A very inspiring speech. After working for a couple of engineering firms, the federal government, and municipal governments I found my passion and started my own engineering business. I was fortunate to have your grandfather, Neil Evans, as a partner and knew his grandson, would do something very worthwhile in life.

Dan Van Dorpe

All I could think was ‘HOW IN THE HELL AM I SLEEPING WHEN THERE IS A WORLD GOING ON OUT THERE!” … If I hadn’t already taken the leap with Giant Thinkwell, I would be all over starting my journey right now!

Great speech Marc, you were born for this.

This is a great post. Thanks to Eric Apse who tweeted it.

I very much agree with your perspective. Large corporations have the resources to assist emerging companies in developing and scaling their businesses with a relatively small investment in time of key executives and financial and non-financial resources.

Our own startup, startupblvd.com, is based on this premise. Large corporations are actively trying to reach out to the entrepreneurial community BEYOND the traditional venture portfolios and banker referrals. They are seeking bootstrapped “tidy little businesses” that can be developed and grown into multi-million dollar business lines leveraging the corporation’s vast resources and networks.

Companies exemplifying this include IBM, Microsoft, Google, Verizon Business, Fidelity Investments, P&G, Coka-Cola, Battelle, to name a few. These corporations are either strongly committed or beginning to commit significant time from senior executives to support early stage companies.

We have found there is plenty of room for improvement in enabling those connections. Especially regarding your first point: platform agnostic. The moment entrepreneurs smell there is an intent from the large corporation to have a lock-in in the startups/small company’s business, they start to question the corporation’s real motivation. Comments like: “they want us to pay for expensive hardware down the road.” or “our valuation will suffer due to less marketability at the time of liquidity” surface, hampering the development of healthy partnerships between the large corporation and the small company.

Entrepreneurs like to work with people who are truly passionate about solving real problems in the market. Thus partners who are willing to work for the greater good, and not just with self-interest in mind, will develop a healthy brand image and good will in the innovation ecosystem.

I would love to connect with you to get your reaction to our project and find ways to collaborate.

Best,
Enrique

It’s so easy for large corps to forget how difficult cashflow can be for a startup. 60 days payment terms, may seem reasonable for mega-corp, but when you are small and bootstrapped 60 days can be the difference between life and death.

Lesson: If you are a corporation looking to get involved in the startup world, don’t just focus on developing your community links, check if your accounts department fast-tracks payments for small companies.

In other words… put your money where your mouth is