Back before I founded Fledge, before even breaking ground on the business plan, I spent my days networking. 15-20 meetings per week. Nearly all at coffee shops at one end of Seattle or another. You learn a lot of that intensity of networking. One skill I learned is how to track hundreds of introductions and conversations. Each and every one of the people I met back then were logged in a...
Its been years since I posted anything on crowdfunding. The JOBS Act is finally up and running. Regulation A+ and Regulation CF fundraising is happening. Is it working? Blogger Scott Purcell has some statistics from 2016, taken from the SEC. I don’t know Scott and don’t know of FundAmerica, but the numbers are from the SEC, and thus should be trustworthy. In short, the answer is...
[This post is targeted to the hundreds of colleges and universities who teach Entrepreneurship, along with the thousands of entrepreneurship training programs] Seventeen years ago, when I first taught Software Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington, 90% of the curriculum was guest speakers. Good stories, but not enough structure for the students. Five years ago, when I was asked to...
At the end of the 10 weeks at Fledge, we ask each company to create a 30/60/90 day plan. After 10 intense weeks on strategic thinking, marketing plans, sales plans, iterations on financial models, and weeks crafting stories for investors and others, it’s time to drop down into tactics and figure out how to execute. That is the easy part. The hard part is then making that plan come true. If...
