17 Mistakes Start-Ups Make 17 Mistakes Start-ups Make John Osher has developed hundreds of consumer products, including an electric toothbrush that became America's best-selling toothbrush in just 15 months. He also started several successful companies, including Cap Toys. "After I sold my business to Hasbro, I decided I'd make a list of everything I'd done wrong and [had] seen other entrepreneurs do wrong," explains the 57-year-old Jupiter, , serial entrepreneur. He came up with an informal list of "16 Mistakes Start-Ups Make"-since expanded to 17-that has been used in a case study, has been cited in many publications, and has become a part of what he teaches budding entrepreneurs in his frequent university lectures. "I didn't expect it to actually work like that, but it did," Osher says. To home in on what lies behind the 17 mistakes, Osher told Entrepreneur what they are and how you can learn from them to achieve your own level of perfection. Mistake 3: Underestimating financial requirements and timing.
Startup How-To Guides Quitting your job to launch your own business can be a hard pill for your company to swallow, particularly if your company is in the same industry. Here's some advice. Laying the Startup Groundwork Starting your own business is not just about having a dream. There are real steps to ensure your business a successful start. So what are all of the things you should consider when launching your new brainchild? Planning for a Successful Start The old adage goes: failure to plan is a plan for failure. Raising Capital You've got the idea and you've got a plan. Establishing Your Image You may have a great idea, product or superior service, but have you thought about what image your startup will take on? Finding Customers Without customers, it doesn't matter how great your product is, how well you branded you are, or how well funded your start-up is. More Startup How-To Guides How to Start a Foundation BY Gwen Moran An Introduction to Business Plans
Guide des Startup, seizième édition Comme le coucou qui sort de l’horloge toutes les heures, voici venir la nouvelle édition du Guide des Startups qui suit à peu près un rythme de publication de deux éditions par an. Seizième édition et six ans d’existence pour ce guide, mazette ! Quelle pérennité n’est-ce pas ? Au départ, il faisait 32 pages. Heureusement, le Guide peut se lire aussi bien séquentiellement qu’en y piochant ce dont vous avez besoin au moment où vous en avez besoin. Avant d’en décrire les nouveautés, voici le lien pour télécharger cette 16ième édition. ATTENTION : ce guide évolue régulièrement et cette édition n’est probablement plus la dernière. Parmi les nouveautés de cette 16ième édition, vous trouverez : Un inventaire de l’écosystème dans les régions des startups numériques pour sortir du parisianisme des versions antérieures, réalisé avec l’aide de nombreux contributeurs dont Sylvain Theveniaud de Sophia-Antipolis. Cette édition comprend aussi les contributions de plusieurs nouveaux intervenants :
Hacker News | Founders who can't code An advise to founders who can't code If you are a business/idea guy and looking for a technical co founder, stop. Stop right now. Take 6 months off and go learn how to code (day and night, weekends including). Most web apps do little besides save, show and update data. The reason why most technical cofounders can create great products is not because they have a deep domain knowledge or they are great hackers. Here is the thing, 1 year from now, you will still have plenty ideas. Stop and go learn. Note 1: If your idea is to build something truly technically challenging, then scratch my advice. Note 2: Off course all the above would mean little if I wasn't the marketer/business/idea/support/whatever guy who spent the past few months learning.
So You Want to Start a Startup? 5 Places to Start The world is rife with business opportunity, and nowhere more so than online. I often think of the web as something of a wild west frontier, awaiting anyone intrepid enough to stake out a claim. But to start an online venture you first need to have an idea of what you want to do. Some time ago I met a very talented developer who was independent and industrious, more than capable of developing a brilliant web app. With a bit more thought and contemplation I’ve decided to catalogue some different methodologies for finding a business to get into. Part 1 – Solve a Problem Solving a problem is arguably the underpinning of every successful business. So let’s start by breaking down some famous online businesses into Problem / Solution couplings: YouSendIt.com Problem: People have trouble sending large files by email. AllRecipes.com Problem: Using recipe books can be expensive and gives you a very limited number of recipes with no popular opinion. Your Own Problems Part 4 – Follow the Money
What Does It Take to Run a Business? Are you smart enough? Are you tough enough? Are you brave enough? Are you stupid enough? If you do fail, what will it take to succeed at a second business attempt? You can’t really tell at the beginning whether someone will be successful with a start-up. When I started my first business, a couple former bosses made comments on my prospects. Was I lucky? Looking back, my prospects weren’t good. When I started my second business, everything had changed. I failed in six months. Start another business, of course. So what does it take to succeed in a business start-up? There are a couple things I’ve learned over the years.
Incubateurs : le carnet d'adresses pour démarrer sa start-up Les incubateurs sont des structures qui accompagnent très en amont les entrepreneurs en herbe qui souhaitent concrétiser un projet ou une idée de création d'entreprise innovante. Ils fournissent un hébergement temporaire à la startup, l'étape suivante pouvant être une pépinière d'entreprise, adap-tée à l'étape suivante de la croissance. Les entrepreneurs sont accompagnés par les incubateurs dans la réalisation de leur business plan et des phases initiales de la création de l'entreprise. Les incubateurs ne financent généralement pas les projets, en France tout du moins. Leurs équipes vont par contre orienter les entrepreneurs dans leur recherche de financements, du fait d'un fonctionnement en réseau avec les autres organisations d'accompagnement des entrepreneurs (plates-formes d'initiatives locales, régions, business angels, etc). Les projets de recherche et de développement peuvent avoir lieu pendant cette phase d'incubation. On trouve plusieurs sortes d'incubateurs:
CoffeeScript Founders Block » Blog Archive » Why Startups Fail: An Analysis of Post-Mortems The guys at ChubbyBrain have graciously allowed Founder’s Block to repost this analysis, originally published Jan 11th, of the top 20 reasons why startups fail. We’ve previously highlighted the top startup failure post-mortems (32 in total) written by a group of startup entrepreneurs gracious enough to share their lessons learned from failure. Many of you read those post-mortems and asked, what are the most common reasons why these startups failed? 20 – The Great Recession Many companies that failed started during the recent financial crisis (and continues to suffer through), and some startups highlighted the larger market negativity as a reason for their ultimate demise. Our analysis was supported by articles in the Wall Street Journal and the NYT, as well as the Mei Moses art index, which suggested the art market was countercyclical and had a low correlation to the S&P. #19 – Lack of Full-Time Commitment Startups are hard. We thought we’d able to run internet service after hours.
How to Run a Business Successfully: The Golden Rules ShareShare It’s easy! Understanding how to run a business successfully really boils down to using your common sense. The trouble is that the pressures & strains of running a business venture make you run business operations ineffectively. The strategic leadership skills needed to run the business fall into a couple of key areas, as I’ll show you… Do your market research You wouldn’t buy a house without checking out the neighborhood, would you? You need to do your research into where the customers are, what benefits they are looking for and how your product is going to satisfy these benefits. The Golden Rules are: Check out the competition. Simplify your expenses If you want to know how to run a business badly then look out for those companies who blow their budgets on fancy advertising campaigns, company cars and hugely inflated workforces. Only increase your work-force size when absolutely necessary. Be a proper leader Encourage open feedback within the company. Author Rod Dunne...
Qu’est-ce que la création de valeur pour une start-up ? Chose incompréhensible, à peine croyable : alors que la création de valeur est la priorité n°1 de tout entrepreneur et de tout investisseur, je n’ai pas le souvenir d’avoir lu un seul article, aussi bien en français qu’en anglais, sur le sujet. Tachons donc de réparer cette grave lacune . Pour bien saisir cette notion de création de valeur pour une start-up, il faut remonter à la création de l’entreprise. Des personnes physiques se réunissent et décident de créer une entreprise, qui est ce que l’on nomme en droit une personne morale. Elles lui donnent un nom : la raison sociale, une adresse : la domiciliation, une tête : le dirigeant, et de l’argent : le capital social. En contrepartie de cet argent, ces personnes reçoivent des parts de l’entreprise, qui sont pour ainsi dire des titres de propriété. Quel est le but de ces investisseurs ? comment revendre ces parts ? Le rachat par une autre entreprise est la seconde façon de revendre des parts. Le premier relève du marché.
Practical Tips for Hiring Ruby Web Developers The topic of 'hiring' always generates a lot of discussion. And why not? Talking about hiring is a convenient way to pass judgment on large groups of people while keeping a professional, detached demeanor.. This post is for those who handle the technical evaluation necessary to hire candidates, especially in the Ruby and Rails scenes, although the overall strategies are language-agnostic (though I'd hope if you're hiring folks to work on missiles and nuclear power plants, all bets are off). This is a guest post by Tim Goh of Trikeapps, an Australian software development company. Some Structure While hiring processes differ, I'm organizing my advice by the following components that, assumedly, most processes include: the job posting itselfthe coding testthe phone screen The Job Posting You need a permanent "Careers" page You should have a permanent careers page on your company site and constantly correspond with candidates, even if you're not hiring at the time. Include a filter question
How to Start an Online Business for $100 Today's economy isn't doing anyone any favors, and if you're one of the unfortunate folks to have been served a layoff notice, you might be facing a long haul when it comes to searching for another job. Is now the right moment to put your long-lingering business idea into practice? While times may be tight for many larger enterprises, in many cases smaller, more-nimble companies are better able to withstand market uncertainty and weather downturns. The best way to stick it to The Man? Starting your own business doesn't have to mean spending thousands of dollars on setup costs before you ever open your doors. Find an Affordable Web Host The Web site for your new business has to reside somewhere. Most hosting plans for small companies offer similar features: basically unlimited storage space, support for common databases and publishing systems, and anywhere from a few gigabytes to 2 terabytes of data transfer per month. How to pick one from the dozens out there? Get Logos and Design Work
Qui sommes-nous ? Le Moovjee, Mouvement pour les jeunes et les étudiants entrepreneurs, association loi 1901, a été créé en 2009 et a pour mission d’amener les jeunes à considérer la création et la reprise d’entreprise pendant ou à la sortie de leur formation (du CAP au Bac+5) comme une véritable option de vie professionnelle. A l’origine du Moovjee, son président : Dominique Restino • Un entrepreneur créateur de son entreprise à 24 ans • Une expérience entrepreneuriale : 20 ans plus tard, un CA de 35 millions d’euros, 100 salariés • Un passionné de l’entrepreneuriat, très investi dans la création, le développement et la reprise d’entreprise • Une conviction : pour une France au cœur du monde, il faut une jeunesse qui bâtit son avenir • Un père de famille (3 enfants de 18, 21 et 29 ans) - Il est le premier ambassadeur du mouvement. Membres du bureau : L’équipe du Moovjee :