The Northern Nevada Business Weekly’s August Breakfast & Business event drew 180 people for the chance to network and hear Doug Erwin and Robert Goldberg talk about entrepreneurship in northwestern Nevada.
Erwin is the vice president, entrepreneurial development for Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada (EDAWN), and Goldberg is the managing partner of GTG Capital, an executive at Zynga and involved in other entrepreneurial ventures.
Erwin explained that the goals of EDAWN’s economic programs are higher wages, higher-skill jobs, expanded economic opportunity and diversification of the the region’s economic base.
A major factor in those programs is encouraging and assisting start-ups. The entrepreneurial spirit is about risk taking, they said.
“The unique thing of living in Nevda and Reno, if you’re going to describe ourselves, I think the work pioneering comes up,” Goldberg said. “The culture here and the last hundred years is an entrepreneurial culture; what we used to call pioneering.”
The goal isn’t just to create a new positions, Erwin said, but to make the community a better place to to give our chidren good careers here, so they don’t have to leave.
“If we don’t make people’s lives better, we’ver failed,” Erwin said.
The Northern Nevada Business Weekly’s next Breakfast & Business event, cosponsored by Nevada State Bank and NCET, will take place Sept. 7 at the Atlantis. The topic will be on cypersecurity.
