So much is changing around us, and I feel lucky to be alive and living in Silicon Valley in 2009! Despite all of the bad news and downturns that we hear about, I am meeting dozens of entrepreneurs every week for mentoring sessions, in my workshops, or through my Entrepreneurship class at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley. These entrepreneurs are so energized and motivated and full of brilliant new ideas that I can be nothing but hopeful that, when we do get out of this downturn, we will again have a strong economy. The Internet and its potential to profoundly change our lives have barely been felt… compared with what is coming our way. We’ve uncovered just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much new stuff cooking now that will impact us over the next few decades that I am totally psyched.

For many years, my colleagues and friends have been asking me to start blogging. And I feel that the time has come. So here is the dreaded post number 1. One always wants the first one to be a great post, but that has kept me from getting going. So I am not going to worry about it and I am going to just do it!

I recently led a seven-week workshop with a wonderful organization called Women 2.0 here in Silicon Valley (www.women2.org). Starting with 21 women entrepreneurs, over the course of seven weeks we worked to transform their ideas into a business. I have always said that all ideas have to be chiseled away into fundable ideas, and we sure did a lot of chiseling. We graduated 15 of these women on the last Thursday of February. This event was wonderful, as we featured famous women entrepreneurs and role models as our guest speakers in every session. We went through a process of outlining steps that anyone can follow to find out whether their ideas have merit and whether the market will accept them.

Here’s a picture of the graduates from the Spring 2009 session: