This is a continuing report from the weekly Innovation Breakfast.  Once again, conversations ended up touching on funding (among other things.)  One of the reasons we started the Funding Friday (#ff$) conversations on Twitter…

This morning’s conversation at Innovation Breakfast touched on information sources:  where do you get your information?  In today’s world, there is a wealth — an overwhelming wealth — of information.  There is so much information it is hard to know where to look first.

The question was asked, “Where do you find information on companies who have just gotten funding?”  (These are the companies who might be hiring.  Who are looking for services.  Who might be on the path to success.)  PE Hub was mentioned.  Someone else mentioned VentureFizz.  Also local news sources, Mass High Tech, Boston Business Journal and Scott Kirsner’s blog and Twitter-stream, report on some of the larger or noteworthy VC deals.

But it isn’t just VC money.  There are a lot of sources for funding dollars — when you don’t need millions of dollars you might be talking with angels, friends and family, or banks (loans.)  There are also state grants, federal grants — often very specific to an industry.  These fundings aren’t well publicized — often no one knows about it unless they are directly involved.

But knowledge of how others get funding is important in terms of lessons learned for those seeking funding.  Also, seeing another competing company getting funding may either discourage companies from getting into a space, or encourage them. (”They may have just gotten funded but we already have a product in the market!”)

Where do you find out who is on that critical path?

We started off the day thinking about bootstrapping.  The early conversations at Innovation Breakfast were about bootstrapping but we were quickly sidetracked with conversations about individual entrepreneurial ventures.  (This is a great group to get feedback from if you are working on the early stages of a project.)

However, before the end of the formal introductions, things shifted again and we were immersed in a conversation about how you raise funds and fund your venture while working full time.  18 months ago the majority of entrepreneurs we ran across were entrepreneurs because they were not working.  They had the opportunity to follow their dream and build something new because they had been pushed out of their comfy nests into the cold.  (i.e. “I lost my job, now I am an entrepreneur.”)  Some of these entrepreneurs were casting about for their raison d’etre.  At the other end of the spectrum were entrepreneurs with fully-fleshed out business plans and product prototypes.

Times have changed and over the last few months, we’ve had more visitors to Innovation Breakfast who have jobs and entrepreneurial dreams.  They have a concept, products and business plans and full-time jobs.  So, how do you fund your new venture when you have a job?  How do you make time to pursue funding, or, if you are creating a business yourself (to avoid hiring people), how do you find time to do that? Sleep seems to be the first thing to go.  At MassChallenge the busiest in-office hours seem to be afternoon and evening, because people were working until late the previous evening.  What about you?  How are you managing the search for funds if you are also working?

Every week we have some fascinating conversations at Innovation Breakfast.  We do introductions, and get to know you and your company but the far-ranging discussions on the industry are among the most compelling reasons to come out to Waltham for coffee on Friday mornings.  In keeping with the “Funding Friday” theme (#ff$), we asked for people’s thoughts around getting funded.  One experienced entrepreneur told the story of his funding adventures, calling funding a black art, what works once, might not work again.

There are various “happy endings” in funding from the entrepreneurs’ point of view.   Funds to go forward building a company.  The sale of a company or the product or the IP.  The incorporation of technology or the product into another company or another product.   Sometimes the intended or expected outcome gets kicked to the curb and something else happens.  Looking for funding?  Maybe it will end up in a sale.  Looking for a sale?  Maybe you will end up with partners.   People looking for funding need to keep their options open.

For the last several weeks, we’ve been meeting with small groups at the Cafe on the Common in Waltham for Friday morning chats and to see what connections we can make for folks.  There’s been a continuing theme:  money…it makes the world go round and sometimes, just a little bit would make all the difference in the world to a company on the brink of something big, or small, or medium sized…

Mass Innovation Nights and Innovation Breakfast would like to “hijack” Follow Friday (#ff) in the Boston area and turn every Friday into a Funding Friday (#ff$).

As background for our non-Twitter audience:  One of the regular trending topics on Twitter is “Follow Friday” (#ff) a weekly opportunity to point out your friends and make suggestions of good people to follow on Twitter.  Meanwhile, one of the biggest issues in the Boston region entrepreneurial community is the inability to connect companies with capital.  (You see where we are going with this…)

So, from now on, Fridays are Funding Fridays…if you use the usual #ff hashtag on Twitter and add a dollar sign #ff$, it will blend right in with the #ffs.  (Twitter seems to ignore the $ when forming the links…)

Funding Fridays are a day when the entrepreneurial and innovation economy players can focus on:

* Connecting companies and capital
* Pointing out companies that have received funding and giving a big “woo-hoo”
* Creating and highlighting blog posts/articles and resources on how to get funded and success factors for funding.  Feel free to #ff$ the people who help fund companies.

Innovation Breakfast, which recently switched over from a monthly speaker program to a weekly Open Coffee style event, will be blogging about “Funding Fridays” right here and leading the charge.  Every Friday, we’ll be live blogging on the Innovation Breakfast website about funding, companies that need funding, and strategies and resources for funding.  We’ll also be leading the live discussion at Café on the Common on Main Street in Waltham from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. in our weekly networking meeting, and asking our friends there for their ideas.

What you can do to help:

* Turn your Follow Friday tweeting into Funding Friday tweeting – look for resources, funding news and people and highlight companies that need funding.  Go right ahead – use that #ff but add a dollar sign to it! Use #ff$
* Help spread the word.  Remember, the next company to get funded could be your own.

You always try to go out with a bang…and, boy, did we ever.  Bill Warner’s talk on “Startups from the Heart” was fantastic!  (Videos are below the break.)  And well received by our largest crowd so far.  (Yes, we opened up “ticket sales” quite a bit beyond the usual small group.)  And, if you were there, you heard us say that Innovation Breakfast is ending.  But, wait, what’s that on the horizon?

Starting in June, we’re kicking off a new model Innovation Breakfast.  We’re going to partially adopt the #OpenCoffee model and move Innovation Breakfast to Waltham’s Cafe on the Common (677 Main Street, at the corner of Main and Moody.)  Over this weekend, we’ll be switching out the Innovation Breakfast website to support this new model.  More soon!  (Oh, yeah, and suggestions welcomed, nay, encouraged!)  And, if you aren’t already a Cambridge “OpenCoffee at Andala” regular, check it out on Meetup.com for the scoop.

More soon!

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Our May 21, 2010 Innovation Breakfast will feature TechStars mentor and serial entrepreneur, Bill Warner.  Bill will be discussing how to “Build Your Startup From the Heart.”  

Much of the advice that entrepreneurs get regards how to “follow their head.”  How to make logical decisions about their business.  This month’s Innovation Breakfast talk will look at tools for the other part of the startup equation: how to follow your heart. Bill Warner will discuss his theories about where the energy comes from within founders, and how to use that energy to make a startup most successful.

RSVP now:  this will be a popular event!  (Also, interested in funding your venture? Check-out this great event too!)

In addition, in keeping with our continuing innovation theme, attendees also have the opportunity to purchase half-price copies of the book, “Drawing On Brilliance”.  Discover a treasure trove of patent lithographs – discarded by the U.S. Patent Office, then rescued from destruction by Randy Rabin.  Randy and Jackie Bassett uncover the secrets to innovation success behind the Wright Bros., Heddy Lamar, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, W.H. Carrier and hundreds of others.

William (Bill) J. Warner is the founder of Avid Technology, Inc. and Wildfire Communications, Inc., FutureBoston, Inc, and Warner Research, LLC.  Avid (Nasdaq: AVID) makes video, audio and film editing systems that make, manage and move media.  Mr. Warner won an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1993 for the development of the Avid Media Composer. In 1999, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Avid with the Oscar® for its success in transforming the editing process in filmmaking. Mr. Warner accepted the award and was shown on the worldwide telecast.

Wildfire developed an innovative electronic secretary that used speech recognition to manage one’s phone calls and messages. Wildfire was sold to Orange, PLC in 2000.

Since 2000, Warner has shared his time between work with non-profits, and a focus on helping entrepreneurs.

In 2002, Warner started a shared-space center for entrepreneurs called the Collaboration Space at Warner Research. This center is now called the Brickyard Collaboration Space and provides low-cost space to early stage entrepreneurs. Many successful companies have started here and moved on to get additional capital for growth.

In addition, Mr. Warner has acted as an angel investor for eight startups, and for three non-profits. The startups are in such diverse areas as 3D animation, email-based blogging, event networking, ad insertion for online videos, visual environments for nightclubs, shared calendars, and compensation design and management. The non-profits are involved with historic/current mapping of Boston for planning purposes; a film school, and an open-source mechanical design approach for new vehicles for people with disabilities.

Mr. Warner is also working on book about entrepreneurship called “Intention and Invention.” It explores how to optimize the connection between what drives an entrepreneur, and how they go about making inventions that spring from that drive.

Mr. Warner has been a long-time trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and has taught classes for entrepreneurs through that organization. In 2008, Warner created and co-chaired the MassTLC Innovation 2008 unConference.

Mr. Warner attended MIT and received a BSEE degree in 1980. Mr. Warner grew up in Millburn, NJ, and is an avid cyclist and photographer.

Bringing in Rachel Happe from the Community Roundtable was a sure thing.  Note only have I seen Rachel speak several times (and she’s always taught me something new) but the regular lunch time get-togethers hosted by Community Roundtable generally provoke some of the more interesting conversations I am involved in.

Like many/most of our Innovation Breakfast speakers, Rachel kept it casual, introducing everyone to the concept of how Community Roundtable works and setting us up for a conversation on things like:

• The difference between moderating an online community and true community management.  Moderators make sure content is appropriate & terms of service not being violated. Community managers deal with things at a higher level and looks at things like the goals of the community.
• How new community and social media tools are shortening sales and marketing funnels.
• How business strategy relates to your community strategy, if the first isn’t clear, the second won’t be either.
• Marketing’s role in community, often very content-oriented.
• Internal ownership of a community is very dependent on what the company thinks is important.
• Internal evangelism is very important to a community manager’s job.  Many community managers  say people don’t know what they do all day.
• Good community managers spend a lot of time on the back channel, behind the scenes.

I think if Rachel hadn’t had another appointment after our breakfast was over, we could have kept her there all day!

There’s some footage on our YouTube channel as well.  Thanks again to everyone who came out and contributed to the conversation, IBM Innovation Center for hosting us again and to Rachel for leading a terrific discussion!

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Our April Innovation Breakfast is scheduled for Friday, April 16 at 8:30 am at the IBM Innovation Center, 404 Wyman Street in Waltham.  We’ll be talking about Community Management and our discussion leader is Rachel Happe of The Community Roundtable, a peer network for community managers and social media practitioners.  RSVP now!

Rachel Happe (@rhappe) is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable and has over fifteen years of experience working with emerging technologies including enterprise social networking, ecommerce, and enterprise software applications. Prior to The Community Roundtable, Rachel served as a product executive at Mzinga, Bitpass, & IDe.  In addition, as a technology analyst, Rachel initiated IDC’s enterprise social software practice where she wrote groundbreaking research including The Power and Passion of Organic Communities: How Technology Can Be Used to Increase Discovery, Engagement, and Productivity;  The Social Enterprise: How Social Networking Changes Everything; and U.S. Social Networking Application 2008-2012 Forecast: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold. Rachel started her business career at PRTM as a Business Analyst focused on helping technology companies understand and improve their product development operations. She writes at The Social Organization.

Much thanks to the British Consulate and the UK Trade and Investment group who came to our rescue with a site for our March event.   We could have taken up their lovely space all day with the fascinating discussion kicked off by Nick Goggans from Conversion Associates.

We loaded up our YouTube channel with a five-part series covering much of the discussion.   We’ll share the first video here but definitely check out The Innovation Nights channel for footage from this event and others!

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This month’s Innovation Breakfast (Friday, March 19, 8:30 – 10:00 am at the UK Trade & Investments offices, One Broadway, Cambridge, MA, will feature Nick Goggans, the president of Conversion Associates, fresh off SXSW and a tour of several major newspaper publishing offices.  Nick will be leading a discussion on “The Future of the Modern Newspaper — a Golden Age or a Death Knell?” (RSVP now!)

If you hang around social media for more than 5 minutes, you know Paul Gillin, the author of two books on social media marketing that should be on every SocMed Marketer’s book shelf.  But you might not know that Paul is also the driver behind The Newspaper Deathwatch site.  The site chronicles the “Decline and the Rebirth of Journalism.”

But you don’t need to know Paul or be a regular reader of Deathwatch to know that the newspaper industry (and the publishing industry as a whole) has had a difficult time of it over the last few years. Nick, our discussion leader on March 19, thinks newspapers are at the dawn of a new Golden Age where finally the tools exist to shift from a business model based on impressions (difficult to measure) to one based on action.  Nick will be focusing the conversation on where the publishing industry is heading and we’re all looking forward to another stimulating morning!

IMPORTANT NOTE: We’re moving things to the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation.  If you haven’t been there before, please use our directions and review the parking map.  Look for the museum entrance underneath the smokestack.  If you are taking the commuter rail, the museum is right near by but is set back from the road and somewhat hidden.  (The museum is in the mill between the river and railroad tracks but parking in on the other side of the river.)