The Yo-Yo Life of a Tech Entrepreneur This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies. TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. Of course articles like these are going to inflame people because not everybody who is running their own business (or aspires to) wants to believe that you need to go all out to compete and win on a global scale. I was now 33 years old.
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. 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. Remember the importance of cash flow. Think outside the box.
How to nail your product market fit and sales pitch with a value proposition diagram Products aren’t sold in isolation - they exist within ecosystems. Great product market fit and sales pitches hinge on understanding and serving all the members of an ecosystem. Should a product fail to meet the needs of any one member, company success and sales velocity will falter. One tool I use with portfolio companies is the Value Proposition Diagram (VPD) which shows why a product is compelling to every customer - and most products are sold to more than one customer at the same time. I’ll walk through three examples of the VPD: Google AdSense, Expensify and Axial Market. A VPD has three columns: the product, the customers and the value proposition for each customer. Google’s AdSense enables publishers to run ads on their websites to generate revenue. The user is the most important. The advertiser follows the user in importance. That’s the genius of AdSense: ad relevancy aligns the incentives of everyone in the ecosystem. Expensify builds expense management systems for SMBs.
The New Business Road Test Traduction : Le tour d’essai des nouveaux business – Ce que les entrepreneurs et les cadres devraient faire avant d’écrire un business plan Phrase-résumée du livre : La plupart des jeunes entreprises échouent, car les entrepreneurs ne testent pas suffisamment leur idée avant de se lancer sur le marché ; ce livre nous donne une méthode en 7 étapes pour faire faire un tour d’essai à son entreprise avant même d’écrire le business plan, permettant ainsi de rejeter des mauvaises idées et d’éviter de perdre des ressources précieuses à encourager le mauvais cheval. De John W. Mullins, 2006 (deuxième édition), 290 pages Chronique et résumé du livre : La passion. Les meilleurs entrepreneurs ont toutefois quelque chose de plus : une volonté de se lever chaque matin et de se poser cette simple question : “Pourquoi mon entreprise va t-elle réussir alors que la plupart échouent ?”. Ces entrepreneurs se posent cette question pour des raisons évidentes : ils comprennent les enjeux. Définir son industrie
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.
Back to the Future: Intel will pour $100M into connected-car investments Intel Capital is announcing today a $100 million fund to invest in the future of car technology. The Intel Capital Connected Car Fund is aimed at turning the web-connected automobile into a reality. The investment arm of the world’s biggest chip maker will target funds at technologies such as in-vehicle infotainment systems (like the pictured system embedded in Tesla’s upcoming Model S electric car), seamless mobile connectivity between the car electronics and your mobile devices, compelling applications and advanced driver assistance systems. The fund marks a turning point for the once-staid electronics of cars, which are now being reimagined in the digital era. The fund will be invested over the next four to five years in hardware, software, and services companies developing new technologies. Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital and Intel executive vice president, said that Intel is already collaborating with Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, and BMW.
What drives the entrepreneur? « Entrepreneurship Talk As I promised I’ll talk a little bit about what drives an entrepreneur. How many times did you hear about “serial entrepreneurs” (that sometimes failed many times but keep on starting again) or about the fact that entrepreneurs have a special mindset? Nobody would rely deny that entrepreneurs usually have a way to look at opportunity and business in a different way. But what is it? I consider myself an entrepreneur at heart but it’s not because I’m risk seeking or because I have faith in every possible opportunity I encounter. I have heard many times (from non entrepreneurs) that entrepreneurs don’t like authority and want to be their own boss. Some people are more artistic than other and enjoy more the art of creation in and all itself, and I believe that those people are more of the entrepreneur’s type than others. Like this: Like Loading... Tags: entrepreneurship, startup
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. DIFFERENT BALL GAME. Selling isn't something that you do only when seeking money for a product or an investment: You sell all through life. It was after my promotion to project manager that I first realized getting anywhere in the corporate world would involve selling my peers and managers. INTO THE FRAY. Then, from a relatively safe haven as vice-president of technology in an investment bank, I assumed the position of chief technology officer of a software spinoff. "SELLING BOOT CAMP." UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOR. PROMISE FULFILLED.