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| CONTACT |
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If you are entrepreneur, hacker, graphic design artist or investor and interested in learning more, just shoot us an email to hello@rodeolabs.com and we promise to get back to you.
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| Q: What does Rodeo Labs do? |
| Rodeo Labs is an incubator and active seed investor for pioneering internet and digital media projects. We are located in Zurich, Switzerland, and Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. |
| Q: What is Rodeo Labs' Approach? |
| We conduct extensive, ongoing research to identify large unsolved problems or big opportunities not yet fully seized by others. When we have identified an opportunity, we look for young companies and start-up teams already working on it and try to get involved as seed investor. If we cannot find a team working on it, if we think we can provide a much better product / solution, or if we cannot invest but think that the size of the problem / opportunity justifies a competitive approach, we will put together our own team and get going.
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| Three Things We Strive to Be the Best At (aka «Core Competencies»): |
1. Identify big untapped opportunities
2. Identify and invest in the most promising start-ups taking on these opportunities
3. Identify talent and assemble teams to execute an idea to its full potential
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| Q: Why Raleigh / Durham in North Carolina? |
| In short: We think it is one of the best spots in the US to develop new internet and digital media products/services and start US-based tech companies! |
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| The Full Story ... |
| The so-called Research Triangle ("The Triangle") located between the cities Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is one of the leading and fastest growing technology hotspots in the US. Three of the nation's leading universities in the technology area - North Carolina State University (Raleigh), Duke University (Durham) and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill) - and over a dozen additional institutions for higher education in the area provide a highly educated workforce. While many startups may still move to the Silicon Valley and more recently also New York, these startups struggle to attract the talents they need as they are directly competing with the high-paying technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. for attention. A battle that only very few startups win. As a consequence of these intense local talent wars, recently very successful technology companies such as Groupon, 37signals, and others, have decided to stay in the cities where they were founded and not move to the Silicon Valley. Further, the rise of start-up schools and incubators in almost every larger city in the country has contributed to the new, more distributed tech/internet community. While the Raleigh/Durham area may still be a bit under the radar of many VC firms and technology business angels, we believe that this will change significantly over the next years. Not only have some of the leading technology companies in their fields (e.g., iContact, Appia, etc.) decided to make long-term commitments to stay in the Triangle, but the area has very vibrant community of young technology entrepreneurs with plenty of universtiy graduates unwilling to leave the area for a bit more money, given that the Raleigh/Durham area has recently taken the #1 spot on Forbes' list of the best places in the US for young families.
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| The Triangle - Some Recent Rankings: |
#1 Most Wired Cities - Forbes, May 2010
#3 America's Most Innovative Cities - Forbes, May 2010
#1 Fastest-Growing Metropolitan Area in the Country - U.S. Census Bureau, March 2009
#1 City Where Americans Are Relocating - Forbes, April 2009
#8 Best Big Cities for Jobs - Forbes, May 2009
#3 Hot Cities for Entrepreneurs - Entrepreneur Magazine, September, 2005
#1 High Tech Region - Silicon Valley Leadership Group, September 16, 2005
#5 U.S. Life Sciences Clusters - Milken Institute, June 2005
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| Tech Powerhouses (Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM, etc.) Moving to North Carolina: |
On May 24, 2010, Forbes reported that Raleigh has recently drawn in tech powerhouses like Cisco, Lenovo and IBM with its neighboring Research Triangle Park as these companies are fed with fresh talent from schools in the surrounding area, including Duke, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
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On June 3, 2011, Computer World reported that Apple is set to follow on the footsteps of Google and Facebook by constructing its new $1 billion, 500,000-square foot data center in North Carolina. Google has already established a $600 million data center in Lenior, NC and Facebook is in the process of building a $450 million, 300,000 square foot data center in Forrest City.
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