Starting startups is hard. It’s a process full of Catch-22’s. But it doesn’t end there. If you successfully navigate the path from idea to startup to revenues, the next stage is just as tricky, just as difficult, and full of new issues to overcome to reach the next milestone, profits. First-time entrepreneurs don’t realize (or know) that these stages exist, let alone...
One of my favorite topics to teach is how to name your startup. Naming can be difficult. Naming can be tricky. You not only need to think up a great name, but you also then need to worry about whether you can own the matching domain name, the Twitter handle, the Facebook page, etc. But even more important than those, you need to worry about what else is in the search results when you Google...
Change happens. Inevitably. Change happens a bit every day, usually without you noticing. Then one day, you look up and the world was not as you remember. This happens in all sorts of areas of life, and this slow series of changes can greatly affect your business in a multitude of ways. The most obvious is when the competition has changed their pricing, or when they’ve added a...
Ray Dalio is the founder, co-Chief Investment Officer and co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. He’s also the author of the #1 NYTimes Bestseller, Principles: Life and Work and has summarized that advice into the following 30 minute video series. (Total running time: 31 minutes) 1. The Call to Adventure 2. Embrace Reality and Deal With It 3. The Five Step...
I have a hypothesis that successful entrepreneurs can perform at least seven varied skills, one of which is Design. Not the narrow definition of Design, as in the ability to draw, but the larger definition, as in the ability to create a whole customer experience, from name and logo through purchase flow and product look, feel, and action. As an entrepreneur who can’t draw, I’m...
I’ve been writing and talking for years about how “California Capitalism” is the wrong answer for 99.9% of all startups. I expect I’ll be talking about this for at least another decade, maybe two, before the investment world comes around to see what they are doing wrong. I don’t blame investors. They are simply stuck in a paradigm, and if you go back and...
Here in 2018, it seems a bit 19th Century to focus solely on writing books. Yes, I also write a blog, and those were not invented until the late 20th Century, but podcasts are one of the 21st Century’s contributions to media, and feels like a medium that is just starting to take off. I’ve thus jumped on the podcasting bandwagon using The Next Step brand from my books as the title and...
It’s business-plan-contest season here in Seattle, and for me that means judging business plans at the University of Washington, Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, plus a dozen other schools who have sent teams to the five major competitions at those universities, including the projects from my own Entrepreneurship students at Presidio Graduate School. You’d think that...
Glen Herud wrote: I founded Happy Cow Milk to make a difference. But last week I had to admit to myself that I failed. I made the decision to shut down the business and I faced the hard truth that I haven’t really made any difference at all. So what went wrong? So begins the post mortem of Happy Cow Milk, as told by the founder himself. It’s not an uncommon story. Founder has a dream. ...
Two weeks ago I was in Boston, speaking at the Angel Capital Association, surrounded by many hundreds of fellow startup investors. As is usually the case in such gatherings, the most common word in the room was “exit” as that is the obsession of the modern startup investor. My talk included that word as well, but only in contrast, as it’s title was “Investing without...
