The 10 Questions You Should Never Stop Asking - Forbes.com. Milestones to Startup Success. Update added to end of post When your startup accepts outside money (such as venture capital), you are obligated to focus on maximizing long-term shareholder value. For most startups this is directly based on your ability to grow (customers, revenue and eventually profit). Most entrepreneurs understand the importance of growth; the common mistake is trying to force growth prematurely. This is frustrating, expensive and unsustainable – killing many startups with otherwise strong potential. Most successful entrepreneurs have a good balance of execution intuition and luck. Several startups later I have a much better understanding of the key milestones needed for a startup to reach its full growth potential. Day 1: Validate Need for Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Before any coding begins it is important to validate that the problem/need you are trying to solve actually exists, is worth solving, and the proposed minimum feature set solves it.
Where’s the Love? Metrics Start Charging Driving Growth. The Art of Doing It Yourself. Ditch the business plan and buy a lottery ticket. That's the advice I give new entrepreneurs who seek venture funding. The odds are better, and you'll get results sooner with the lottery. If you have a great idea that can change the world, then bootstrap your way until you can prove it. Funding will come just when you don't need it. I founded two tech companies, co-produced a Hollywood film, and helped raise close to $100 million in private and public financing. BEYOND IDEAS. Ask any entrepreneur who has called on venture capitalists and they will likely tell you that it is almost impossible to even get calls returned.
To be fair, most business plans don't deserve funding. So what should an entrepreneur do? SELF-STARTERS. There is no single recipe for bootstrapping a company, but there are some essential ingredients. Share your ideas with those who have done it before. Find a way to connect with your market. Start small. Focus on revenue and profitability from the start. Learn to sell. Learn the five secrets of innovation. Researchers say anyone can learn to innovate like Steve Jobs. After a six-year study, researchers say they have identified the secrets of being a great innovatorInnovation is not an inherent trait, it's a set of skills that anyone can learnExposing yourself to new ideas and observing the world around you can drive innovation London, England (CNN) -- Coming up with brilliant, game-changing ideas is what makes the likes of Apple's Steve Jobs so successful, and now researchers say they have identified the five secrets to being a great innovator Professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs, that included interviews with high-profile entrepreneurs including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers.
The researchers describe this ability to connect ideas as "associating," and say it's key to innovators' ability to think outside the box. The Making of a Successful Entrepreneur: Where Founders Find Fin. Selling for Survival. If I were creating a survival guide for entrepreneurs, the first lesson would be on selling. Yes, you have to learn to raise and manage money, create great products that your customers actually need, manage and motivate your employees, and so on. But the single most important skill that entrepreneurs don't typically learn is how to seal the deal. During my days as a techie, I always associated "sales" with the used-car business. Perhaps movies like Glengarry Glen Ross and Tin Men helped me conclude that selling equaled hustling. I thought it meant convincing people to buy things they didn't need, and the key was to close a sale before they changed their minds.
DIFFERENT BALL GAME. Yet, after having worked my way up the ranks of Corporate America, cofounding two tech companies, helping launch a film and a TV venture, and mentoring dozens of entrepreneurs, I've come to the conclusion that I was completely wrong. INTO THE FRAY. "SELLING BOOT CAMP. " UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOR. A Student's Guide to Startups. October 2006 (This essay is derived from a talk at MIT.) Till recently graduating seniors had two choices: get a job or go to grad school.
I think there will increasingly be a third option: to start your own startup. But how common will that be? I'm sure the default will always be to get a job, but starting a startup could well become as popular as grad school. The most ambitious students will at this point be asking: Why wait till you graduate? A year and a half ago I gave a talk where I said that the average age of the founders of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft was 24, and that if grad students could start startups, why not undergrads? I now realize that something does change at graduation: you lose a huge excuse for failing. The problem with starting a startup while you're still in school is that there's a built-in escape hatch.
Even if you start a startup explicitly to get rich, the money you might get seems pretty theoretical most of the time. You probably can't change that. Plus Minus. How Experienced Developers Can Handicap a Lean Startup. Inexperienced developers have one big advantage: they haven’t been programmed to work for perfection and they’re not afriad to make mistakes. –Neil Callanan, Founder of FitFeud Summary Start-up success depends on rapidly figuring out what customers will actually buy, a process that often requires quickly hacking solutions and other bad software practices for the enterprise. Unfortunately most of us get our tech skills from the enterprise – an environment where cutting corners usually causes more long-term problems than benefits. As a profession we need better practices for lean startups Life as an Enterprise Software Engineer I learned most of my technical skills in established (i.e. non start-up) companies doing what most engineers do every day: I solved problems.
I also learned that there are wrong ways to solve problems, that cutting corners on scalability, security, etc. ultimately lead to even bigger problems later. Problems, problems, and more problems. Life as a Startup Hacker Yikes. Start-ups have no room for VPs. Penniless Startup Founders. Before starting, I'd like to point out that the tips that follow are only valid in a particular context: Understand that these tips are for the very early stage Your first business goal is to get out of the very early stage as soon as possible. Lots of these tips concern petty little details. However, together these details matter when at the very early stage, when you're fighting for survival. Survival is a huge milestone but it isn't the end goal You have no money and aren't interested in loans. If you have no money, this is probably your first venture. You're starting a software company.
Everyone values the dollar differently. Eventually, you should aim at moving out of consulting, as it doesn't scale. Don't hire an accountant to prepare invoices for you. There are plenty of examples of ways not to spend money when you're just starting out and have none of your own. Be smart about the commercial bank account you choose I've dealt with a few different banks over the years.
Your Image. Validated learning about customers. Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? Sounds like a no-brainer, but I’d like to try and convince you that it’s not. All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. But all things are never equal. In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of charging customers for your product from day one.
I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies who refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of iterations. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? Consider this company (as always, a fictionalized composite): they have a million dollars of revenue, and are showing growth quarter after quarter. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product. Zunavision. The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route. No one disputes that Silicon Valley is the global capital of the tech world.
But this wasn’t always so. It is the Valley’s dynamism and networks which have given it an unassailable advantage. Silicon Valley has simply left rivals like Boston’s Route 128 in the dust. I mentioned a little bit about my first Columbus Day in California in a previous column. But I didn’t tell you the whole story. I was invited to three amazing events on the night of October 12. It was a really hard decision which one to pick. I am focusing on what is possibly the largest of these networks, an organization called The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). Which brings me to Boston.
In the 1980’s the Silicon Valley and Route 128 looked very similar—a mix of large and small tech firms, world class universities, venture capital, and military funding. A young professor at UC-Berkeley, AnnaLee Saxenian, wrote a book in 1994 which answers this question. She noted that Silicon Valley had an amazing dynamism about it. Start-up studies: A pop quiz. Advice from young millionaire Gurbaksh Chahal. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Gurbaksh Chahal in his San Francisco high-rise penthouse in downtown San Francisco, Calif. on Friday Oct. 17, 2008.
Chahal is the San Jose internet entrepeneur who made a company as a teenager and sold it to Yahoo for $300 million a few years ago.He has a book coming out on Oct. 23 and will appear on Oprah the same day. less Gurbaksh Chahal in his San Francisco high-rise penthouse in downtown San Francisco, Calif. on Friday Oct. 17, 2008. ... more tk SECRET MILLIONAIRE: Gurbaksh Chahal volunteers at St.
Photo: Courtesy Fox TV Gurbaksh Chahal in his San Francsico high-rise penthouse in downtown San Francisco, Calif. on Friday Oct. 17, 2008. Gurbaksh Chahal in his San Francsico high-rise penthouse in downtown San Francisco, Calif. on Friday Oct. 17, 2008. Advice from young millionaire Gurbaksh Chahal When he sought venture capital from investors, he skirted questions about his experience (none!)
He appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Thursday. "I can't. The Cheap Revolution: Top 20 Entrepreneurial Quotes. I recently read a quote that inspired me and thought, "Why not share it with others? " I've also collected a list of quotes from entrepreneurs and other quotes that are relevant to entrepreneurship. Skip and I included our own at the bottom of the post. I hope one of these quotes inspires you as well.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientistThe only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary - Vidal Sassoon, entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't - A student in Warren G. Here are our quotes: Being an entrepreneur is a lot like playing poker - you can fold, limp in, or go for it - Yasmine Mustafa If you kick it around enough, it starts to look like a ball - Skip Shuda What's your favorite quote? Help us reach a 1,000 diggs by clicking here. Related Posts: Our Most Popular Posts: Comment & analysis - Share ideas to the maximum. Found+READ. How to Kill a Great Idea - Jonathan Abrams - Friendster - Social.
It's not easy being the brains behind one of the biggest disappointments in Internet history. Sure, there are those who describe you as a visionary, but in the same breath they'll deride you as a lousy businessman. Bloggers attack you, call you "a real asshole" and "a very lucky idiot savant. " Former investors badmouth you. Other entrepreneurs copy your ideas without giving you credit. Jonathan Abrams--founder of Friendster, the first online social network, and a pioneer of one of today's hottest trends on the Web--tries his best not to think about these things.
And yet the story of how Friendster, once the hottest start-up in America, became the butt of a business joke continues to preoccupy him. If he had invented something as mundane as a brilliant customer relations management application, no one would know Jonathan Abrams's name. Friendster is among the few start-ups that changed the world--but not as its founder had hoped. Abrams is not the only one who feels this way. How to Launch a Business Without Spending a Dime - lifehack.org. The biggest mistake I see first time entrepreneurs make is that they spend too much money.
They rent an office or retail location, pay big incorporation fees, hire employees, and build an expensive website (just to name a few). And all before they’ve earned their first dollar! Each month their cash reserves get lower and lower while they struggle to make sales to cover their expenses. Eventually the fledgling business dies with no cash flow, leaving the owner hurt emotionally and financially. Luckily, it is possible (and actually quite simple) to start up a business without spending a dime.
The first thing you’ve got to do is get past the idea of spending. You can spend money on all that stuff once you are bringing in revenue! Now to actually get started, here are 10 steps you can use to launch a new business, without spending a dime. Get an EIN at the IRS websiteThis one is specific to the USA, but all companies need an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Read full content. Y Combinator Startup News. Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 5 New Jobs of the Web 2.0 Genera. Entrepreneurship is a craft. But given the risky nature of starting one’s own business are there opportunities to practice the skills involved?
Absolutely. Below I’ve taken five online opportunities that would be a natural extension of a web worker’s daily routine. Each does require certain skills and, in some cases, a small amount of capital. However, all are purposely picked to have the lowest barriers to entry. The experiments: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The web is not only revolutionizing the way we work; it’s also creating opportunities to experiment with what that work might be. Rondam Ramblings.
Jonathan D. Nolen - The Open Company Test. After writing that last post damning Apple's lack of transparency, I thought it might be a good idea to actually come of with a list of questions with which we might identify an open software company. I don't think it's necessary that a company meet all of these criteria, but the more the better. Open Sourcecode: Do you have access to the sourcecode? True open source is great, but simple access to the source code, even if it’s not under an open source license, is often enough.Open Data: Can you easily get your data into or out of the application, should the need arise? Open APIs: Can your other software interact with the application? The best applications provide different means of access: GUI, command-line, RSS, SOAP or REST, for example. These additional avenues of access enable you to build more complex and customized solutions using the product. There is, of course, a price for companies to pay for all of these behaviours.
Like this: Like Loading... FatBlog » Joel On Software: Please Get Off of Software. Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog. 8 Outdated notions of entrepreneurship » Brazen Careerist. MBA Toolbox : Hello world. Raw Thought: Aaron Swartz's weblog. The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT. Essay. Why Startups Condense in America. What Business Can Learn from Open Source. Current Issue. Musings of a social architect. Startup Library. WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrep. VentureBlog. The Venture Capital Institute- Deathtrap. Tartupschool2006 (notelab) StartupJournal | The Wall Street Journal C. Startup Venture Toolbox. Starting a business - SmallBusiness.com.