2009 NECINA Entrepreneurship Case Study Seminar

* Date and Time: Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 6:30 pm - 8:50 pm
* RSVP (Online Registration required): http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=192024
* Venue: IBM Innovation Center, 404 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451-1280
* Sponsor: IBM INNOVATION CENTER
* Fee:Member: $5.00; Non-member: $20.00
* Contacts: Harry Gao (harry@gnwLaser.com), Haifei Zhang (hfazhang@gmail.com)

Greetings everyone! NECINA continues its series of dynamic events with a seminar featuring case studies of two start-ups - Solar Engineering Solutions (SES) and WebNotes. In this session, these two entrepreneurial teams will discuss their ideas and products, share their experience in dealing with challenges of building their companies, and raise questions and solicit input from panelists and the general audience. There is a twist of the seminar format in that we encourage all audience to play a more active role in offering their perspective of how they would handle the challenges themselves.

The seminar will also feature an esteemed group of experienced, well-qualified panelists including John Manning of Deloitte & Touche, Jo Tango of Kepha Partners, who will provide feedback on these two presentations. Following the moderator's questions, the panelists will use the studies as a springboard to a more general discussion over best practices that will hopefully be helpful to all aspiring, current and future entrepreneurs. In short, the seminar will provide an opportunity for all audience members to learn the basic principles of being a successful entrepreneur.

* Agenda 6:30-7:00 pm: Networking
* 7:00-7:05 pm: Introduction of NECINA, Excubator Program, Venture Club
* 7:05-7:10 pm: Introduction of IBM Innovation Centers
* 7:10-7:30 pm: Presentation by Solar Engineering (including 5 minute Q & A)
* 7:30-7:50 pm: Presentation by Webnotes (including 5 minute Q & A)
* 7:50-8:30 pm: Panel discussion with panelists led by a moderator
* 8:30-8:40 pm: Q &A session
* 8:40-8:50 pm: Closing Remarks & Survey Descriptions of Teams



Descriptions of Teams

Solar Engineering Solutions (SES)

SES offers a solar solution for cooling and heating needs in large commercial buildings. It harnesses clean solar thermal energy and delivers to buildings at a greater energy savings than any other solutions. This solution also enables peak-time electricity demand shaving.

Their Solar Air Conditioning System (SACS) utilizes solar energy to heat up water to both drive the air-conditioning system and satisfy hot water demands for large buildings. Customers will benefit from energy savings of up to 80%, with a payback period of 3-5 years; this payback period can be further reduced to 1-2 years with tax incentives and rebates from government.

SES has been awarded laboratory space on an MIT building for demonstration purposes. They have discussed with potential customers who have shown keen interest in their technology and products.

Webnotes

PR firms spend hundreds of hours every week performing online research to track client coverage, competition, and industry news, tediously copying and pasting information from the web into Word documents which are formatted and emailed to clients. By making it easy to capture and organize content from web pages and PDFs and automatically generate professional reports, WebNotes (www.webnotes.net) allows firms to save up to 50% of their time at half the cost of competing products.

Ryan Damico, WebNotes' co-founder & CEO, graduated from MIT in 2005 with a degree in Computer Science. Prior to founding WebNotes, Ryan was a Program Manager at Avid Technology.

* Moderator Joseph Perry:

Joseph Perry is the Regional Innovation Center Manager for the North American Eastern Region and Canada for IBM's ISV & Developer Relations. Joe was also a member of the IBM Software Group's Worldwide Technical Leadership Council for 3 years. Joe has extensive experience with Internet technology and with business consulting. Joe currently is a Ph.D. candidate in the Law, Policy & Society Program at Northeastern University, where he is also an instructor for the on-line MBA program. He has experience working with Fortune 100 clients. Joe's areas of expertise include Internet privacy, health care technologies and policy, and networked communications. He holds an M.B.A. (concentration in technology) from Northeastern University and a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

* Panelists John Manning:

John F. Manning is Partner, Assurance & Advisory Services at Deloitte & Touche. John has 22 years of public accounting experience, specializing in multi-national complex businesses, in the media, technology and life sciences industries. He serves a number of our office's largest, fastest growing clients and has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions work, public company reporting issues, and multi-national companies. John is one of the Boston office's professional practice directors, having served as a deputy in that position for 8 years. In addition, he is a frequent speaker at industry events on topics such as software revenue recognition and business combinations. John has served or represented more than two-dozen large companies in New England. He is member of American Institute of Certified Public Accountant and Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants.

* Jo Tango:

Jo Tango founded Kepha Partners. He has invested in the e-commerce, search engine, Internet ad network, wireless, supply chain software, storage, database, security, on-line payments and data center virtualization spaces.

He has been a founding or first institutional investor in AutoVirt, Azuki Systems, Bit9, ByLedge, ExaGrid, StreamBase Systems, Vertica Systems, and Virtual Iron, getting involved nearly always at the company inception phase. Other investments include Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq: ASKJ), Digital Market (acquired by Agile Software), and NextCard (Nasdaq: NXCD).

Jo previously was at Highland Capital Partners for nearly 9 years, where he was a General Partner. He also spent five years with Bain & Company, where he was based in Singapore, Hong Kong and Boston, and focused on technology and start-up projects.

Jo attended Yale University (B.A., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., Baker Scholar). He serves on the board of NECINA (New England Chinese Information and Network Association) and is very active with the MIT Deshpande Center.

* Eric Apse:

Eric Apse is a IBM Venture Capital Group Partner, representing IBM's ISV and Developer Relations. Eric leads a team of Business Development Executives responsible for developing key new partnerships for IBM with Venture backed software companies across North America. He has had over 20 years of combined experience in sales, marketing, pricing and finance.

You are welcome to join NECINA at http://www.necina.org/member.htm