998 Posts Found

Jenny Lefcourt is general partner at Freestyle Capital, a venture capital firm that specializes in seed and early-stage investments. She knows what it takes to be an entrepreneur because she’s been there. Lefcourt co-founded two companies — WeddingChannel.com and Bella Pictures — after dropping out of Stanford Business School. Meetings with investors to pitch the business and raise capital left her with a deeper understanding … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jenny Lefcourt | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Howard Morgan is an encyclopedia of tech history and startup lessons. And all that he hasn’t experienced firsthand, he soaks up, too. (He keeps a running list of all the books he’s read over the last 30 years; it’s over 5,700 entries long.) In this exclusive interview, we dig into the practice Morgan has seen differentiate good founders from great founders: the ability to relax … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Howard Morgan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Jim Clifton, chief executive of Gallup Inc., has a robust theory about entrepreneurialism and economic recovery.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Art Kleiner, Jim Clifton | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Economics, Entrepreneurship

The reality is that visionaries like Steve Jobs haven’t been successful because they thought of something amazing and original out of thin air. Rather, they were gifted at constantly persuading many people to follow them on their journey to something amazing and original. To succeed, startup founders need to cultivate persuasion as a skill and habit. That’s how they’re going to get the funding, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Tyler Odean | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Should I take my company public? Why? If so, when and how? In this post, I’ll demystify these questions and provide a framework for answering them.

Content: Article | Author: Nicole Irvin | Source: Andreessen Horowitz | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Founders will often ask me, “Do you want to go through our deck?”
 
It’s not about the slide deck. We have made the decision to invest in entrepreneurs without slides, whose ambition, passion, depth of understanding of an opportunity and compelling vision come through crystal-clear in conversation.
 
But…that’s a high bar for communication. Most of the time, putting a business plan on paper helps you structure a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

In my experience, it will generally take three to four rounds of equity capital to finance the business and 20-25% of the company to recruit and retain a management team. That will typically leave the founder/founder team with 10-20% of the business when it’s all said and done.

Content: Article | Author: Fred Wilson | Source: A VC | Subject: Entrepreneurship

There’s a joke about startups. “For every 10 startups you see in the market, 11 of them will fail.” I didn’t want to think that my startup would be the one to fail, and no entrepreneur does. I thought I knew it all…or at least would learn it all during the process of launching my startup. After my own failure, I became obsessed with understanding … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Anastasia Mudrova | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Startups go through a series of steps before they become a large company.

Content: Article | Author: Steve Blank | Source: ThinkGrowth.org | Subject: Entrepreneurship

The dynamics of companies change fundamentally when they exceed roughly 150 people, in ways that startup founders can struggle to address.

Content: Article | Author: Kevin J. Delaney | Source: Quartz | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Khalid Halim notices patterns in startups that how companies scale and break matches military groupings. In this exclusive interview, he pulls at the strings of this scaling-and-breaking phenomenon to articulate what he calls the law of startup physics. He explains how companies and people grow at different rates — and what this tension means for how both will break while scaling. Halim shares how he’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Khalid Halim | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Cognitive behavior theory says automatic thoughts color and distort our observations, our judgments, and our actions. These automatic thoughts come to mind without even trying. They reflect deep beliefs about self, past experiences, and expectations for the future, and they have a profound impact on judgment and behavior. I’ve met thousands of founders over the last decade or so and I think many of them … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael Dearing | Source: Medium | Subject: Entrepreneurship

In my short career as a VC, I’ve reviewed thousands of pitch decks and helped hundreds of founders refine their pitches. Additionally, I’m often approached by founder friends to provide feedback on their slides before they go to market. Given pitch decks are frequently discussed and they’re essential in the fundraising process, I thought it would be useful to create a simple guide to building … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Steve Schlafman | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

For the first-time and early-stage founder out there, it can be daunting to recruit and hire executives — especially when you don’t have enough knowledge to test them for skill in their area of expertise. In this exclusive interview, Marco Zappacosta shares his four-step process for identifying and vetting his leadership team. From job descriptions to interview questions to references, Zappacosta shares his approach to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Marco Zappacosta | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Human Resources

A common question entrepreneurs have is how much equity you should grant when you make a hire. Fred Wilson addresses that question in this post.

Content: Article | Author: Fred Wilson | Source: A VC | Subject: Entrepreneurship

VCs turn down 99% of the companies they’re introduced to. Most of those don’t make it to a face to face meeting. If you’ve made it to an in-person meeting, here are the numbers you need to know to get a VC excited.

Content: Article | Author: Ash Rust | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Founders at companies like Tesla, Paypal, and Airbnb all have traits in common. Learn what six skills they share.

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Amy Wilkinson, Sukhjit Ghag | Source: Stanford University | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Advice from Kellogg faculty experts on starting and running your own business.

Content: Article | Source: Kellogg Insight | Subject: Entrepreneurship

In the early days of building a company, it’s hard to step back and think about the bigger picture when there are always so many fires to fight or opportunities to chase down. That’s a shame, because looking at your business from a 50,000-foot view often reveals areas of misplaced focus or resource misallocation.
 
One technique that can break through the bubble of always being in … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Leo Polovets | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Risk Management

Avoid people whose skills complement yours. Consider the “cell division” approach instead.

Content: Article | Author: Roy Bahat | Subject: Entrepreneurship