Mark Geller

Last Thursday night I went to the info meeting for the upcoming Founder Institute session in Los Angeles. Founder Institute (FII) is the entrepreneur training and mentoring program started and run by Adeo Ressi, in which I participated last fall. After the initial session in Silicon Valley, FII started additional sessions in NYC, Seattle, Washington D.C., and San Diego. Now they are expanding to Denver, Singapore, Paris, and L.A.

I am particularly excited about FII starting a session in L.A. because: 1) FII is an excellent program and can be a great help to new founders; and 2) through its expanded sessions, FII is creating an amazing network of mentors and alumni–the L.A. session mentors include Michael Robertson (MP3.com), Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese), and Peter Guber (producer of Rain Man, Batman and other blockbusters), among many others–I am looking forward to getting to know the mentors and founders in my local area!

The L.A. session is being run by Ken Rutkowski, founder of KenRadio.com and one of the most engaged and connected folks in the L.A. technology and media scene. The event on Thursday was hosted at Clearstone Venture Partners and there were about 50 founders present. Adeo made the trip from Silicon Valley to present about FII and answer questions and there was a lot of excitement among founders for the program.

I am looking forward to helping out and participating in the FII program in L.A. in any way I can. If you are interested, you can apply here. The early admission deadline is Feb 15–good luck to all the new FII L.A. founders!