Entrepreneurs enjoy feedback sessions at CURE
Groton — Matthew Gillen of Mystic, a 17-year-old student at Grasso Tech, was one of about 100 people who attended Paul Singh's North American Tech Tour stop Thursday at CURE Innovation Commons, hoping to get some tips on entrepreneurship.
Gillen, who writes apps for Google, got in a quick meeting with Singh, who advised him on some colleges he could attend next year.
As for the apps, Singh told Gillen, "Every 30 days, release something, then blog about it," Gillen said later.
He thought that was good advice, but he never got a chance to ask him about another of his entrepreneurial ideas: installing Alexa, the Amazon voice assistant, in hotel rooms. He also has an app that sends out a short motivational call to people on a daily basis, based on talks he's gleaned from YouTube.
It's for people like Gillen as well as more experienced entrepreneurs that Singh's tech tour was meant. For Singh, this was the 88th stop — and one of the first tour appearances in New England — in the past year and half during a sojourn by Airstream coach in which he has concentrated on the suburbs rather than major hubs such as Boston and Silicon Valley.
Singh is one of the three original founders of 500 Startups, former managing director of the incubator 1776 and a serial entrepreneur who has assisted the White House.
"He's been so impressed with the companies he has met," said Mary Anne Rooke, executive director of Crossroads Venture Group, which arranged the tour stop.
Kim Kelly, who directs the CURE Commons incubator, said the six-hour event included one-on-one podcasts in which entrepreneurs explained their ideas, as well as free business advice and several business-formation and patent lawyers.
The Crossroad Venture Group's event, which was replicated in the four areas of Connecticut that the state has designated as Innovation Places, was presented in partnership with the Ignite Program in which CURE Commons and Spark Makerspace have collaborated. The idea is to spur new business growth in the Thames River region through networking events, education and business support activities.
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