992 Posts Found

Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert offer a downloadable excel spreadsheet model for financial forecasts that can be used when pitching a new venture. Also included is useful discussion about the goals for such financial projections.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Reichert, Guy Kawasaki | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Entrepreneurship

How Eric Ries developed a scientific method for launching profitable companies

Content: Article | Author: Eric Ries | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is widely recognized as one of the most important drivers of economic growth. But it’s also risky: The majority of new ventures fail, and many end in bankruptcy. Given that track record, when entrepreneurs consider a new international market, they regularly weigh such factors as logistics and differences in cultural attitudes and financial regulations.

But according to this paper, business owners would do well to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Legal

To cut to the chase, there are two extremes in online dating: eHarmony and Hot Or Not. When you use the former, you provide the data along 29 dimensions to find your soul mate. When you use the latter, you look at a picture and decide if the person is “hot or not” in a few seconds.

When it comes to PowerPoint pitches for your company, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Guy Kawasaki | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Entrepreneurship

What qualities or ways of thinking characterize the entrepreneurial mind, and can this type of innovative thinking be cultivated in others? Let’s explore some of hallmarks of entrepreneurial thinking to better understand how it works and how we can challenge and adapt our own thinking to achieve better results.

Content: Article | Author: Kentin Waits | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Eric Ries | Subject: Entrepreneurship

If you had to describe your company’s mission in a single sentence, what would your pitch read or sound like? One good way to summarize what you do and boil it down to one clear sentence is to follow the advice of Founder Institute founder Adeo Ressi. This is how it’s done:

“My company, _(insert name of company)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: TechCrunch | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Master entrepreneurs rely on… effectual reasoning. Brilliant improvisers, the entrepreneurs don’t start out with concrete goals. Instead, they constantly assess how to use their personal strengths and whatever resources they have at hand to develop goals on the fly, while creatively reacting to contingencies. By contrast, [successful] corporate executives… use causal reasoning. They set a goal and diligently seek the best ways to achieve it. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Leigh Buchanan, Saras Sarasvathy | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Entrepreneurship

If you give [entrepreneurs] data that has to do with the future, they just dismiss it. They don’t believe the future is predictable…or they don’t want to be in a space that is very predictable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Saras Sarasvathy | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Entrepreneurship

[Entrepreneurs] make lots of mistakes. They overestimate market size and underestimate how long things will take. But what happens most often is that entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of what they don’t know. They know their competition as it is today, and they know that their own product is going to be significantly better. But they don’t know what’s going on in the backroom of their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Draper | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology typically focus on creativity, tolerance for risk, and the desire for achievement—enviable traits that, unfortunately, are not very teachable. So Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, set out to determine how expert entrepreneurs think, with the goal of transferring that knowledge to aspiring founders. While still a graduate student at … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Leigh Buchanan | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Jeff Boardman (founder of LearnVC) has done a nice job building a site that both models a cap table and provides a lot of information to empower entrepreneurs both with educational resources and software tools. In addition to modeling a cap table and ownership of the company, Jeff’s software helps answer questions like “if I sell for $100M, how much money does everyone receive.”

In addition, … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Author: Brad Feld | Source: Ask the VC | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Finance Friday’s gets off the ground with today’s post by introducing you to an imaginary startup, the entrepreneurs that we’ll being following throughout the series, and their first challenges: splitting up the founders’ equity and addressing the case where one of the founders provides the initial seed capital for the business.

Content: Article | Author: Brad Feld | Source: Feld Thoughts | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Understanding the 5 C’s to decide whether to get an MBA.

Content: Article | Author: Mark Suster | Source: Both Sides of the Table | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, MBA Related, Miscellaneous MBA-related Resources

Learn the in’s and out’s of term sheets to negotiate the best terms for your startup. [Hat tip to Brad Feld]

Content: Online Resource | Source: Veri | Subject: Entrepreneurship

5 pitfalls for recent grads starting a company

Content: Article | Author: Stuart Wall | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, MBA Related, Miscellaneous MBA-related Resources

When you decided to start a business, it probably wasn’t the fun of keeping up with the latest employment regulations, tax issues, and OSHA requirements that lit your fire. Nevertheless, if you have even a single employee, you’re stuck with all that and more. You’re not alone and fortunately, where there is opportunity there are generally entrepreneurs with a solution. Enter the world of professional … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Kate Lister | Source: OPEN Forum (American Express) | Subjects: Human Resources, Outsourcing / BPO, Small Business

You have one minute to explain yourself, your business, your goals, and your passions. Your audience knows none of these. Are you prepared? Can you present your vision smoothly, enticing them to want to know more?

Content: Online Resource | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Investors that put money into your company provide a ton of value, both in terms of their capital and all the support/guidance/networking. And what about all those investors that turned you down? They actually can end up providing a lot of value as well, and that’s what this post is about.

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

Joe Abraham, the author of Entrepreneurial DNA: The Breakthrough Discovery That Aligns Your Businesses to Your Unique Strengths, has identified four types of innate entrepreneurial style (basically a person’s “business DNA”) and shows entrepreneurs how to leverage those individual strengths and leadership styles.

Content: Article | Author: Jeff Haden | Source: BNET | Subject: Entrepreneurship