If you don’t read Becky McCray’s Small Biz Survival blog, this is a good chance to remind you that you should. It’s been on my blogroll here on this blog for a long time now. And what reminds me is her “Can you teach entrepreneurship” post on that blog a couple of days ago.
Teaching entrepreneurship is a real issue. I’ve had my say on it often enough (try the entrepreneurship education category here). My favorites on the topic on this blog are “Do You Really Want That MBA Degree?” and “What Degree Does an Entrepreneur Get?” And my all-time favorite, on my main blog, is “5 Entrepreneurship Basics Business Schools Don’t Teach.”
Becky’s post summarizes what must have been a fascinating session at last week’s SXSW conference in Austin. To my mind, the most important point in the post, ironically, is right in the last sentence:
If your city or region is founding angel groups and venture capital funds, they can improve their chance of success by providing more training and information to those investors first.
That’s really important. I’ve been watching how this works as part of the local angel investment group I’m in, the Willamette Angel Conference, which has made training beginning angel investors an important, even fundamental, part of what it’s doing.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
