The Funding Friday Concept

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.



2 Responses to “The Funding Friday Concept”

  1. […] 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 […]

  2. […] ended up touching on funding (among other things.)  One of the reasons we started the Funding Friday (#ff$) conversations on […]