Month: August 2013

Well, not much has been happening in August as I took a couple weeks to vacation in the Seattle/Vancouver/Whistler area – what a beautiful part of North America!  Between that, the summer lull in networking events, and the vacations of others it has been a fairly quiet month.   It has become increasingly apparent to me that the kind of position I am seeking (early-stage, VP-level, marketing/product development, electronics) is fairly specific and that hitting upon it at the right place and time is challenging.   I’ve therefore increased my focus on developing a startup concept of my own.

Towards this end I’ve got two sets of activities.  First, I continue to meet with the ex-Raytheon colleagues I’d previously written about to explore a variety of ideas.  Several interesting ones have emerged that I am investigating in greater depth.  Second, I recently met a young, technical entrepreneur who had a successful, small-scale trial of a service business concept last summer and is looking for help to refine and scale his idea.  It is a bit of a different type of business that what I had envisioned for myself but it is interesting and is something I’m spending time exploring further.

In parallel with all this I am working to arrange for a trip to the Bay Area to expand my networking range.  There is a lot of activity there that I have not tapped into.   My thinking is to spend a week or two out there in late September or early October connecting with investors and entrepreneurs.  I’m trying to leverage my existing contacts to identify appropriate contacts in advance.  It’s been slow going so far but I’ve got a couple so far.

That’s it for now…the journey continues!

I’ve found restarting my networking to be a bit sluggish…don’t know if this is a summer phenomenon or an outcome of letting things lapse for a while. Having said that, I did recently reconnect with three engineers/engineering managers I worked with long ago at Raytheon.  They, after working at a few startups, find themselves back at Raytheon via acquisition and are interested to leave and create their own startup.  The nice thing about this group is that they form a strong basis for an experienced, engineering team. We had an initial meeting this week to reacquaint ourselves with each other and start talking about ideas.  We’ll be meeting again in late August after various vacations get out of the way.

I also had two meetings this week with local startups.  One is a provider of intelligent power distribution equipment for electric grids while the other is a specialty semiconductor company in early stealth mode.  In both cases it is too early for them to be expanding/creating their commercial teams but there would likely be a need to do so in 2014.

I’m finding in my search, as with many things in life, timing is critical.  I’ve encountered many interesting startups with whom I’d be a good match. However, I’ve either been too early or too late in finding them.  I suppose I just need to continue to broaden my outreach and give it more time and eventually I’ll hit upon the right company at the right time.  In parallel, I’ll be continuing to talk with my ex-Raytheon colleagues and see if something interesting emerges there.