Reliability Engineers (Rochester, New York Chapter)

2005-01-20T15:58:00.000-05:00

Forwarded by Anthony P. Caraglio

Since 2001, the Rochester Chapter of the Society of Reliability Engineers has been formed and membership has steadily grown to 44 members in 2004. It consists of group of Reliability interested people, who want to learn, share and deploy on the use of reliability tools. The chapter membership varies from certified black belts, certified reliability engineers, maintenance personnel, technicians, and other disciplines that are interested in reliability body of knowledge.

Monthly meetings feature guest speakers/members presenting a variety of topics (ex. Design of Experiments, Reliability Centered Maintenance, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, Reliability Testing Methods, Concurrent Engineering, Systems Thinking, Root Cause Analysis and other reliability tools/processes.

Some past activities included black belt training, summer picnic seminars, change management joint society meetings and community support programs.

We would like to encourage people to attend one of our monthly meetings and be part of a growing effort to enhance skills, learn new tools, and network with our diverse and multi-disciplined membership. Membership fee is $25.00/year.

For any further questions or information on organization and meetings, please contact:

Joe Wille, Vice President or Tony Caraglio, Program Director - sre_rochester@yahoo.com.

Writing Things Down

2005-01-20T13:25:00.000-05:00

I once wrote an article for my Ducks In Order newsletter called The Power of Writing Things Down.

I mention this because it's an example of why you should be submitting articles to the Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource.

It's a way for people to become familiar with you without your having to meet them face-to-face. Face-to-face will always give you a higher quality connection, but successful marketing depends on multiple types of connections.

It's a more efficient use of your time than face-to-face meetings. Sure, it takes you longer to write something than it does to say it. But once you've written it down, it doesn't take any more of your time to communicate that same message to dozens or thousands of people.

It allows you to leverage your marketing activities. A good article written in a blog can easily become a PR piece in the newspaper and a brochure given out at trade shows. It can even become a chapter in a book or an article in a magazine.

The whole point of this is that you should be making use of every chance you get to let people know about yourself and your business, and the Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource is one such mechanism that is begging to be used!

P.S. I intend to make use of this idea myself, so don't be surprised to see a version of this note on my own blog and on several networking forums that I belong to!

U of R Patents New 'Pure Light' Technology

2005-01-14T09:43:00.000-05:00

University of Rochester researchers have patented a new class of optical materials that efficiently create "pure polarized light," which uses far less energy than conventional flat-panel displays to produce the same images. The new technology promises brighter displays, longer battery life for portable devices like cell phones and laptops, and commercial avilability of 3-D displays.

You can read more about it in this University of Rochester Press Release.

Inventors - The Odds Are Against You

2005-01-10T09:46:00.000-05:00

Inventors take note: According to Bob Shaver's article An Inventor's Chance of Success, your invention has a 2-3% chance of being successful. Success, by the way, is defined as either growing the invention into a successful single-product company, or licensing it to a larger company.

When you factor in the $5,000 to $10,000 it costs to obtain a patent, you need a $250,000 minimum profit projection before patenting becomes a worthwhile gamble.

Also, be prepared to wait 18 to 24 months before you receive your patent. That's the typical amount of time between starting the patent search and receiving the patent. Add in any additional time for marketing and selling your product or license.

Are you ready to take the plunge? Can you afford it?

Small Business Know-How Brown Bag Breakfast

2005-01-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

Forwarded by Mark B. Gydesen

The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC) is presenting a "Small Business Know-How Brown Bag Breakfast" workshop on January 12, 2005. The workshop "Small Business Marketing Strategies" will run from 7:30-9:30 A.M. The workshop will be held at the FLCC’s Institute building, located at 4340 Lakeshore Drive in Canandaigua. Sponsored by the Small Business Development Centers at Finger Lakes Community College and SUNY Brockport, the workshop is designed to provide small business owners with essential skills and information. The workshop is free for Chamber of Commerce members, and just $5.00 per person for non-members. Pre-registration is required. Please call the SBDC at (585) 394-3500, ext. 7660 to register.

Rochester Most Entrepreneurial City in NY

2005-01-06T23:36:00.000-05:00

According to Entrepreneur.com, Rochester ranks 25th in the list of Top 50 Entrepreneurial Cities in the nation. This makes it the most entrepreneurial in New York, ahead of Buffalo (at #33) and New York City (#46).

The rankings are based on the average number of new business licenses and DBA registrations, and the number of utility patents, issued in the Metropolitan Statistical Areas.

Lab for Social Computing

2005-01-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

My discovery of this morning is RIT's Lab for Social Computing (LSC).

"The purpose of the LSC is to engage in research, technology development, and education related to social computing--the use of technology to facilitate social and collaborative activities."

This means blogs (like this one), message boards, webinars, wikis, and all those other tools that are popping up on the Internet that either a) help people collaborate toward common goals despite being on opposite sides of the world, or b) cause people to spend countless hours in front of their computer when they should be doing something constructive like watching reruns of Friends.

Towards this end, the LSC is hosting Seminar: Weblogs and Wikis and Friendsters (Oh, My!) on Friday, January 7th, in the Golisano College auditorium (70-1400) from 3-4:30pm.

Will I see you there?

Mars Rover Still Going Strong

2005-01-04T14:14:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've already heard that the Mars Rovers are still working (far longer than had been planned), but even so this article on LinuxInsider should be an inspiration, especially for those of us who like Space stories.

I seem to recall an issue being raised about nine months ago - NASA hadn't budgeted to continue the mission, and were going to shut it down. Fortunately they didn't!

How about you? Are you able to handle success that lasts longer than expected?

Watch Out Where Those Huskies Go!

2005-01-04T08:58:00.000-05:00

This post is inspired by a brief article on Inc.com called From Mushing to Management. The article itself isn't so great, but it suggested the title of this post to me, which I had to use!

Then, in the interest of fact-checking, I had to track down where the title came from. Frank Zappa, of course! His website is pretty cool for a dead guy!

Will HP Buy Kodak?

2005-01-03T21:37:00.000-05:00

An interesting speculation discovered in this article on SFGate.com: "Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler, in a new study by the Cambridge, Mass., firm, makes a case for such cross-industry acquisitions as Hewlett-Packard Co. buying Eastman Kodak Co."

The article is a warm-up to the Consumer Electronics Show being held starting Wednesday in Las Vegas, which seems this year to be focusing on technology mergers.

On a related note, Investor's Business Daily has a press release from Kodak about a reception they're hosting on Thursday for members of the investment community who will be attending the show. The press release includes access information for a conference call during the reception, which will be recorded and available for later listening.

Should HP buy Kodak? What do you think?

Creating The Right Team

2005-01-03T15:27:00.000-05:00

While I'm on organizational issues, here's an article on How To Create The Right Team For Your Company which I found on Ecademy. What do you think?

Ways to Structure a Company

2005-01-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

I came across an article at SCORE titled There Are a Variety of Ways to Structure a Corporation or LLC. This is a useful overview of the options available to someone setting up a company or organization. (Seeing as how the group sponsoring this blog is going through some restructuring, I felt it was rather timely!)

The Envelopes, Please

2005-01-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

Rochester needs some awards, don't you think? How about a few like these found in the New York Times?

What awards should be given out for 2004, and to whom?

Rochester 2005 Growth Forecast

2005-01-01T22:07:00.000-05:00

The Democrat & Chronicle is not terribly optimistic about Rochester's growth prospects for this next year, according to this article. The concensus among the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Center for Governmental Research, and the Rochester Business Alliance is that economic growth in 2005 will be flat, due in part to more job cuts at Kodak and other manufacturing firms, and offset by growth in eduction and health care.

Are You A 'Pure Entrepreneur'?

2004-12-31T12:39:00.000-05:00

Are you:

loopy and obsessed?
driven by a belief that a major shift is coming?
a solo enterprise, funded by credit cards, consulting projects, and second mortgages?
focused more on producing a product that people will find useful than on figuring out how you'll make money from it?
believing that everything is possible?

Read this article from The Boston Globe to find out more about dealing with your curse!

Open Source Predictions

2004-12-31T12:17:00.000-05:00

LinuxInsider is predicting a Happy New Year for open source software.

According to the article, you should look for more companies to start taking open source software seriously. As a result, expect software buyers to demand full disclosure of which parts were not entirely developed by the seller and are subject to other licenses. You should also expect to see legal due diligence checklists add a section covering open source, checking for both inbound and outbound open-source licenses.

Something for those of us who buy, sell, and develop software to think about!

Patent Services

2004-12-30T10:13:00.000-05:00

I recently came across a short list of local companies offering Intellectual Property Services.

At the same time a competing list of local Patent Searchers came up.

It's interesting to note that Technosystems Services Corporation (from the first list) is also doing business as INVENTION SUBMISSION CORPORATION-ISC (from the second list).

If you know of other local companies that offer similar services, please let me know.

The Year According to EBay

2004-12-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

This article at USA Today gives an interesting perspective on what people were really interested in buying and selling this past year.

Between the descriptions of the Virgin Mary cheese sandwich and rocker Bryan Adams' unwashed socks, you'll find interesting observations on what people are looking to buy, and sell, right now.

EBay - "It's a societal seismometer."

New Technology Measures Document Intent

2004-12-28T11:53:00.000-05:00

According to this article on Sci-Tech Today, Steven Harrington at Xerox, J. Fernando Naveda at RIT, and Rhys Price Jones at IBM are developing the science of what documents mean -- and intend to mean. They hope to automate the process so that your next PowerPoint presention conveys its meaning more clearly and acurately.

Assuming you intend to be clear and accurate!

For ideas about how to present information clearly (or not!) please visit the Gallery of Data Visualization, especially their "best" and "worst" statistical graphics.

Proposed Elimination of Deduction for State Taxes

2004-12-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Bush administration has been talking about scrapping the federal deduction for state and local taxes as part of a broader plan to revamp the nation's tax system.

New York, which currently has the second-highest income tax rate, would be hit hard, with residents losing as much as $37 billion annually in federal tax deductions.

Is this an effort to punish "blue" states after the recent presidential election? Let us know what you think.

Rochester Area Small Business Development Centers

2004-12-24T09:09:00.000-05:00

I woke this morning to a blurb on the radio about local Empire Zones. Then I saw an article in Business Strategies about programs to aid economic development.

I got the hint. Here are links to Rochester area Small Business Development Centers.

Let's start close to home. The Small Business Development Center at SUNY Brockport serves the counties of Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, and Wayne. It's offering a Start Your Own Business Workshop in Canandaigua on 01/26/2005.

The Small Business Development Center at Niagara County Community College serves the counties of Niagara, Orleans, Livingston, Erie, and Genesee. It has an outreach office at SUNY Geneseo.

You can find the locations of all New York State's Small Business Development Centers here. The caption on the map states "We take pride in knowing that no business in New York is more than 30 miles from any of our offices," but it looks like some of those miles are a lot longer than others!

P.S. The "uber-site" for all of this information is part of the state's I Love New York presence on the Web.

Rochester Area Business Incubators

2004-12-23T23:04:00.000-05:00

I found this list of Rochester area business incubators in the new (January) issue of Business Strategies. I couldn't find this list on their website, so I've re-entered it here (I also labeled the links and corrected the typos I found):

ABC Enterprise Center
Mancuso Business Development Group
High Tech Rochester
Cornell Biotechnology Institute : Center for Advanced Technology
RIT High Technology Incubator

As usual, if you know of any other Rochester area business incubators that should be on this list, either add comments to this article or contact me directly.

SCORE Rochester's January Workshops

2004-12-23T08:56:00.000-05:00

SCORE Rochester has two workshops coming up in January:

Jan. 12, 2005 - Prepare Your Own Business Plan
Jan. 13, 2005 - Small Business Start-Up & Survival (four sessions)

If you know of any other workshops or seminars coming up in the next month, please let me know.

San Francisco Examiner to Create Rochester Examiner?

2004-12-23T08:27:00.000-05:00

I was doing a search for Rochester patent news articles, and came across this one about billionaire Philip Anschutz trademarking the name "Examiner" for use here in Rochester, among other places.

You may be familiar with the name of the San Francisco Examiner which once was the flagship of William Randolph Hearst's media empire. It now is a free weekday tabloid owned by Anschutz, who ranks 33rd among Forbes' richest 400 Americans.

This doesn't sound to me like new venture capital coming into the community. Instead it sounds like City Newspaper may be receiving some competition.

Trillium Invests in E-chx Inc.

2004-12-18T17:57:00.000-05:00

According to this article in the Democrat & Chronicle, Trillium Lakefront Partners III has made its first venture capital investment, in E-chx Inc.

Although the investment amount was not disclosed, the article says that the fund was built to distribute $2 million to $5 million per investment. A little bit larger than most of Rochester's entrepreneurs require.

E-Chx, a payroll service company with headquarters in Brighton's Canal View Office Park, currently employs 19 people here, along with an unspecified number in Atlanta, GA.

Trillium Group LLC also manages the Monroe Fund, the venture capital fund set up by Monroe County and a number of banks, corporations, and other local institutions.

See also this article in the Rochester Business Journal.

RIPN Roster of Volunteers Survey

2004-12-17T13:31:00.000-05:00

County Executive Maggie Brooks has asked RIPN to provide a list of people who would be interested and available to assist her team by providing input and guidance on various projects and/or initiatives. You can participate by filling out their Roster of Volunteers survey form.

Google Partners with Oxford, Harvard & Others to Digitize Libraries

2004-12-17T11:55:00.000-05:00

Google is working with libraries at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library to digitize books in their collections and make them accessible via Google Print. Find out more...

While this is not a completely new idea (see Project Gutenberg), it could have an impact on the cost and availability of information for your business, especially if you broker information or do research for clients.

How do you think this will affect you?

Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!)

2004-12-17T10:47:00.000-05:00

Like the Monkees said, "Look out! Here comes tomorrow!" (The fact that I remember such things shows my age!)

I just found out about the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, offered by the University of Rochester, which introduces middle and high school students to a course of project-based, hands-on entrepreneurial education.

These kids could be your competition. But would that be such a bad thing?

New Business Filings Database

2004-12-16T11:16:00.000-05:00

One of the things many small businesses want to know, if only so they don't feel so alone, is what other businesses have recently been formed in their area. The Democrat & Chronicle's New Business Filings database allows you to search for Rochester-area start-ups by date, town, and keyword.

Just another wrench for your toolbox!

The Other Side of Outsourcing

2004-12-15T21:31:00.000-05:00

by Richard Blazey

We hear lots of complaints about American jobs lost to workers in China and India. I recently had occasion to see a silver lining to this otherwise dark cloud. I was looking for an opportunity for one of my clients to manufacture a product in China. He had been told that his comfort liners for bicycle helmets had to be made in China because that was where all of the bicycle helmet manufacturers were now located. So I arranged a meeting for my client with a local Chinese Export/Import dealer. What I learned at that meeting was an eye-opener.

The dealer said that he couldn’t help my client for two reasons. The first was that he had a different mission, exporting high value American made goods to China. We often think of the Chinese market as a 1.2 billion low income customers for inexpensive products, but that is an incomplete and incorrect view.

The dealer pointed out that the new world of commerce has created high income Chinese who want to buy products perceived by them as high value, and to those Chinese those high value goods are American (and European). The exporter was busily arranging to export Zweigle’s hot dogs to China.

I said, "Who in China has ever heard of Zweigle’s white hots?" and he replied, "You would be surprised how many Chinese either attended or know someone who attended the University of Rochester." I guess they developed the taste for Zweigle’s at local picnics. Maybe there is also a market for Buffalo chicken wings?

The other thing he told me was to forget trying to convince Chinese bicycle helmet manufacturers to buy American helmet liners. "These Chinese factories," he said, "are just captive satellites of the American parent companies. They make what they are told and compete to be able to supply at the lowest possible price because the American companies play one of them off against the other. The American companies that told your client that they had no power over the manufacturing of their helmets were lying to your client."

All in all it was a very interesting and surprising conversation.

Richard Blazey is managing member of Business Metamorphosis LLC, an innovation services company focused on intellectual asset management and technology startup businesses and located in Rochester, New York.

Starting a For-Profit Small Business in the U.S.

2004-12-15T17:14:00.000-05:00

I recently came across this page on Starting a For-Profit Small Business in the U.S. which is a pretty comprehensive set of guidelines for starting up a business. A very dull looking page, but very useful.

Serendipity and Spyware Removal

2004-12-15T12:44:00.000-05:00

I was reading a Marketing Sherpa article on the outlook for Affiliate Marketing in 2005 which talks about using desktop applications for marketing your products. One of the related links points to Benjamin Edelman's blog on adware and spyware, which gets into (among other things) discussions on End User License Agreements and recent laws that are supposed to reduce the amount of spyware PC users have to contend with.

His blog led me to The Spyware Warrior Guide to Anti-Spyware Testing by Eric L. Howes, which is a truly scary set of test results on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of popular anti-spyware software.

A number of local entrepreneurs (including me!) rely on Nick Francesco's Security Tango instructions to keep our computers running smoothly. After reading the Spyware Warrior's test results, I think Nick's going to have to add a few more steps to his dance!

Catching the fire

2004-12-15T08:43:00.000-05:00

I heard this report on WXXI about the volunteer effort to place an ad in the NY Times for the free "Firefox" browser. On looking into it further I discovered that the effort (which was wildly successful, by the way) occurred at the end of October. The effort was organized by a website called SpreadFirefox.com, and was successful in raising over $250,000 in ten days.

Check out this press release for more inspiration. (Think anyone in Rochester could put together an effort like this?)

Firms intend to add staff

2004-12-14T16:58:00.000-05:00

According to this article in the Rochester Business Journal, Rochester area businesses forecast job growth over the next three months.

How about you? Are you planning to add employees? For that matter, do you have any employees to begin with?

Center for Civic Entrepreneurship

2004-12-13T17:06:00.000-05:00

This article in the Rochester Business Journal describes the Center for Civic Entrepreneurship which was announced today by Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks.

Do you think they have a clue?

Minimum Wage

2004-12-13T10:37:00.000-05:00

Another article in the Democrat & Chronicle - State to raise minimum wage - has me wondering how this will affect local entrepreneurs. Do you view this as good news, or bad for business? Or do you see it as having any affect at all?

I look forward to you comments!

E-ZNet Folds

2004-12-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

There was an article in yesterday's Democrat & Chronicle called E-ZNet's decline snares users that I hope everybody got a chance to read. (If not, follow the link.) It sounds like the E-ZNet fiasco was nearly as bad as when VivaNet died. And to think that at one time E-ZNet was doing so much business (at least with my employer) that I had their numbers in the speed-dial of my cellphone!

Rochester Business Networks

2004-12-10T08:17:00.000-05:00

Here are links to local business networks that I've been able to locate:

RPCN - Rochester Professional Consultants Network
High Tech Rochester
The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers
The Rump Group
Rochester Women's Network
the eBusiness Association
Toastmasters International (list of Rochester clubs)
Business Network International (Upstate NY)
Simon School's Alumni web pages
Rochester Venture Capital Group
Genesis Fund
Rochester Business Alliance
Connect Rochester
High Technology Business Council
Digital Rochester
Greater Rochester Jaycees
Rochester Young Professionals Network
National Association of Women Business Owners
Rochester Entrepreneurial Society
Rochester Black Business Association
SCORE, Rochester Chapter
Greater Rochester Quality Council
Financial Executives Networking Group
Regional Innovators' Participation Network
Rochester Green Business Network
The August Group
Better Business Bureau - Western NY
Finger Lakes Entrepreneurs’ Forum

If you know of any others that should be in this list, please leave a comment!

RPCN Annual Tax Update Presentation

2004-12-09T11:05:00.000-05:00

The RPCN - Rochester Professional Consultants Network's: 'Annual Tax Update' presentation will be held Friday, Dec. 10, at 8:00 am. The presenter is Sharon Ziegler (filling in for John Foote).

Other Rochester Area Blogs

2004-12-08T12:40:00.000-05:00

Let's kick off a list of Rochester-area business blogs. The one I've been able to find (other than my own) is Lip-Sticking. I'm sure there are others out there, I just haven't found them yet!

If you know of any, please post them in the comments.

Mission Statement

2004-12-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

The Rochester Entrepreneurs Resource blog is

news, information, and opinion
of, by, and for entrepreneurs
in and around Rochester, NY.

It is being edited by Kurt Schweitzer. Please direct all article submissions to rochent@kurtschweitzer.com.