Category Archives: Business

Princeton Regional Chamber Events, useful tips from U.S. 1 Newspaper

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.

 

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, , ,

Julie%20Brown%20headshot%20(2)_Spotlight

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.

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.

House of Cupcakes won a spot on “Cupcake Wars” with this video and fulfilled their pledge to donate all the proceeds to the St. Jude Children’s Hospital

Then their store burned down.

Hear their story at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast, Wednesday, July 23.

To Publicity Chairmen: Make it Easy

Around Town, Business, Faith and Social Justice, , , ,
kiwanis
With Robert Bullington, president of the Kiwanis chapter

Today I had a delightful lunch with the Kiwanis Club of Trenton at Leonardo’s II. The program chairman asked me to offer tips that would help this nearly 90-year-old chapter publicize the Times-Kiwanis Camp Fund, founded in 1955 in partnership with the then Trenton Times.

My 10-minutes talk focused on war stories, PR successes and failures, everything from the New Jersey State Button Society show to a Congo mission trip by Princeton United Methodist Church on behalf of UFAR. Titled “Make it Easy: Ask ‘How High,'” the talk focused on how to encourage donors to give, editors to print press releases, and individuals to leverage their connections.

Does anyone else want these tips? Have talk, will travel.

 

Eisgruber Bleeds Orange?

Around Town, Business,

President-Elect Chris EisgruberChristian Eisgruber, the new president of Princeton University, speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber lunch on Thursday, May 8, at the Forrestal Marriott.

Raised Catholic, he recently discovered that he has Jewish heritage, and now describes himself as a non-theist Jew.

Another intriguing factoid: he used to teach a seminar on the Supreme Court and I’ll bet he has a strong opinion about the Court’s ruling on affirmative action. One of his missions as provost was to increase diversity on campus.

He’s the first president in 25 years to be an alumnus of the university: he is Class of 1989.

Jonathan Shenk: Pastor to Painter

Jonathan Shenk: Greenleaf Painters

Congratulations to Jonathan Shenk, whom I often see at Princeton chamber lunches and breakfasts.  Recently named a Princeton Regional Chamber Champion for Business, he had an excellent feature article in the Sunday Times of Trenton about his ecologically sound company, Greenleaf Painters. 

It is his second career. He had been pastor of Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church and wanted to take a new direction. A temporary painting job turned into an entrepreneurial opportunity. Here is a link to the story about that in West Windsor-Plainsboro News.

Felten: Dollars, Euros — and Bitcoin

Around Town, Business, Technology & Innovation, ,

feltenThere are 12.4 million Bitcoins in existence — but …

the Federal Reserve doesn’t know much about Bitcoin.

And one of Bitcoin’s major banks just did a face plant.

Yet  Ed Felten, former technology guru for the FTC, now returned to Princeton University to teach, says Bitcoin is one of his top predictions for what will work in the future. He was interviewed about this on C-Span, link here.

Felten speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber lunch on Thursday, March 6, at 11:30 a.m. His topic: “Dollars, Euros — and Bitcoins: the Future of Digital Currency.”