Jeanine Jacobson runs both the Los Angeles and San Diego Founder Institutes, the early-stage startup accelerator and global launch network that helps entrepreneurs create meaningful and enduring technology companies. Lonnee is a recent graduate of the Founder Institute and CEO of startup My Cookshelf. She is James Beard Award nominated writer for Saveur magazine and is co-organizing the dinner.

Join us for a delicious Belgian-inspired meal at Little Bear in Downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District. Draft Magazine voted Little Bear one of the Top 100 beer bars in America. Serious Eats called their burgers “genius.”

What could be better than a beer, great food, great conversation, and startups and entrees? Sign up today! Spaces are limited.

For more info, or to buy tickets, go to: https://www.grubwithus.com/meals/little-bear

I recently finished the four-month-long startup accelerator Founder Institute. I am the CEO of My Cookshelf, which will be a recipe-sharing website.

Founder Institute is an international early-stage startup accelerator program started by Adeo Alessi. It is aimed at nurturing would-be startup founders in launching their dream company. Jeanine Jacobson ran the Los Angeles chapter of Founder Institute, where I graduated from. She was our main point person for the program and was very helpful.

Founder Institute schedules weekly meetings with various mentors who give you their own version of “startup rules of the road”… things to watch out for, practical advice, etc. Each week Founders are required to be prepared to pitch their business idea to the mentors and be graded in the pitch “hot seat.” In return, Founders rate the mentors so there is an incentive for each side to do their best.

The program is extremely rigorous and demanding, but it was just what I needed to move my “great idea” into the next level. Founder Institute is part-time (meaning, expect to spend 15-20 hours a week on assignments), but that allows people who, like myself, have jobs, kids, responsibilities to work on their companies around their regular schedules.  But if you can’t keep up with the workload, you will be asked to leave the program. The goal is to replicate the demands of starting your own business. I guess you could say that it is designed to make you fail, but so is the real world. Can you cut it?

Just stay on top of the workload. Take the assignments seriously, and you’ll be fine.

And you are guided along the way. It’s not just sink or swim. I learned to develop my pitch, create a solid pitch deck, write an executive summary, do market research, find revenue models among other things. Practical steps you need to build a business, gain traction and attract investors.

I have now incorporated my business, My Cookshelf, Inc. and am in the process of looking for seed funding to launch my site.

Wish me luck!

I am the CEO of a new startup, My Cookshelf. Check it out.

One of those aw-shucks heartwarming stories that makes even the most cynical pause. Social media at its best – connecting people to someone who is doing something amazing and noteworthy, who would otherwise not get recognition.

Watch this video, and while you’re at it, donate a few bucks to this kid’s scholarship fund.

What that means is that consumers are no longer limited to such domain extensions as .com, .net, or .org. Instead, you might be able to buy .television, or .politics, or whatever name you can think of.

Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN, posted a written statement on the ICANN website:

“ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind.”

Serving all of mankind is a worthy goal, but in practical terms what this unleashes is an investor buying spree on extensions such as .sucks, .fail useful for bashing competitors; or those belonging to public figures such as .palin, or .obama.

The extensions won’t be cheap and they will be doled out by ICANN.

From Wired.com:

Applications for the first round of new global Top Level Domains (gTLDS) begins January 12, 2012 and will close on April 12, 2012. The application fee is $185,000, and there is a limit of 1,000 new gTLDs every year, which can be registered in any of the languages and scripts recognized by ICANN.

We will have to see whether the use of custom domains trumps ruling Internet God .com.

Or will they be just more domains relegated to the dustbin with .tv, .biz, and .me?

The report, called  Social Networking and Our Lives, states:

Facebook users are more trusting, have more close friends, are more politically engaged, and get more support from their friends. Additionally, Facebook helps revive “dormant” ties with lost connections—the highest proportion of Facebook friends is high school classmates.

The report also finds that 47% of adults are now on social networking sites, compared to 26% in 2008. More than half are over the age of 35.

While you’re browsing the site, just for fun take the time to answer the quiz “What Kind of Tech User Are You?” (I’m a Digital Collaborator).

This is a follow-up to a series by NATO Review on the role of social media in nascent democracy movements. 

I have a brief appearance in this video and the previous one, “Political Change: What Social Media Can and Cannot Do.”