For those of you who are garage inventors of non-virtual things, the PBS show "Everyday Edisons" is doing an open call in Providence for the next cool gizmo.

Staples, Home Depot, and other big retailers are sponsoring this as a form of crowdsourcing.

Brian Lash, a young Pittsburgh techpreneur, has an interesting POV on the unintended consequences of state-funded seed funds and incubators.

The most efficient way for a risk-averse investing public to perform due diligence on investing opportunities is to let others do it for them. No one's more willing to do that than the incubators who can finance it with other people's money (remember, they're state-funded). So it becomes a sort of right-of-passage for technology startups that they should pass through these incubators before they see an opportunity for venture capital, and more and more, for angel money. And you can't blame the investors... it's an economically-sound decision on their parts.

I went to college in Pittsburgh, looked at moving a company there, and think it has a lot of similarities to Providence. However, I think the interplay between our state-funded resources and our entrepreneurs works differently, and I said so here.

State seed funds and incubators adjust their form and shape to the vacuum that is unique to their locale. The number of existing tech angels, volume of startups, dominance of universities, proximity to major startup markets and the local cultural attitude to high-risk investment form the boundary conditions to which the state entity will (unconsciously) conform.

What are your thoughts on how funding, diligence, and gatekeeping works in RI for tech startups? What elements are we missing ? Who should be providing them ?

Eight techpreneurs. Two companies in growth mode, three in launch mode, and a few more getting off the ground. Three solid tech tips, two leads on developers, and one customer introduction. Oh, and about 20 cups of liquid caffeine.

Last Wednesday saw the first Techpreneurs Open Coffee , held at 729 Hope Cafe. I heard conversations about coworking, Wordpress customization, seed investment, and finding interns. There were more topics, but the group continuously shifted around discussions throughout the 2+ hours.

I walked away energized, and committed to making the Open Coffee a regular event. So what's next for the Techpreneurs Open Coffee?

• Regular frequency - twice a month, on alternate weeks with Prov Geeks . Still a casual - drop in, drop out format, so if you miss one or can only stay for a few, you know there is another one in a couple weeks.
• More tech entrepreneurs, designers, and geeks - but not too many. Seems like the optimal size of this confab is 16-24 (2-4 tables), after which we'd probably overwhelm any coffee shop or start battling the regular patrons for tables.
• An open invite to investors - without planning the coffee around them. Folks at the Coffee felt like having some investors in the conversations would be good for everyone, without biasing the honest cross-talk. I'm confident that where techpreneurs gather, investors will follow!
• A change in venue - possibly. We chatted about finding a place closer to the universities than 729 Hope Cafe, but were at a loss for a coffee shop that satisfied the constraints of: seating, wireless, parking, and student walkable. Also wondering whether our entrepreneurial students and profs would show at 8AM? Opinions?

We'll keep the core the same, casual drop-in, drop-out, buy your own coffee. Fluid discussion topics focused around tech startups, a few will be suggested in the schedule reminder, but its up to those who show to decide what they want to talk about. Seems like "digging in" on an idea or question is what the Open Coffee can provide, along with a conducive setting to trade resources and connections.

So roll out of bed, break away from your email, and stop by, Jan 23 8-10 at 729 Hope Cafe!

Today's post is by Allan Tear, a Providence-based strategy consultant. If you have an idea for a post you'd like to write, please let us know.

Those of us in the design|geek zeitgeist in Rhode Island are feeling pretty good about the energy in this corner of the global neighborhood. Despite hand wringing on the national and state economic front, the range and potential of truly interesting startups around here is rapidly increasing.

But just like a company that wants to grow quickly, we’ve got to figure out whether we are going to grow organically, or by acquisition. Organically is how we got here so far, and we’ve built a small but compelling core, and we’ve learned to support each other in new ways. Spend time at Geeks or similar confabs, and its obvious that our startup gems center around talented people.

So how do we get more? More talent, more ideas, more design|geek startups, more successes? Consider this story.

In 2005, two seniors at the University of Virginia, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, were cooking up an idea for a Web 2.0 mobile application. They considered taking day jobs – programmer and web designer – to pay the bills while they built their idea in their “spare time”. But they’d also applied for a competitive seed funding program, Ycombinator, based in Boston.

Luckily for them, they got accepted, and they took the chance to move to Cambridge for 3 months to see if they could turn their idea into a real product that people would use. Ycombinator hooked them up with $12K in cash to keep the wolves from the door, and some good advice that their original idea was crap. Together, they came up with a better one, a Web 2.0 social news site.

Over the summer of 2005, with mentoring from Ycombinator, their prototype successfully launched as Reddit. They hit social bookmarking just right, and though they never caught up to Digg, Reddit climbed quickly to 70K users and 700K page views a day. In 2006, with 4 employees, having raised only $100K, Reddit was acquired by Conde Nast (Wired publisher) for $M’s.

Why am I telling you this story?

Well, what YCombinator and some similar models represent is a next generation funding platform that plays very well to the strengths and the needs of our design|geek community. By remixing the seed fund, the incubator, and the business pitch competition, this “early venture platform” channels the original intent of all those approaches.

It identifies and acts as a magnet for bright young sparks, most in/just out of college, then takes a chance on their talent. It gets them the right combination of seed funding, guidance, access, and drive for results so that their ideas can get a chance in the market. It uses a sense of place, colocating the companies and plugging them into an existing community of entrepreneurs, experts, and funders to nurture and advise the fledgling founders.

Although RI has many of the basic pieces to make this approach work – bunches of college students, a growing base of successful entrepreneurs, seed angels, service providers and freelancers accustomed to working with startups – no one has yet connected the dots. And each piece, in isolation, hasn’t made our design|geek startup rate hit escape velocity.

So what are your thoughts? Is there a place for this model in RI? If so, what would it look like? What would its hook be? Who would it target? How would it play with the existing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers?

Jump over to the discussion forum and let me know where you stand. There you can read more about the model and find links to the organizations that we can learn from.

Following on from the home page post on a new seed venture platform for RI similar to YCombinator. Please add your opinion, including (but not limited to!) answers to these questions:

Is there a place for this model in RI? If so, what would it look like? What would its hook be? Who would it target? How would it play with the existing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers?

Here are some of the other examples, which are in various stages of development.

YCombinator – Cambridge and Silicon Valley
TechStars – Denver/Boulder
Seedcamp – London
BoostPhase – Atlanta
LaunchBox – DC
YEurope – Vienna

How about a Latest Forum Posts sidebar?