Did You Know 4.0 – Fall 2009

Even more mind blowing than the original…

More Than Just Surf City

Another much deserved re-post from friend and CEO of NextSpace Jeremy Neuner. If you’ve even heard of Santa Cruz, you should read this… in full.

-Sean

More Than Just Surf City
4th August, 2009
written by jeremy neuner

By now, almost everyone in the entire known universe has seen the Huffington Post’s mashup of “Sarah Palin vs. That Crazy Santa Cruz Lady.” Whatever you may think of the former Veep candidate, the young Santa Cruzan in the video—ranting to the city council about pesticides and slavery in an attempt to, um, participate in our local democracy—doesn’t do much to dispel a popular stereotype of Santa Cruz: that ours is a quirky, un-serious town.

I won’t try to deny that Santa Cruz is a quirky place. In fact, I wouldn’t want it any other way. What the rest of the world may see as quirky, most of us Santa Cruzans see as tolerant, welcoming, creative, and innovative. Still, I’m troubled by the possibility that the viral spread of the Huffington Post video is giving our fair seaside town a bad rap. So in the interest of providing a more complete version of the character of Santa Cruz, please take a spin through the following few items:

–In this short video, Greg Gumble (yep, THE Greg Gumble) from “The Economic Report” shows why Santa Cruz is a unique ecosystem that boasts a balanced lifestyle, a history of innovation, a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and a highly educated workforce. These are the exact ingredients for a strong, vibrant economy and we’ve got more than our fair share of those ingredients in Santa Cruz.

–Santa Cruz is loaded with creative designers, scrappy entrepreneurs, and savvy business people. This video, produced and directed by NextSpace member Dusty Nelson, features a who’s who of local educators, engineers, bankers, designers, government officials, and CEOs, all offering their pitch on why Santa Cruz is a great place to work, live, and play. Take 10 minutes and watch the whole thing. It’s an awfully damn impressive piece of filmmaking and showcases some of the world-class talent in this town.

–Speaking of world-class talent, check out this Business Week article about Santa Cruz-based Plantronics and Altec Lansing. Together, these companies racked up six innovation awards at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Tens of millions of people all over the world use their award-winning products and every one of those products was designed right here in Santa Cruz.

–What about the money? You need a pile of it to build great companies, not an easy task in these cash-strapped times. But local social networking start-up UserVoice recently landed $800,000 in seed stage capital. AlgaeOMEGA, a bio-fuels company spun out of research at NASA and UC Santa Cruz, received another $800,000. NextSpace member Carmen Kubas led her company, Lightfoot Industries, to a third place finish in a regional venture capital competition. And local heroes 12seconds.tv are luring investors with their new iPhone app and their huge community of users. Want to invest in some of the hottest new companies across a range of industries? Look no further than “quirky” Santa Cruz.

Like any city, Santa Cruz has lots of faces. We’re a surfing town, a tourist town, and a university town. Despite our depiction in the Huffington Post, Santa Cruz is a town that’s building an enviable ecosystem of business, lifestyle, and innovation. What’s our secret? We take ourselves seriously, just not too seriously.

Santa Cruz – Our Quality of Life is Good for Your Bottom Line

Yet Another Win for Geeks in Santa Cruz

Congratulations to Rich, Marcus, Emily and Scott @UserVoice!

UserVoice Raises Funding, White-Labels User Feedback Facilitator

Expect some more awesome things coming from UserVoice and a few other rock’in statups here in town…

My Morning on KUSP’s GeekSpeak

Had a great time this morning with GeekSpeak host Lyle Troxell and his fellow geeks Drew Meyer, Miles Elam, and Ben Jaffe at KUSP’s GeekSpeak.  Thank you Drew for setting this up, thank you Lyle for making it happen and thank you Santa Cruz Geeks for all your support pre/during/post the broadcast!

Check out the 12second.tv Vid I took Prior to the Show Starting

Listen to the Broadcast (meat of it starts @ half way through)

2008 Was a Great Year for Santa Cruz Geeks

At the dinner we had last week I sat down about 30 minutes before the event started and began writing down all the different and amazing things that took place in 2008 that either directly or indirectly spawned out of the Geek Dinners we had started only a little over a year prior. I also started listing some of the movers and shakers in the room specifically providing infrastructure to help the technology and entrepreneurial community in town. What I came up with is below, and I gotta say, I’m still freaking impressed and very much looking forward to an even more successful 2009.

MEMBERSHIP
-grew from Sol Lipman, Margaret Rosas, David Beach and Sean Tario to nearly 200 amazing members within a single year

EVENTS
-Numerous CoWorking Jellys at Quiddities’ former offices and at a stellar rental on the beach
-FreelanceCamp
-Public Media Camp
-Numerous Santa Cruz Design and Innovation Center Events
-Geeks on the Beach – Dinner and short lived bonfire
-Holiday and Halloween Parties
-Santa Cruz New Tech Alliance Meetup
-iPhone Application Meetup

COMPANIES MAKING HUGE STRIDES
-12seconds.tv (spawned from Beach and Sol connecting at a dinner)
-UserVoice.com (convinced founders to move from SF and Wisconsin to Santa Cruz because of the geek dinner!)
-RideSpring.com (look out for even bigger things from Paul and RideSpring in 2009!)
-RoomQuick.com (You’ll be hearing a lot about these folks in 2009, guaranteed!)
-ProductOps.com (Bob said, “why the heck not, done it before and I’ll do it again,” and thus, ProductOps was born in 2008)

INFRASTRUCTURE
-Marty Collins and The Digital Media Factory on the West Side (not new, but Marty did some serious growing last year!)
-Jeremy, Ryan and Veronica and NextSpace downtown
-Santa Cruz Geeks Google Group
-www.SantaCruzGeeks.com
-Local geek Peter Koht hired as the Economic Development Manager for the City, who was able to launch within the first month in the position www.CruzBusiness.com

OTHER STUFF
-Mike Brogan, Acting Director of Marketing for Cruzio Internet, elected as the Technology Director on the Board of Directors for Santa Cruz Next
-UCSC Baskin School of Engineering starting to spin off some interesting and viable companies such as www.pergamumsystems.com and putting plans in place for some engaging and entrepreneurial focused events coming up in 2009

So, that’s what I’ve got off the top of my head… what’s missing?

True Innovation is Undercapitalized

Most shocking and telling is slide #13 which shows that the amount of money going into VC firms now exceeds the total economic value created by VC firms…

TheFunded – Canarie

The NextSpace Investors Forum

Today is the final day for submissions for our November 19th Forum.  So stoked to be a part of making this happen here in Santa Cruz – making the connections between local capital and local businesses!!!  If you want to learn more, below is the email I kicked to a few local networks talking about what we have planned… and better yet, if you want to participate on either side of the table for this event or future events, please contact me directly.

…………

Hey Everyone,

I would like to invite you to submit your business plans, slide decks, executive summaries (or anything else that tells us exactly how cool your company is) for the first meeting of the NextSpace Investors Forum.  As you may know, Jeremy Neuner and his partners opened NextSpace Coworking + Innovation http://www.nextspace.us to catalyze local ideas, local talent, and local capital in Santa Cruz to create
products, services, and solutions for the global marketplace.  You all have the ideas and talent.  Now, we’re hosting NextSpace Investors Forum to help you connect with local capital.

Jeremy and I are screening companies to attend the first meeting of NIF, which will be held at NextSpace the afternoon/evening of November 19th.  We’ll be selecting 3-5 local companies and inviting 8-12 local angel investors.  If selected, you’ll have the chance to pitch to these investors, get feedback, and start conversations that will hopefully lead to funding commitments.  Our aspiration is to increase
the quality of deal flow in Santa Cruz, and enhance Santa Cruz’s reputation as a place where ideas, talent, and capital come together to create great companies.  This first meeting of NIF is yet another step toward making this aspiration a reality.

What we need from you on/before November 12th.
1)    1 Page Fact Sheet on your company and company management
2)    2-4 Page Executive Summary
3)    Any other materials you think will help us get to know you and
your business

We’ll get back in touch with you no later than November 13th regarding acceptance, format, timelines, etc.  If you feel you need some help putting these materials together, please let us know ASAP as we can help guide you in the right direction.  Please note that this is not a competition, but we will only be able to select at most 5 companies to present at the opening session of NIF, so send us the best stuff you have!

If you have any questions about this meeting, please email us at jeremy@nextspace.us or sean.tario@gmail.com.

Thank you!

Jeremy Neuner and Sean Tario

Jeremy Neuner
Co-Founder and CEO
NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, Inc.
www.NextSpace.us
831-420-0710

Sean Patrick Tario
Local Geek, Community Evangelist and Entrepreneur
Sean.tario@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/seanpatricktario
408-482-9953

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