Doing a Start-up on the Cheap: the Fifty250 Method (aka Cheap Bastard Start-up)

Build a world class company with $50K. Office space and employees are highly overrated. Leverage your way to success using open source while local sourcing your contractors and business partners. And, give a 1,000% ROI to your seed investors.

September 30, 2009 / 12:00pm - 1:00pm (Boxed lunch will be served)
Stamm Commons, Room 1044, Centennial Engineering Center (Centennial Engineering Center is located at the intersection of Martin Luther King Blvd. and Redondo Dr. Map)
Presented by Mr. Bruce Fryer, CEO (ProtoHIT, Inc.)

Summary

Mr. Fryer is currently the CEO of ProtoHIT, Inc., an STC start-up formed around managed care software developed by Dr. Phillip Wagner from the Department of Internal Medicine at UNM’s School of Medicine. He has also served as Interim COO at NuView Life Sciences, a life sciences company with an option to license pancreatic cancer, leukemia and lymphoma technologies at UNM’s Health Sciences Center. He holds a B.S. from Iowa State University and an M.B.A. from the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University... but let Mr. Fryer explain what he’s been up to:

"If it hasn't been done, then it's worth doing." (Bruce Fryer)

Life in high tech really started back in 1983 when I installed my first LAN at Baxter Healthcare. It was then I realized engineers were developing products which they thought were cool, but not very relevant to the actual customers. So I spent eight years working with companies like Compaq, Microsoft, cc:Mail and Lotus to make sure they built products for our use at Baxter. Next I did some freelancing for PC Week, writing articles and analysis on the emerging technologies and trends in the marketplace. This led to product strategy and management at Zenith Data Systems. Here, we conceived and delivered the first network appliance which won a product-of-the-year award in five countries. Novell then asked me to move to Utah, learn to ski and help them with their high level product strategies. I did over $110M in deals over a few years, starting BEA systems, and interesting technology deals with Intel and others.

The next logical steps were start-ups, so for the last nine years I have done four start-up companies ranging from secure Java-based email products to visioning software for automotive robots. During this period, I was in publications such as Time, Forbes, Business Week, ZDNet, Linux Journal and Managing Automation. I’ve also authored a book on email and co-authored a networking book back in the day.

Bare metal start-ups require attention to execution detail along with heavy vision—bi-polar management. My last company, DigiSense Inc., took advantage of all the cool open source projects and Amazon Web Services. We got product, customers, some big deals and met and developed great relationships with people in the industry. DigiSense Inc. was a subscription data service focused on SMB (well, more S) delivered through managed services providers. I was responsible for sales, business development, marketing, operations, production, finance and HR. Pays to be organized.

I am doing consulting projects now focused in health care from nuclear medicine to health IT, always thinking of the next great company opportunity out there.

To review a summary of the seminar and available resources, go to http://www.cheapbastardstartup.com.

PODCAST AVAILABLE: You may download and view the seminar here.

Event Registration

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