Hans Rosling has a great new talk on global poverty (with even better graphics than his first TED talks). As always, he tells a great story. However, in his five minutes he explains what happened over 215 years, but doesn’t provide any analysis. Most importantly, he doesn’t point out that we are not only winning this war on global poverty, but at the same time losing. The story...
A key tenant to the Lean Startup philosophy is the repeated cycle of learning. Launch. Measure. Learn. Repeat. Too often, first-time entrepreneurs think they know the right answer, when in fact they don’t even know the right questions to be asking. For successful established companies, this cycle of learning never stops. Case in point today, when Fledge took a field trip to visit...
Nothing is wrong with the concept of doing good by doing business. What’s wrong are all the connotations and assumptions that come with the term “social enterprise”. Decades ago, all social enterprises were non-profit organizations which earned some revenues from the services they provided, instead of relying 100% on donations. Goodwill is a great example of a traditional social enterprise. Most...
First-time entrepreneurs don’t always understand that outside investments come with a whole new slew of responsibilities and relationships. This is made quite clear by venture capitalists, where the norm is monthly board meetings for the first year or two after an investment closes. For Angel-backed startups, too often the investors’ expectations for communications are not met by the...
