Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Friday, June 04, 2004New Mexico Invests in Flywheel Ventures
The Albuquerque Journal reported that the State of New Mexico has invested in Flywheel Ventures' latest fund:
Flywheel Ventures, which is based in Santa Fe and has offices in Silicon Valley, will receive an investment of $15 million, pending completion of paperwork, from the council's regional venture capital program, which taps a $200 million chunk of the state's permanent funds...Flywheel aims to raise a total of $30 million, with which it will make seed-stage investments, typically less than $1 million, in technology-related companies. A previous fund operated by the firm already has small investments in software firm CoMeT Solutions and Web-based government information provider Samba Holdings, both based in Albuquerque.
Flywheel founder Trevor Loy told the council the firm had seen annualized returns of 62 percent on its previous funds, far above the seed-fund industry standard of about 22 percent.
The 5-year-old firm has also received a $3 million commitment from another state investment fund, the Small Business Investment Corp.
Situations that Promote Learning
In his Captology Notebook, Stanford University researcher BJ Fogg takes a stab at identifying situations that promote learning. He defines learning as behavior change, which he believes is more likely if people are dissatsified, in a good mood, or when rewards, such as fun, are immediate.
So, how might this apply to entrepreneurial learning? For starters, it seems obvious that the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunity stems from a basic sense of dissatisfaction. In most cases, the financial payoffs from entrepreneurial learning are distant, so a situation that allows for lots of short-term wins and a culture that need only a small excuse to celebrate would appear to be beneficial. Last, but not least, an open, engaging environment would be advantageous. Truly entrepreneurial places, places that support effective learning and adaptive behavior change, really do tend to be fun places.