Plug and Play Tech Center Current University Relationship: Silicon Valley Furnished Office Space, Instant Office, Executive Suites, move in offices, Silicon Valley Incubator, month to month office space, instant technology office, angel investing, investment forum, plugandplaytechcenter.com

Current University Relationship

PnP visited East Coast Universities

Saeed Amidi, the CEO of Plug and Play Tech Center
Blerina Dhimo, Executive Assistant to the CEO and a Business Development Associate
Olga Grigoryeva, Business Relationship Manager and University Program Coordinator

All three of us have visited Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA and Cambridge, MA. It was our first weeklong business trip to the Universities. While on the trip we have collectively set up lots of interesting meetings at Cornell, Harvard, MIT and Babson College, along with very productive and exciting Venture Capitalist meetings.

Our first two days of the trip we have spent at the Big Spring Celebration at Cornell, in Ithaca, NY. There were lots of exciting things going on, the first day there was a graduate student business plan competition, Saeed Amidi our CEO got a chance to be on the panel of judges to see all of these great ideas. After the judging was over, we got a chance to witness the keynote address by the Entrepreneur of the Year, Howard P. Milstein, Chair, President and CEO of New York Private Bank & Trust. Mr. Milstein had a very motivational and inspirational story to tell, in a couple of words it boiled down to the fact that there is this "magical" method of trial and error. He also talked about how if he didn´t like something in other businesses he was dealing with, Mr. Milstein started his own business that did it right, which happened on numerous occasions! His answer to solving a problem was to start a business, and he succeeded each time.

The highlight of the next day was the Big Idea competition that Saeed and Olga got a chance to judge. These were some of the ideas that we have seen before, however the students were so excited to about their concepts and very passionate. We were very impressed to see that some of them actually had working products that were even bringing real revenue.

After we left Cornell, Friday evening to drive to our next hotel in Cambridge, there was so many exciting things to decide on the ride to Charles Hotel that we didn´t feel tired one bit! Bright and early on Saturday morning we took off to go to Harvard University, for their E-Trek 2008. It was a combination of kick off session by one of the professors of Entrepreneurship at Harvard (Joe Lassiter), different panels, networking and towards the end the pitches by students from Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Babson, and MIT. They were very simple 3 to 5 minute pitches with, a panel of judges asking typical investor questions on whether there is an actual business there. In the end it was closed off by a nice networking cocktail party, which was pretty exciting and gave the Plug and Play Team a chance to get a stronger relationship with the students!

Sunday we got an unexpected surprise of getting a chance to visit Babson College. It was very exciting to see this university, since it is a very entrepreneurial business school only university! Even in the dorms, there are different sections for the various concentration (I-Tower for finance focused students, E-Tower for Entrepreneurship focused students). We got to actually talk to most of the E-Tower students, which is 21 very entrepreneurial people! In the evening that same day we got to check out Cambridge Innovation Center, which is a really nice space, very cool and creatively messy!

Monday and Tuesday we went to go visit MIT and Harvard, along with a lot of Venture Capitalist meetings. To our surprise, a lot of the VCs (Venture Capitalists) in the Boston Area are still very much interested in the seed and early stage companies, as a contrast to the VCs in the Silicon Valley, where they have sort of retreated to doing less risky investments in later stages of funding and company lifecycle.

Monday - visited the founding father of entrepreneurship effort at MIT (Ed Roberts). He is a great guy, very excited and is still pretty involved with everything that is going on at MIT. Another exciting part was, Saeed gave a lunch talk to over 50 MIT students, and later we invited them to come have dinner with us at the Charles Hotel (of course not all showed up, but we got 10 people, which was a great success in our opinion).

Tuesday, we went back to Harvard to meet with more professors and students during the first half of the day. And later we managed to meet with a couple of very interesting Venture Firms on Winter Street, which is the equivalent of Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley. And one VC firm in downtown Boston!

Contact: Olga Grigoryeva