The Darden School (UVA’s MBA and graduate business program) announced today the opening of a new building and innovation lab that will provide “experiential, team-based and collaborative learning opportunities, such as a design-based studio where students can transform concepts and ideas into physical prototypes.” The grand opening event will be March 19th and will include remarks by New York Times bestselling-author Daniel Pink.

From the website announcement:

“Darden’s new i.Lab is a physical manifestation of leading scholarship on innovation that has emerged from the Batten Institute and the Darden School over the past several years,” said Elizabeth O’Halloran, Managing Director, Batten Institute

Anyone out there considering quitting their job and starting a company? Here’s a great video clip of Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com) explaining his decision to leave a great job on Wall Street and place a bet on “this new internet thing”. He describes creating a “Regret Minimization Framework” which sounds a lot like this quote from President Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

What: First Wednesdays meetup. Where: Escafe (on Downtown Mall, by Omni). When: 7pm-ish to whenever. What: Hanging out with Cville’s startup, tech and internet community. Why: Because going to a bar on a Wednesday can be a business expense…

Come out tonight to Escafe and hang out with some of Charlottesville’s entreprenurial, startup and tech crowd. Drink specials include $2 Bud Light $5 Orange Crush.

Tweet something with #FirstWednesdays to let people know you are coming. If you haven’t already, join the mailing list to get notified of upcoming events.

See you tonight!

A little inspiration and motivation for the middle of the week:

But most importantly, remember when you were a kid? When everything was within your reach, and then say to yourself, quietly, but with determination… it still is.

Sidenote: This is a great example of marketing. The video was created by Grasshopper, a virtual phone system company (which Cloudbrain uses). Do they describe their product? Nope, they just speak directly to what their customers are really trying to do: build a business and change the world.

Search Mojo (search engine marketing) is looking for an Account Executive, Link Specialist and a Web Developer. Scitent (web-based medical training) is looking for a Web Applications Developer and an eLearning Designer. Advanced Network Systems is looking for an IT Network Engineer. Rimm-Kaufman Group (search marketing) is looking for developers and analysts.

Job posting of the week: This company knows what they are looking for. Way to just come out and say it: Model / Receptionist Wanted (Rio Rd.)

Two big issues I have with job postings (sorry, a rant):

1. Not using the company’s name. I understand that some organizations are very secretive (Apple / CIA) and that some job postings could tip off a competitor to a company’s upcoming plans. However, for the vast majority of companys, there is no good reason to not mention the name of the company is the posting. What are you trying to hide? Wouldn’t you be more likely to get good, high quality applicants (and cover letters) if you let those applicants research your company before contacting you? Any job posting should be a marketing / sales pitch: You are selling your company to potential candidates hoping they apply. Don’t hide.
2. Describing an experience, high-skilled job position and then saying you are looking for someone that just “wants to establish himself” (code for “we aren’t going to pay you a lot but you should be grateful to get anything”). Either you want an experienced professional or you want someone just getting started (new blood, creative, perspective etc.). Neither are bad, just come out and say it.

Do you run a local businesses that is doing well, despite the economic downturn?  As the Cavalier Daily reports, the The Tayloe Murphy Center at the Darden School wants to hear from you.  Starting April 1st, they will be accepting applications for the Tayloe Murphy Resilience Awards Competition with the aim of promoting “innovative and thought-leading entrepreneurs who know how to utilize unique strengths of the community even in a challenging economy.”  Awards include a week-long executive education course at Darden and promotional opportunities.

Props to Darden for wanting to engage with the local startup scene.  Of course, if you run a startup that is currently struggling, you are still out of luck.  Cavalier Daily article here.

Search Mojo is a B2B-focused search engine marketing company.  Like any good marketing firm, they handle the entire funnel process for lead generation – from pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to landing page creation, conversion tracking and analytics.  Founded in 2005 by Janet Miller, a online marketing veteran, Search Mojo’s eight staff work out of their new office off the Downtown Mall behind the Lexis Nexis building (what is the name of that building?).  Of course, per the rules of online marketing, their staff is very active in social media and can be found on Twitter here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Ars Technica has a story up entitled Virginia puts schools on high-fiber diet with broadband funds.  Tom Perriello announced in a press conference that Virginia K-12 schools will be getting more than twenty million dollars in federal funding in order to lay over 500 miles of new fiber optic internet cable.  The new high speed connections with be coming to schools in the “southern part of the state” as well as several Appalachian counties surround Virginia Tech.

orderTopia is new on the scene – launched at the end of last year by Dan Epstein and Brian Williford.  You may have already met Dan while eating Downtown – he’s also the owner of Eppies.  They have a pretty ambitious goal – the re-think the whole point-of-sale systems and ordering processes of restaurants and retail stores.

Currently, new businesses have to invest in expensive touch-screen computers or complicated software (think QuickBooks) as well as purchase bar code scanners, computers etc.  These systems are expensive to install, difficult to maintain and rarely integrate with a store’s other operations (like online ordering).  orderTopia hopes to change all that by offering a cloud-based point-of-sale system that easily integrates with a merchants website as well as connects to customer’s social profiles.  The cloud POS runs on cheap hardware (i.e. a laptop or iPhone) and maintenance and upgrades are handled automatically behind-the-scenes (picture the difference between purchasing Microsoft Outlook and using Gmail).  And because the software already lives on the Internet, its an easy step to connect with customers where they hang out – Facebook, Twitter etc.

orderTopia is already up and running with several local merchants including Revolutionary Soup, Mellow Mushroom, O’Suzanna and more.

Hotelicopter began as VibeAgent, a Darden Incubator company started by MBA grads Adam Healey and Charles Seilheimer.  The plan was to create a social hotel search engine based on user-generated hotel reviews and “vibe ratings” (i.e. romantic, adventurous, classy etc.).  They raised 3 million dollars in funding at the end of 2008 and promptly moved in to some of the best office space on the Downtown Mall.  In April 2009 they changed their name to “Hotelicopter” and launched a new website with an april fools marketing campaign that went viral and brought them national attention.  The new focus of the website is to provide the largest selection of hotel search information by aggregating all the other travel search engines (orbitz, travelocity etc.).