Here’s what it actually takes to make it as an entrepreneur. Want to conquer the digital world? Then read on. (Euan Rocha/Reuters) A young male who was born to be an entrepreneur drops out from a computer-science program at a prestigious university. He meets a powerful venture capitalist who is so enamored with his idea that he gives him millions of dollars to build his technology. Then comes the multi-billion-dollar IPO. That’s the Hollywood version of Silicon Valley. 1. A common belief is that entrepreneurs are born and cannot be made. They’re wrong. This sample doesn’t necessarily prove my point.
I know many ordinary entrepreneurs who also didn’t sell lemonade. Silicon Valley luminary Steve Blank, who moderated my debate with Suster, adds another perspective. 2. Silicon Valley investors openly tout their preference for younger entrepreneurs. My research teams documented that the average and median age of successful technology company founders when they started their companies had been 40. 3. His effort proved to be a dismal failure. 4. 5. 6. What It's Like Being Verified on Twitter. About Steve. Put to a vote, I might have been chosen “least likely to succeed” in my New York City high school class. My path has taken me from repairing fighter planes in Thailand during the Vietnam War (a member of the Society of Wild Weasels), to spook stuff in undisclosed location(s), and I was lucky enough to arrive at the beginning of the boom times of Silicon Valley in 1978.
After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games. Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits. How To Build a Web Startup – Lean LaunchPad Edition. If you’re an experienced coder and user interface designer you think nothing is easier than diving into Ruby on Rails, Node.js and Balsamiq and throwing together a web site.
(Heck, in Silicon Valley even the waiters can do it.) But for the rest of us mortals whose eyes glaze over at the buzzwords, the questions are, “How do I get my great idea on the web? What are the steps in building a web site?” And the most important question is, “How do I use the business model canvas and Customer Development to test whether this is a real business?” My first attempt at helping students answer these questions was by putting together the Startup Tools Page - a compilation of available web development tools.
So today, I offer my next attempt. How To Build a Web Startup – The Lean LaunchPad Edition Here’s the step-by-step process we suggest our students use in our Lean LaunchPad classes. (Use the Startup Tools Page as the resource for tool choices) Step 1: Set Up Team Logistics Step 2. For non-coders: “Venture Assistance”: A Philosophical View Of What Boards Should And Should Not Do. Editor’s note: Legendary investor Vinod Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures. You can follow him on Twitter @vkhosla. Most VCs pitch their venture firms as value added to a company’s entrepreneurial founders. Personally, I think leading VC firms do a pretty good job of being supportive of their companies, and most entrepreneurs funded by good funds like their investors.
But, on the question of “value added,” most venture capitalists, even among the leading firms, are pretty passive and ineffective when it comes to assisting companies. In my view, many if not most of them haven’t done enough in their careers to earn the right to advise entrepreneurs, a job I consider laden with responsibility. A lot of VCs, especially those from the more financially oriented firms, do more harm to startups than good when they get themselves on company boards without ever having built a company themselves, or seeing one from the inside.
Keith Rabois How do I measure my partners and myself? It’s the CEO’s job to email the first 1000 signups. Until you’ve passed a thousand signups, the CEO should be personally emailing every new user. I’m going to cover: PracticalitiesHow to mess it upCommon objectionsGoals, perks & benefits The signup thank you note It’s not a big message. Hey Jackie,Thanks for taking the time to check out STK. The specifics (like the footer) are just my personal preference[1]. What I hope you’ll extract from the example is the casual tone and brevity. How to mess this up There are only two ways to mess this up and they’re both easy to avoid. The first is to be demanding. You’re just politely putting your hand up and saying: Hey, here I am. The second way to mess up is by forgetting common courtesy. Also, make sure you do it every day. I’ve seen some intros come through with a survey, which I [personally] find to be fairly disrespectful toward your new users’ time (aka my time).
Common objections This is an easy list to make because I rattled it off to my investors practically every Friday for a year. 10 Sure Fire Ways Young Entrepreneurs Set Their Ideas Up For Failure. I had a conversation awhile back with a young entrepreneur that frustrated me beyond belief. It went something like this… “I’m looking for some advice on this amazing idea I have but I can’t tell you anything about it. All I can say is we will be competing with sites like eBay and when this idea gets out everybody is going to try and take it. I mean seriously its amazing and there is nothing like it out there where it’s a win, win, win for everyone involved. We’re projected to do about a quarter of eBay’s business in 2 years and eventually make them irrelevant. We will be launching in 6 months and I mean it will be a no brainer for people to use it. Now I’m not saying this kid doesn’t have a brilliant idea or he isn’t the next Mark Zuckerberg but a conversation like this sets off a million alerts in my head. 1.
You may think you have the greatest idea in the world and if you even give a single hint at what it is everyone is going to steal it. 2. 3. 4. You have to launch! 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 14 Ways To Be A Great Startup CEO. Everyone thinks that being a startup CEO is a glamorous job or one that has to be a ton of fun. That's what I now refer to as the "glamour brain" speaking aka the startup life you hear about from the press.
You know the press articles I'm talking about... the ones that talk about how easy it is to raise money, how many users the company is getting, and how great it is to be CEO. Very rarely do you hear about what a bitch it is to be CEO and how it's not for every founder that wants to be an entrepreneur. I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about what it takes to be a great Startup CEO that is also a founder. Be A Keeper Of The Company Vision The CEO is the keeper of the company's overall vision. Absorb The Pain For The Team A startup CEO needs to be the personal voodoo doll for a startup. Find The Smartest People And Defer On Domain Expertise A startup CEO has a great knack for finding talent. Be A Good Link Between The Company + Investors Be Able To Learn On The Job.
How To Be A Million-Dollar Entrepreneur - And Why It Matters. Guest author John Fearon is CEO of Dropmyemail.com, which backs up emails in the cloud. If you have a startup, ignore the business plan, financial projections, valuations and statistics for now. Instead, look at yourself. Would investors spend $1 million to have coffee, much less champagne, with you? Let’s face it. The entrepreneurial path is a lonely, hardscrabble one that often ends in failure. Statistic Brain estimates that half of all startups fail by the fourth year. So, it pays to understand what savvy investors are thinking when you put your hand out. It's All About You There are exceptions, but among the investors who can do you the most good, money is flowing to the people behind startups, not so much to the idea behind them. Being the person that investors believe in is the surest way to secure seed funding.
As the movie “The Social Network” and Facebook’s About Us page attest, Mark Zuckerberg got his initial capital from his then-best friend, Eduardo Saverin to start Facebook. The CEO’s Weekly Checklist // Scott Weiss. As a first time CEO, there were times when I would sit at my desk and think, “What should I be doing today?” This feeling was especially strong after every financing round closed. After our seed round, we had defined the product and the engineers were coding it. I didn’t code. After I hired the executive team and started delegating, most of the bases were covered. Of course, 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 continued to nag at me. I was pretty aggressive about reaching out to other CEOs and mentors and this question was my biggest area of inquiry: “Hey, when you think back to when your company was my size, how did you spend your time?”
There were a number of suggestions that were specific to the company lifecycle stage like, “Get some alpha customers teed up” or “Get together a launch plan for Europe.” Push the team Set aggressive goals. Sell the vision.