Sol Lipman’s Journey

Sol Lipman is now AOL's Senior Director of Mobile. Brian Solis photo.

The outline for Sol Lipman’s talk at Thursday night’s TechRaising meetup would read like a standard-issue business-inspirational presentation: Your startup is a journey; it isn’t about the money; don’t be afraid to fail; My Five Rules for Startups. But this was not a standard-issue presentation.

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Santa Cruz’s Crush on Tech

Is there any chance Jon Kvitky doesn't want more high tech biz in Santa Cruz?

Welcome to Silicon Beach. Or at least that’s what we should be calling Santa Cruz, according to a recent survey by the online polling and policy outfit Civinomics. The six-question poll, taken at the Chamber of Commerce Business Fair at Cocoanut Grove on March 14 by a Civinomics team (which included the author, a Civinomics co-founder), found that the industry in which Santa Cruz businesspeople have the most confidence is technology. In fact, 40 percent of those surveyed stated that if they could invest $10,000 in any local industry, technology would be their first choice, followed closely by tourism at 35 percent. Retail and agriculture finished substantially behind, with 18 percent and 16 percent respectively (some respondents picked two industries). Forever 21 might want to take notice of these results.

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