Lead, Follow or Get the Fuck Out of the Way. Today’s post courtesy of the Dave McClure school of vocabulary.
About a month ago I was meeting with a seasoned entrepreneur. After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. He was recounting one of his higher profile startups to me. He founded the company, raised a bunch of money, built the product and established a good reputation and market position. But five years into it he has brought on a senior management team, had stopped growing at the same meteoric rate and started to lose some enthusiasm.
He said that when talking with the board and with investors he realized that he was no longer visionary in this particular field and certainly no longer passionate about it. He told me his motto, which is one that I’ve always lived by. Hallelujah. I sure wish the founders of Yahoo! Why does this credo resonate with me? 1. 2. 3. I asked him to continue. Dissent is fine. Image Courtesy of 500px. 10 YouTube Videos Every Entrepreneur Should Watch. 46 Ways To Start A Business With No Money. Most people who want to start their own business don’t have a ton of money laying around and it’s probably one the most common questions I get emailed about: How can I get started without a lot of cash?
Well I’ve put together a list below of the best ideas I’ve heard and personally used. I hope you find it useful! The three basic strategies to starting a business without much money are: Delay the normal “business starting” activities like incorporating, hiring, renting office or retail space, etc until AFTER your business has started earning money. This is known as bootstrapping.Doing everything yourself and spending your personal time instead of hiring an expert. Start With The Easy Stuff: Eliminate Expenses Don’t rent an office! Legal Stuff and Incorporating Make a website for your business Getting a Logo Don’t hire a fancy graphic designer. Accepting Credit Cards Starting a service business where you consult, coach, teach, etc Creating Info Products Before investing in a retail location… Entrepreneur Startup Advice.
I usually tell people that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned by F’ing up at my first company.
I think the sign of a good entrepreneur is the ability to spot your mistakes, correct quickly and not repeat the mistakes. I made plenty of mistakes. Below are some of the lessons I learned along the way. If there’s a link on a title below I’ve written the post, if not I plan to. The summary of each posting will be here but the full article requires you to follow the links. For now it’s mostly an outline for me to follow (in no particular order). Disclaimer: I ran two SaaS software companies. 1. 2.
You also need to consider founder scenarios, ownership, prenuptials and stock options.