992 Posts Found

We studied new venture entrepreneurs as well as those entrepreneuring inside organizations of all kinds—corporations, government organizations, nonprofits, and religious organizations. And, the method and practices they use are more alike than different when creating something new. There are five specific practices of entrepreneurs both inside and out.

Content: Article | Author: Heidi Neck | Source: Babson Insight | Subject: Entrepreneurship

I suspect that in my 13 years years or so in the venture business I have received somewhere on the order of 5,000 executive summaries directly from founders. I read all 5,000 executive summaries. I met with some of those entrepreneurs too. Yet, I didn’t fund a single one of them. But it got me thinking. Maybe I was biased. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: David Hornik | Source: VentureBlog | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Most of the startup learning curve is a learn-on-the-job endeavor. Nothing replaces the real experience of managing your own company; however there are some lessons that are worth learning ahead of time.

Smart entrepreneurs learn to pick out which teachings should be followed and which should be discarded. This is my common response I send when friends ask for a book list. In fact, I … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jason Freedman | Source: humbledMBA | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the Darden School, at the University of Virginia, has researched the differences between how entrepreneurs and very good senior managers at Fortune 500 firms think. She gives them a scenario about a new-product introduction. The typical Fortune 500 manager will run projections from the market data. But the entrepreneur says, “I don’t trust the data. I’d find a customer and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chip Heath, Saras Sarasvathy | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Management, Trends / Analysis

James Altucher offers this bullet FAQ on starting a business with the caveat that, depending on your business, some of these won’t apply. All of these questions come from questions he’s been asked.

Editor’s Note: This is far too simplistic a list (e.g., “If someone wants to give you money, then take it.”) and I think some of the advice is wrong (e.g., … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: James Altucher | Subject: Entrepreneurship

There is something about how to do a startup in 2013 that is 180 degrees different from what an intelligent, thoughtful outside observer will intuitively do using their own common sense.

Content: Article | Author: Jason Freedman | Source: humbledMBA | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Budding start-ups often aim at the big prize of either going public or getting acquired, but both avenues can hurt innovation. What’s the best path to growth while maintaining your firm’s creative flair?

Content: Article | Author: Vikas Aggarwal | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation

Paul Graham offers some very useful advice to entrepreneurs about trying to raise money. As he points out, most inexperienced founders try to convince with their pitch when they would be better off if they let their startup do the work—if they started by understanding why their startup is worth investing in, then simply explained this well to investors.

Content: Article | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

John Doerr, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, discusses what one should look for when joining a company.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: John Doerr | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Career, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Beginning in 2005, Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, managing directors at Foundry Group, wrote a long series of blog posts describing all the parts of a typical venture capital Term Sheet: a document which outlines key financial and other terms of a proposed investment. Since this time, they’ve seen the series used as the basis for a number of college courses, and have been thanked … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson | Subject: Entrepreneurship

No company, however successful, ever looks more than a pretty good bet a few months in.

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Investors are looking for startups that will be very successful. But that test is not as simple as it sounds. In startups, as in a lot of other domains, the distribution of outcomes follows a power law, but in startups the curve is startlingly steep. The big successes are so big they dwarf the rest. And since there are only a handful each year (the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

The time to raise money is not when you need it, or when you reach some artificial deadline like a Demo Day. It’s when you can convince investors, and not before.

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Raising money is not like applying to college, where you can assume that if you can get into MIT, you can also get into Foobar State. Because the best investors are much smarter than the rest, and the best startup ideas look initially like bad ideas, it’s not uncommon for a startup to be rejected by all the VCs except the best ones.

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

[Investors] think they’re trying to convince investors of something very uncertain—that their startup will be huge—and convincing anyone of something like that must obviously entail some wild feat of salesmanship. But in fact when you raise money you’re trying to convince investors of something so much less speculative—whether the company has all the elements of a good bet—that you can approach the problem in a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Graham | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Getting Real details the business, design, programming, and marketing principles of 37signals. The book is packed with keep-it-simple insights, contrarian points of view, and unconventional approaches to software design. This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it’s a book of ideas. Anyone working on a web app – including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers – will find value and inspiration in … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Jason Fried | Subject: Entrepreneurship

The ideal business is one that runs without you. In such a case, you can focus your time on growing the business, rather than being an integral part of its day-to-day operations. Achieving this not only dramatically increases the value of your business, but significantly reduces your stress and allows you to take more time off.

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Lavinsky | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management

New research offers insights into how venture capitalists make funding decisions. The Breakdown:
30.4% – Potential Return
27% – Founders’ Experience
26.4% – Market Readiness
6.6% – Regulatory Exposure
6.4% – Social Connection with Founders
3.2% – Lead investor

Content: Article | Author: Daniel McGinn | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

I’ve started 4 companies and have invested in 25 more. And I can say, with supreme confidence, that I have made or seen almost every mistake possible. None of these are fun to live through, I assure you. But they are not nearly as fatal to a young company as the #1 mistake entrepreneurs make – FOCUSING ON THE WRONG THINGS. Successful entrepreneurs focus exclusively … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael Lazerow | Source: LinkedIn | Subject: Entrepreneurship

As Skype turns ten, a look back at how six Europeans changed the world.

Content: Case Study | Author: Toivo Tänavsuu | Source: Ars Technica | Subject: Entrepreneurship | Company: Skype