The Power Of Purse: Funding A Start-Up In Boston

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, December 10, 2011   0 comments.

 

People talk with each other at a 2009 TechStars "demo day," where new products developed by TechStars participants are shared. (Andrew-Hyde via Flickr)

To build a company, you need an idea. You need a good team. And, in most cases, you need some money.

We hear from the people with the purse. Some of the Boston area’s most knowledgeable venture capitalists, seed-funders and prize-givers join us to talk about what they’re investing in, how to spot great talent, and whether the economy is finally springing back to life in Boston.

Guests:

• Katie Rae, managing director, TechStars; founder, Project 11

• Michael Greeley, general partnery, Flybridge Capital

• Scott Bailey, cheif of staff, Mass Challenge

A Home -- And An Adrenaline Shot -- For Startups

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, December 10, 2011   0 comments.

You’ve got a great idea for a start-up, but where do you house it?

Two people work at Dogpatch Labs (via Dogpatch).

This week, we look at how to create spaces that encourage creativity and inventiveness. What happens when you put hundreds of ambitious entrepreneurs in one building? Do great minds feed off each other? What can they teach us about success — and about potential pitfalls?

We take a peek inside the Cambridge Innovation Center and other hotbeds of start-up activity.

Guests:

• Tim Rowe, CEO, Cambridge Innovation Center

• Gus Weber, Dogpatch Labs

• Owen Johnson, founder, managing partnery, Betaspring

Boston's Young Entrepreneurs

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, December 3, 2011   0 comments.

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This week, we look at what it takes for young people to start their own businesses in tough economic times. What ideas are viable? Where do you get money? And how do you cater to financially-strapped consumers? We talk to some of the most creative young minds in the Boston area.

A cereal from Cocomama Foods, owned by Sara Gragnoloti. (Courtesy)

We'll hear from a retailer who came up with a new concept for selling blue jeans, a food manufacturer who devised a new, healthy cereal, a college student who created an environmentally-friendly-lighting business, a lawyer who started her own patent firm, and a young businessman who built a website to help connect Boston-area entrepreneurs.

Guests:

• Jason Evanish, co-founder, Greenhorn Connect

• Alison Barnard, owner, in-jean-ius

• Sara Gragnoloti, founder, CEO, Cocomama Foods

• Cynthia Gilbert, patent attorney; founder, Hyperion Law

• Dinesh Wadhwani, co-founder, ThinkLite

Sustainability Is Served

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, November 26, 2011   0 comments.

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We follow food from the land and water to the restaurant table.

A dish is served at Russell House Tavern (Yelp via Flickr)

How are some of Boston’s top chefs incorporating sustainability into their work? Does it change what they serve? How they run their restaurants? And even how food tastes?

We’ll ask them as we investigate the growing sustainable food movement.

Guests:

• Ana Sortun,  chef and owner, Oleana, Sofra (Cambridge, Mass.).

• Michael Scelfo, chef, Russell House Tavern (Cambridge, Mass.)

• Michael Leviton, chef, owner, Lumiere (Newton, Mass.); partner, Area Four (Cambridge, Mass.)

Local Frontiers In Sustainable Farming

By Kara Miller   |   Friday, November 25, 2011   0 comments.

Today, we look at the newest frontiers in the sustainable food movement.

A photograph shows part of the farming process at Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury, Mass. (via Island Creek Oysters)

Is a new model of food production changing the way we eat? The way we think about food? How do you run a green, 21st-century farm? How can you compete with inexpensive imports? And how do you get consumers to embrace sustainable farming and fishing, even when it can cost more at the grocery store?

We find out from two Boston-area farms, an oyster grower and a nationally-acclaimed author.

Guests:

• Barry Estabrook, author, "Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit;" winner,James Beard award for magazine feature writing

• Shore Gregory, director of business development, Island Creek Oysters (Duxbury, Mass.)

• Jennifer Hashley, director, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (Lowell, Mass.)

• John Lee, general manager, Allendale Farm (Brookline, Mass.)

Four Years, Four Walls: Innovating Beyond The Classroom

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, November 19, 2011   0 comments.

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Part two:

Professor Walter Lewin's lecture, "The Birth and Death of Stars," is available to the public via MIT World. Online lectures are a relatively new way of granting individuals not affiliated with a university the chance to learn from them.

As students grapple with the high costs of college, and universities work to cope with increasing demand, could a new model for higher education be on the way? Or is it already here?

We speak with Walter Lewin, the MIT professor who has broken ground by making his lectures accessible via television and the Web, bringing his teaching to millions of people; the founder of an education hub that's entirely online; and the president of a Massachusetts college that has consistently pushed the envelope in finding new ways to teach — and fund — its students.

Guests:
 

• Walter Lewin, emeritus professor of physics, MIT Department of Physics (find many of Prof. Lewin's online lectures here)

• Peter Hopkins, co-founder, The Floating University

• Richard Miller, president, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

• Clayton Christensen, professor, Harvard Business School; co-author, "The Innovative University"

About Innovation Hub

Each week, Kara Miller talks to Boston's most innovative thinkers, examining new ideas and potential solutions to today’s many challenges. Topics range from education to health care to green energy. Join us on Saturdays at 7 a.m. and Sundays at 10 p.m.

Kara Miller
As a radio host, Kara Miller has interviewed thinkers from E.J. Dionne to Howard Gardner, Deepak Chopra to Lani Guinier. She is a panelist on WGBH-TV's "Beat the Press," as well as an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The National Journal, The Boston Herald, Boston Magazine, and The International Herald Tribune.

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