In the world of social responsibility, co-ops are a corporate form that stands out as an functioning design. Consumer co-ops are a well-worn form for grocery stores (PCC and a dozen others here in Washington State), for retailers (see the multi-billion dollar REI), producers (see Organic Valley and Equal Exchange), and savings (see any credit union). Expanding that cooperative ethos across the...
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...
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...
It is application season once again at Fledge, and with it, dozens of repeats of a very common first-time entrepreneurial mistake. A grand vision with multiple components, which as a whole, all implemented, all popular, would solve some problem or simply make people’s lives better. To the ears of the entrepreneur, it sounds wonderful. To anyone who doesn’t review hundreds of business plans each...
In the traditional world of early stage, Angel and VC investing, money is local. Studies show that over 80% of funding at Angel groups and Series A VCs goes to businesses in the same city/region as the funders. Over in the impact investing space, this rule is not true. Socially and environmentally conscious entrepreneurs are tackling global, planet-scale issues, often well outside the investment...
One often misunderstood topic of entrepreneurship is “sustainable competitive advantage“, and specifically, the advantage from a “network effect“. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, iTunes, and many other modern technologies succeeded due to this effect, but the anecdote I like to use is almost 150 years old, the telephone. The anecdote goes this like: One telephone has...
Most people follow a century-old paradigm of philanthropy, popularized by Andrew Carnegie back at the turn of the 20th Century. Simply put, maximize the return of investments, and give a portion of those earning to charity. In Carnegie’s case, those investments provided him so much wealth, that despite giving away an equivalent of $5 billion in his two decades as philanthropist, enough of his...
Continuing the discussion of early-stage investing, a common thought circling around the venture capital community is that their the traditional investment model is broken. In “Investing without Zombies”, I focused on the odd choice of optimizing the system for the least likely case. But there is a second flaw in that system as well. Exits. Traditional equity investments are worthless until a...
