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I was recently honored to give some opening remarks at the OC Innovation Summit by 41Orange . I talked about innovation in building inclusive startup and tech ecosystems. You can actually watch the talk here and Ethan Perez at The Cove wrote some takeaways here as well. I was thrilled to see how much it resonated with a lot of the audience and how it fired others up to want to lean in and help.
At the center of it all, it’s about the entrepreneurs but that also means entrepreneurs need to lead not just their companies but their community too. As I talk about in the presentation, at every step of the entrepreneur’s journey moving forward, there is a responsibility to help the next entrepreneur who is one step back. We often talk about how a big exit will help our community because it will free up capital and successful founders to start giving back. There’s no reason to wait for that. We can’t wait 10 years to then start planting the next seeds. We need to be planting now and that’s what we intend to continue showcasing in these newsletters; how to give back now, who’s already doing it, and how you can too.
Step one: share this newsletter with someone that needs to know what’s going on in OC.