992 Posts Found

I’ve learned that there are two kinds of mistakes in venture capital. There’s the mistake of commission, in which you invest in or go work for a company that fails. And then there’s the mistake of omission, in which you don’t invest in Google or don’t go to work at Facebook in 2005.

The longer you’re in this industry, the more you learn that the mistakes … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marc Andreessen | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Succeeding as a start-up is as hard as it’s ever been, because the same fundamental dynamic is in play. You’ve got some idea of why the world should change, but the world doesn’t want to. People are too busy to hear another pitch from another start-up. People are happy in their jobs and don’t want to leave for your start-up. People are happy with the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marc Andreessen | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Crunchbase data offers some insights into how a degree from a particular institution correlates with one’s likelihood of becoming a funded founder. It turns out, your likelihood of raising funds for a startup has a pretty strong correlation with where you attended school.

Content: Prospective MBA Content | Author: Joanna Glasner | Source: Crunchbase | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, MBA Program Rankings, MBA Related, Prospective

Trying to change someone’s mind often feels like a fruitless pursuit, almost as if it requires waving some sort of magic wand or casting an enchanting spell.

Trying to change someone’s mind often feels like a fruitless pursuit, almost as if it requires waving some sort of magic wand or casting an enchanting spell. On a smaller scale, you might think of a particularly sticky … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jonah Berger | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales

New data highlights five things incumbent businesses could learn from venture capitalists and unicorns.

Content: Article | Authors: Jerome Königsfeld, Kai Vollhardt, Leo Leypoldt, Markus Berger-de León | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Venture Capital

For three years, Poets&Quants has ranked the best MBA programs in the world for entrepreneurship. And for each of those years — 2020, 2021, and now 2022 — the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis has topped the list.

Content: Prospective MBA Content | Author: Nathan Allen | Source: Poets & Quants | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, MBA Program Rankings, Prospective

Product creators like to think of what’s possible: They dream about how introducing their product into the market might change the world. This is an appropriate framing — as long as it comes with a bit of humble pie. New products don’t succeed because of the wide breadth of features they provide. Facebook isn’t successful because it allows people to build groups, host events or … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Gagan Biyani | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Marketing / Sales

When you’re adding new features, the question shouldn’t be, “Is this potentially useful to someone?” Instead ask, “How does this contribute to our users achieving their goals?” It’s very easy to “value add” your way straight out of product/market fit.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jane Davis | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Entrepreneurship, Innovation

MVP works when you have almost no competition, or if you are taking a radically different approach to what’s on the market, but it completely falls on its face when you are just straight-up cloning an established competitor.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ron Amadeo | Source: Ars Technica | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Founders should recognize the difference between validating product/market fit and discovering product/market fit. If you can deeply understand what your customers are looking for, you can discover product/market fit without actually having to build a product.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ryan Glasgow | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

If you’re going to be successful as an entrepreneur, the biggest thing is being able to take in conflicting feedback from all these people, many of whom are jaded or have bad habits, and some who are spot on. You have to be able to sit there and distill that information into something valuable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Nat Turner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

If you have to ask if you’re in love, you’re probably not in love. The same goes with product/market fit — if you have to ask if you have it, you probably don’t.

Content: Quotation | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

In startups, there will be times you need to persist, and times you need to pivot — therein lies the founder’s dilemma. To get conviction on the right path, validate your gut feelings with logic and research.

Content: Quotation | Author: Tara Viswanathan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

While early employees help set implicit norms, building systems early in a company’s lifecycle sets explicit norms. How do decisions get made? How are meetings structured? How are goals set? These systems are much easier to build when the company is small, and very challenging to put into place as the company grows.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kevin Fishner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

For the past couple of years, Annie Duke has been sharing her advice with founders and angel investors in closed sessions for the First Round community, but given our focus on open-sourcing so others in the tech ecosystem can learn, we thought readers of The Review would be curious to see a few pages from her decision-making playbook, tailored specifically for the startup context.

In this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Annie Duke | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Naivety is an important quality for entrepreneurs to possess — there are no assumptions about what is and isn’t possible. The ability to not know what lies around every single corner is actually an advantage because it forces you to look around corners that you normally would never go towards.

Content: Quotation | Author: Irving Fain | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Most founders tend to remain high-level when the topic of culture comes up. For starters, there are tons of reads on why culture matters, but strikingly few on how to actually architect it. We all understand what it means to some extent, but it’s rarely defined or broken down. There are frameworks for product/market fit or founder-led sales, but when it comes to culture, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Laura Del Beccaro | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

There are two camps on the most effective way to frame an innovative idea. One contends you should emphasize why the idea is desirable. The other says you should focus on how to implement the idea. Which one is right? A research project found that the answer depends on your audience. If you’re making a pitch to novices, focus on why. If you’re making it … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Denise Falchetti, Gino Cattani, Simone Ferriani | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Communication, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Organizational Behavior

The cultural attributes and values of an organization are really a reflection of who joins early on — the shared values that bring the early team together. Building the culture starts with who you hire, and it’s nothing more than that. It’s a mistake to be too explicit about the culture and values upfront in the earliest days of a startup. You don’t know yet … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Marco Zappacosta | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

It’s useful to recognize the ways in which you’re not a special flower. In the early days, you think you and your company are special in every way, and then over time, you realize there’s a lot of stuff that everybody goes through.

Content: Quotation | Author: Marco Zappacosta | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship