All posts by bfiggefox

What will Flint Lane do next?

Business, Technology & Innovation, , , , ,

Flint Lane is one of those guys who “looks over the mountain.” He invented an electronic bill presenting service that helped to found Paytrust, and changed the habits of the bill paying population. It sold, and then he then he started Billtrust. He kept popping up in articles at U.S. 1.  most recently with moving 110 employees to American Metro Center. Now he owns (however did he get here?) a ping pong facility.

He got there by  loving ping pong. Ping pong champion David Zhuang, as quoted in an engaging story by Nicole Mulvaney in the Times of Trenton, had been longing for a Central Jersey based backer to build a facility here. “Give me a guy who loves ping pong!” said Zhuang.

I got the “over the mountain” analogy from Universal Display’s Julie Brown. When she spoke at the Princeton Chamber last week, she said that was one of the secret’s of entrepreneurial success.

It certainly applies to Lane. And now  Princeton has a new amenity.

 

If you perused the Darwin-and-the-finches story in the New York Times science section, you may not have noticed the story’s stars, Rosemary and Peter Grant, are from Princeton.

Their new and much-lauded book, “40 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Finches on Daphne Major Island,” is just published by Princeton University Press.   It tells of an evolutionary process that is taking place, not from century to century, but from generation to generation.

Jonathan Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize winner and fellow researcher, wrote the NYT story published yesterday. All I could think about when reading about the Grants’ travails on this lonely island is — I’m glad it’s not me that had to crawl on the rocks and live in a cave. Especially when I realize that I am about the same age.

 

 

A Big OOPS. I got the date wrong on the demo for the Keller Lab, as below. I said it was Wednesday in Princeton, but it was Monday. I missed it too. The New York version starts today (Tuesday, August 12) at 5 p.m., details here.

It is fun to read about the different companies and their technologies.

Original post below, edited to take out the wrong date.

Universal Display was the brain child of a Princeton University faculty member (see story on Julie Brown). This summer the Keller Lab at the university is also hatching tech startups from students at what is known as the ‘e-Lab.” U.S. 1 has a story about one of the startups, Solstice Intitiative. Another is Space Touch (video demo here).  Here was the program.

How They Did It: Julie Brown

Business, Technology & Innovation, , ,

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It’s always exciting to hear from folks who were on the ground floor of a successful company. Julie Brown, the speaker for Thursday’s Princeton chamber lunch, was on the ground floor (well, actually, the second floor over Hoagie Haven) of Universal Display Corporation, now with global partners and 125 full time workers in Ewing.  Your cell phone probably has UDC’s display technology.

Click here for lunch information. I’m looking forward to this — Julie was one of the most interesting people I’ve interviewed.

Asked to describe myself in one word, the word that popped out was “driven.” And why:

From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. Luke 12:48

Largesse for math and science

Around Town, Business, Technology & Innovation, ,

I can’t help noticing, in the half page ad in today’s New York Times, that three ot the 16 winners of Simons Foundation prizes are from Central jersey. Names below. And then when I look up “Who is Mr. Simon” I discover that James Simon worked at the Institute of Defense Analyses (the one in Princeton) before he left academe to found his now $23 billion hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies.

He’s using his wealth, at least some of it, “to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.” His money is also behind Math for America and he was one of the first billionaires to sign the Giving Pledge.

News of the 2014 Simons Investigators doesn’t even seem to be up on the web yet, but here is a link to last year’s prizes in math and physical sciences. This year’s winners include Rachel Somerville of Rutgers (theoretical astrophysics), Anatoly Spitkovsky of Princeton (high energy astrophysics), and Moses Charikar of Princeton (computer science, approximation algorithms). Their prize gives them, in effect, an extra sabbatical “to work on long term projects of fundamental importance.”

Congratulations all round. And can anyone tell me whether the Simons family did indeed live in Princeton, when he worked at IDA? I thought of asking Lee Neuwirth, who was in charge of the IDA during those years.

Then I found this link to some fast facts about James Simons and learn he is #93 on the Forbes richest list with $12.5 billion. And here is the New York Times source, July 8, 2014.

The article leans heavily on the revelation that Simons, now 75, failed as a programmer, so he wants young people to know, “If I can do it, so can you.”

Hospitals assume that patients will follow directions when they leave the hospital. VOX Telehealth assumes most will not.

Here is my story about VOX Telehealth, part of the cover story in the June 25 health and fitness issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper.

It’s good news for those advocating e-Patient rights.

Jargon is power.

When I was a dance critic, in the ’70s and ’80s, my job was to translate jargon so that non-dancers would understand.

When I was a freelance reporter, during the same time period, I had to use jargon to convince big city editors to believe I knew what I was doing.

When I was a business writer, 1986 to 2006 plus, my job was to translate all kinds of business topics so that non-MBAs would understand.

It’s all about keeping it simple, says John Lanchester in an article in the current New Yorker, entitled Money Talks: Learning the language of finance.

Lessons:

Adopt the jargon of the field you want to enter. Like a patois, you are believable when — to an editor — the first thing you ask is “are you on deadline?”

Don’t accept the jargon of the field you don’t know about. If you see it, the author is lazy.

Full disclosure: Many an editor has blue penciled my own less-than-clear copy.

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I sat next to moms and dads at the Berlind Theater tonight, while their dance students, mostly young women, many from other states, performed at the closing concert for the Princeton Ballet School summer intensive program. I had watched them at the barre (as above).

The parents had reason to be proud. Very few of them will see their dancers on a professional stage. For some, this performance will be the highlight of their young careers.

It was a worthy highlight. On a professional stage with nice costumes and lighting, the choreography challenged but did not tax; it showcased the average dancer and let the talented shine.

I’m glad for them all, even those not blessed with the right bodies for dance or with the unstinting ambition of their fated-to-be-more-successful peers. All have learned what it is to work and work some more.

For those who make dancing only their avocation, they have a resourece at times when they don’t want to reveal that their hearts are low. They have learned how to hold themselves with a royal air. And no one will know.