How long will it be before entrepreneurs realize and start treating fundraising is a sales process, not as an inalienable right?! Last week I attended my umpteenth Angel group forum. Four formal pitches. Six mini pitches. Plus a few updates from the ecosystem. Not an uncommon pattern for a gathering by an Angel group. The problem… nearly all of these presenters presented facts and figures. Slide...
Winding down the last third of Fledge, my conscious company accelerator, the inevitable topic on the mind of all the fledglings is funding. Who will fund their startups? Where can they meet these people? Given Fledge is not a typical tech accelerator, but instead a program focused on socially and environmentally conscious companies, the answer is complicated. Fundamentally, there is a lot...
We seem to be in a golden age of startups. From my nearly quarter century view as a serial entrepreneur, it certainly seems that entrepreneurship does nothing but rise year after year. Surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Labor says otherwise. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics entrepreneurship has been declining. According to the same research, the death rate of small businesses is...
Once you realize that it is possible to do good for the world while doing business, you start to think about the scalability of that good. Or the flip side of that thought, that when thinking about the impact of an organization, you think about how to scale up that impact using business practices. Both these thoughts came to my mind as I listened to a recent Planet Money podcast, one that...
I appreciate the way David Brooks thinks (an op-ed writer for The New York Times), but I don’t recall him writing often about conscious capitalism. David’s piece from last Sunday’s paper, entitled “The Moral Bucket List“, is one of those stories that everyone needs to read. My only critique is that I know it is possible for people like this to be aware how their...
Carol Sanford, host of The Responsible Capitalist Podcast, talks to Luni Libes, a serial entrepreneur and Entrepreneur in Residence at Pinchot where he teaches entrepreneurialism. His latest venture is Fledge, is a social business accelerator and investment vehicle. This Responsible Capitalist podcast talks to him about how he selects applicants and his methods for determining whether or not an...
In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore describes the gap in the adoption curve, where the marketing effort needs to be changed to appeal to the Early Majority, when most of the Early Adopters have been acquired. In talking with one of the older fledglings, I realized that there is a similar gap earlier along the curve, between the initial customers and the bulk of the early adopters. Here’s...
Ah… the proverbial hockey stick in a startup’s financial projections. No one believes it, and yet it must be included in any investor pitch. Why? Two reasons. First and foremost, investors are looking for big opportunities, and if the revenue forecasts grow exponentially, that serves as a proxy to claim a large opportunity exists. Second, investors want their money back (and more), and...
Raising money is a sales process, one in which a very small percentage of customers want what you are selling. Following on “If you think it… they will fund“, if you actually want that funding, you’ll need to talk with investors. How many investors??? More than most entrepreneurs think. A conversation with a potential fledgling led to this post. He was frustrated at...
How do you measure, compare and aggregate the impact of organizations that aim to do good in the world? Measure, whether in a nonprofit project or for-profit social enterprise? Compare, using a universal measure to easily compare a rooftop of solar panels vs. an acre of re-planted forest vs. 500 vaccines vs. jobs vs. food vs. happiness? Aggregate, as in taking the sum of any or all impacts...
