Jazzed About Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the D.C. Area

On Monday I attended a talk sponsored by FounderCorps featuring D.C. business leader Mike Daniels and moderated by Jonathan Aberman. As the former chairman of Network Solutions it was thrilling to be in the room with the guy who saw the window of opportunity and made that company wildly profitable. Network Solutions functioned as a service organization to ARPA (now DARPA) in creating the marketplace for domain names. Mike had great stories and clearly understands the opportunities of running businesses that work for and around government agencies. One of his anecdotes was that a sure-fire way of evaluating the potential of a company is by noting the hours that there are cars in the parking lot. If the parking lot fills up in the early morning and remains full into the late evening, this is a sign that the employees are engaged and devoted to success.

The most insightful part of this session for me was the discussion around what makes D.C. a great area for entrepreneurs who want to start companies. Mike and Jonathan suggested that D.C. is unique because the type of companies started here are a more diverse combination of products and services than you would find in Silicon Valley. That difference makes the entrepreneurial culture in D.C. more perpetual. Companies are in for the long haul and not looking to create the next big thing and quickly cash out. They are very willing to help each other (often for free according to Daniels) and have a calling to support and capitalize on opportunities created by new government policies. Although in my opinion, this is clearly becoming more and more challenging since our government isn’t moving the ball forward very readily these days!

The type of people listening and networking at this session was very energizing. I learned about my new favorite site called CoFoundersLab. It’s a well executed site that matches co-founders. Clearly they have taken some lessons from dating sites and their UI is great. I also learned about TechLink which is a searchable database of patented technologies, many of which are available for licensing.

There are some really important, entrepreneurial things happening in D.C. these days and I feel the momentum building. I’m excited to be part of the Founder Corps movement! See a photo from the event.