Montana Entrepreneurs and those that dream of being in Montana, can earn a spot at the table at Rob Ryan’s Entrepreneur-America Boot camp. Is your startup capable of becoming a large successful company?

Up to 6 companies will win the ability to have their business plan analyzed by noted Entrepreneur and Mentor Rob Ryan at his Entrepreneur-America Bootcamp http://entrepreneur-america.com/ in Hamilton, MT on 11/13 and 11/27. This opportunity is open to Montana companies or companies that will agree to move to Montana if they are offered the opportunity to work with Rob.

Entrepreneurs in Montana and other rural states have long bemoaned the lack of mentoring and entrepreneurial assistance to help them in developing their ideas into large successful companies. The distance from Silicon Valley, Boston and other hubs of entrepreneurial vibrancy, lack of Angel and Venture Capital funding opportunities, and an inability to learn how to build and nurture a sustainable global company are all reasons they give for a lack of success.

Montana does have a solution for many of these challenges in Rob and Terry Ryan and their Entrepreneur-America Boot camp.

Rob Ryan founded Ascend Communications in 1989. Rob served as President, CEO, and Chairman of Ascend, taking it public Friday the thirteenth of May, 1994, at $13.00 per share. Ascend was sold in 1999 to Lucent/AT&T for the largest amount for a technology company in the history of the US . In 1995 Rob and Terry started Entrepreneur America,EA . EA was started as a way for Rob and Terry to give back to the country, the USA they both love and to help entrepreneurs avoid some of the pitfalls.

Rob gained his first experience in Local Area Networking as a Systems Analyst at Lawrence Livermore Lab in the mid-seventies working on the first non-military extension of Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet.

He became a principle architect of DecNet with Digital Equipment Corp. in the late seventies, then authored the Intel portion of the Ethernet Specification, known as the “Blue Book” which set the local area network standard in the early eighties. He joined Ungermann-Bass as Director of Engineering in 1982, leaving in 1983 to found his first company, SoftCom, which was sold to Hayes Microcomputer in 1984. In 1989, Rob left Hayes with three Engineers and his wife Terry to found Ascend.

Under Rob’s leadership, Ascend became the leading manufacturer of Point of Presence boxes (POPS) for Internet providers. When you dial into the Internet, using whatever technology be it modem,cable,DSL, etc, there needs to be a network box in the local Internet Service providers point of presence. These boxes were built by Ascend. Ascend garnered close to 70 plus percent market share. Rob describes Ascend’s business as selling the picks and shovels for the Internet gold rush. The more miners ( users on the Internet) the more boxes ( picks and shovels)

Ascend grew from zero sales in 1989 to over 2 billion in sales by 1998. In 1995, the last year Rob served as CEO of Ascend, the stock was acknowledged as the best performer of the year on all of Wall Street returning a whopping 721% (Business Week, December 25, 1995; pp. 126-127). If you had invested in Ascend two months after the IPO, you would have gained 3,223% one and three quarters years later (Investors Business Daily August 30, 1996; p. A3).

At the end of 1995, Rob won the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern California (including Silicon Valley). Rob was selected as the Cornell University Entrepreneur of the Year for 2002.

Rob Ryan’s current focus is his Entrepreneur America facility in Montana. In this Rocky Mountain setting Rob mentors promising entrepreneurs, assisting with focusing product ideas, writing business plans, sharpening presentations, and raising venture capital. The opportunity to acquire shares is the only payment Rob receives.

Rob currently sits on 4 Boards where he is Chairman of two of those. Rob looks for only the best of the best and would consider perhaps one more Board. Rob has a strong interest in MT and is a resident. One of EA’s earlier companies was Rightnow Technology http://www.rightnow.com/ out of Bozeman. Rob was the first Board member and stayed on the Board till months before the IPO ( Rob does not sit on public Boards). http://www.entrepreneur-america.com/default.asp.

Rob and Terry are going to conduct a new version of the Boot camp with up to 3 management teams all presenting their companies and receiving individual analysis and guidance. This will not only be highly valuable to each business model but also give each entrepreneur the advantage of listening to the critiques of the other presenting companies to further increase their entrepreneurial abilities.

Entrepreneurs interested in taking advantage of this opportunity should submit their executive summaries by 10/20.

1. Each team member must read Rob’s book SMARTUPS http://entrepreneur-america.com/ . Rob does not run a kindergarten so if it becomes obvious that you did not do your homework, he will not nag you or berate you. He just won’t work with you.

2. Do your company presentation per the format in the book. This is a hard assignment and will force you to do a lot of work. This work is exactly what is needed for Rob and any other angel or VC.

3. Based on number 2 (the presentation), Fill out the Executive Summary criteria listed below to compete for an invitation to participate.

Your summary will be reviewed and the winning presentations will be notified and advised of additional information or research that they’ll need to bring to the gathering.

There will be up to two meetings of up to 3 companies per meeting. Each company will be allowed to bring 3 mangers to participate so the groups will be small and very personal. (Lunch and drinks are ten dollars per person to cover the costs only..)

Each team will present their pitch and then be evaluated by Rob. Discussion will follow of how to proceed with each company.

This will be an outstanding opportunity for Montana Entrepreneurs who wish to move to the next level of success.

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The process for gaining an invitation to our Boot Camp consists of:

Submit your executive summary by clicking on "Submit your Application" under the "Boot Camp" tab on the top banner of the page http://www.entrepreneur-america.com/default.asp.

The electronic form will lead you through steps for building an Executive Summary. The Executive Summary is the best tool you have to help you find the funding you are striving to attain. If you have the information, fill out this form clearly and concisely, and submit it WHEN COMPLETED!

Do not waste our time (or yours) by sending a partially completed summary. This will forever dash your chance of getting into the EA program or a venture capitalist.

The exercise of building your executive summary and annotating it will also help you in your efforts to raise money and win customers.

The summary is also what VCs and "angels" use to determine if they are willing to read the rest of your plan. It pays to write a good one, for your sake and for the future sake of your company.

Each submission will be reviewed and ranked into two categories; high and low.

"Almost In!": means you are a company that professional VC’s or "angels" might wish to invest in and have met all the qualification criteria above.

If your business looks interesting to us, you will receive an invitation to the gathering at the Boot camp.

"Out": indicates the Executive Summary is filled out completely, but does not rate as high. You will receive a response from EA upon confirmation, but will not receive further communications.

You are always welcome to use the resources offered on this site, and feel free to return, as we are continually adding new features (including presentations and tutorials), aimed at entrepreneurs like you.

Good luck.