999 Posts Found

There is always plenty to do at a startup and the CEO is usually the head cook and dishwasher, but the question of where I should be productively spending my time is an important one. Besides suggestions specific to a company lifecycle stage like, “Get some alpha customers teed up” or “Get together a launch plan for Europe,” there are some core, evergreen pieces of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Scott Weiss | Source: GigaOM | Subject: Entrepreneurship

When talking to an investor (or potential advisor, partner or other person who cares about the viability of your business success) you will talk at some point about all the major things: the market, the product, the team, the target customer, the business model etc — but how you lead the discussion and how you frame your points matters a lot.

From my experience at two … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jason Shen | Subject: Entrepreneurship

This article culls the top 10 lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs, based on the author’s research and hands-on experience starting two companies. The author lends support to some previous findings, but also identifies additional factors that provide valuable input.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Davis, Ph.D. | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Business school will cost you five years. At least.

If you want to learn normal business school stuff and get a normal business school job at a large company. It may be the right choice for you. If you are going to business school to ‘learn’ entrepreneurship and ‘build your toolbox.’ You’re just lying to yourself. Even if you could … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jason Freedman | Source: humbledMBA | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, MBA Related, Miscellaneous MBA-related Resources

Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: Should they go it alone or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Noam Wasserman | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Thuuz Co-Founder and CEO Warren Packard appreciates how uncertainty is a constant force in the lives of entrepreneurs. Sharing stories from his career as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Packard captures how life is a series of decisions made without complete information. He also addresses how his current venture approaches issues of funding and strategic partnerships.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Warren Packard | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Bill Nguyen launches startups with haste, never researches the competition, and makes the same mistakes “again and again.” So why do people keep giving him so much money?

Editor’s Note: This is the guy behind Color. I don’t find the portrait of him flattering nor does he seem especially worth emulating, but some of the discussion about Silicon Valley, funding and entrepreneurship is indeed interesting … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Danielle Sacks | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Entrepreneurship | Company: Color

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