999 Posts Found

I’ve heard thousands of investors ask tens of thousands of questions. I’ve also learned that startups’ answers to these questions can be far more insightful than a rehearsed pitch. This is a list of the most frequently asked investor questions.

Content: Article | Author: Elizabeth Kraus | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I get a lot of people asking me about PR, and how to achieve coverage, especially around a launch or announcement.

At the end of the day, it’s not a big mystery. It’s a B2B sales campaign, where you have a qualified, relevant list of targets (media list), a means by which to reach them (email addresses), a coherent argument for why what you’re doing is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Pete Kazanjy | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Public Relations

Pete Kazanjy discusses a recruiting strategy for bringing aboard energized, motivated salespeople who produced, including the mistakes he made and has seen other organizations make, and — most importantly — how to find and close the candidates that will make or break your ability to sell your product.

Content: Article | Author: Pete Kazanjy | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Human Resources, Marketing / Sales

Investors write checks when the idea they hear is compelling, when they are persuaded that the team of founders can realize its vision, and that the opportunity described is real and sufficiently large. When founders are ready to tell this story, they can raise money. And usually when you can raise money, you should.

Content: Quotation | Author: Geoff Ralston | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Most entrepreneurs hate gambling. What they really enjoy is the opportunity to try something new. They’re typically driven not by this craving for risk, but rather, this desire to say, “Can I pursue a passion? Can I work independently? Can I do something where I’m really going to have an impact?”

What mystifies a lot of us is we look at entrepreneurs, and we see them … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Entrepreneurship

“Every chapter of Horowitz’s no-holds-barred book offers hard-won lessons for the CEOs of startups and rapid-growth tech companies. Unlike the pablum that many business book authors deliver, this entrepreneur and VC (Horowitz is a co-founder of Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz) refuses to sanitize the story: for instance, he admits that CEOs often don’t have great choices and, instead, must find the least-worst option to … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Ben Horowitz | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management

After product market fit, nothing is more important to growth than hiring the right people. The right people grow your startup exponentially – the wrong ones stunt growth. To get that exponential growth, you need a recruiting strategy that provides a steady pipeline of people ready to jump aboard when you post your jobs. I’ve put together 19 tips to help you build a strategy … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Adam Seabrook | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Human Resources

Marc Andreessen writes about the only thing that matters for a new startup – product/market fit.

Content: Article | Author: Marc Andreessen | Source: LinkedIn | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Brad Feld offers simple but useful advice on hiring for senior leadership positions in a fast-growing startup.

Content: Article | Author: Brad Feld | Source: Feld Thoughts | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Human Resources

It’s natural to expect that many young companies fail, but what’s remarkable is that in an overwhelming number of times, they fail from avoidable mistakes. Of course sometimes events occur that could never have been predicted—such as the loss of a key founder, or an unexpected government action that eliminates the need for the product—but these events are rare in our experience. This is a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Henry Kressel, Norman Winarsky | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Entrepreneurship

The Four Steps to the Epiphany launched the Lean Startup approach to new ventures. It was the first book to offer that startups are not smaller versions of large companies and that new ventures are different than existing ones.

Startups search for business models while existing companies execute them. The book offers the practical and proven four-step Customer Development process for search and offers insight … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Steve Blank | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation

You should raise money when you need it or when it’s available on good terms. Be careful not to lose your sense of frugality or to start solving problems by throwing money at them. Not having enough money can be bad, but having too much money is almost always bad.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Altman | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Competitors are a startup ghost story. First-time founders think they are what kill 99% of startups. But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder. Worry instead about all of your internal problems. If you fail, it will very likely be because you failed to make a great product and/or failed to make a great company.

99% of the time, you should ignore competitors. Especially ignore … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Altman | Subjects: Competition, Entrepreneurship

Don’t compromise on the quality of people you hire. Everyone knows this, and yet everyone compromises on this at some point during a desperate need. Everyone goes on to regret it, and it sometimes almost kills the company. Good and bad people are both infectious, and if you start with mediocre people, the average does not usually trend up. […] Finally, fire quickly. Everyone knows … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Altman | Subjects: Culture, Entrepreneurship, Management, Organizational Behavior

It’s easier to do something new and hard than something derivative and easy. People will want to help you and join you if it’s the former; they will not if it’s the latter.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Altman | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation

There are a lot of nuances in a VP of Sales at a startup that are important to be on the lookout for during the interview process. The following are the top 5 attributes to look for when interviewing.

Content: Article | Author: Jordan Wan | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Human Resources, Marketing / Sales

It is incredibly important to understand the incentives of investors when you are raising money. This used to be fairly easy – you raised money from Venture Capitalists who wanted to see a big return on their investment. The best of these investors were incredibly focused on doing the one thing they did well: investing in technology companies.

The world looks different now. There are a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Aaron Harris | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Running a start-up is profoundly different than running a big company. When you’re small, founders are close to the action and can make sure all the important things happen. But as a start-up scales, founders can’t have their hands in everything: many companies lose focus on the customer; decisions get bogged down; and there are hiring mistakes. We’ve all seen these things happen to good … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Boris Wertz | Source: Venture One | Subjects: Culture, Entrepreneurship | Company: Amazon.com Inc.

It’s a common adage in Silicon Valley that 90% of startups ultimately fail. To understand why that’s the case, a pair of researchers meticulously pored over 193 blog posts—startup postmortems, if you will—written by founders examining what went wrong.

Content: Article | Author: Alice Truong | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Figuring out the right pricing for your startup is a challenging, yet crucial, part of building a successful company. The way you price your product can make or break your startup. So, it’s important to understand the pricing landscape of your market and how your company fits into it to get your startup’s pricing right.

Dreamit recently hosted an educational panel on startup pricing for the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Medium | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Pricing