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I heard guests today give San Diego as an example of a city that turned its potential into an active, top VC center. I worked in San Diego during the dot com boom and bust at an organization that played a vital part of making San Diego a center for successful entrepreneurship ? UCSD CONNECT. CONNECT was a public policy program housed in the extension programs department of the U. of California San Diego. It was (for the most part) a nonpartisan, neutral entity whose sole purpose was to connect entrepreneurs to the resources they needed ? funding, lawyers, accountants, networking, etc. - and to generally make San Diego fertile ground for start-ups. It was often described as an ?incubator without walls?. While housed in UCSD, CONNECT was self-funded though its own fund raising and fees from its conference activities, etc. Although I'm not actively involved in the entrepreneurship arena in Portland, a ?neutral? center to develop, support and network entrepreneurs seems to be a key missing part to the region's success.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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