Nearly two years after Washington D.C. passed the JOBS Act, which legalized crowdfunding of startup fund raising, the law goes unused, awaiting a final set of regulations from the SEC. With no end to that process in sight, we here in Washington State took matters into our own hands, and last month passed the Washington Jobs Act, an intrastate crowdfunding law. This law will allow any Washington...
Today was a typical day. Big pile of email, including two wantrapreneurs looking for feedback on their ideas, stand-up status meeting with the current “fledglings”, a few one-on-ones with those CEOs, a few asks throughout the day from those teams, and a few quick meetings with graduate fledglings and one of my other mentees. Two and a half years into this new career of providing guidance and...
By this definition we have at least 2.6 billion deep sinners – the 37% of people in the world who live on less than $2 a day. They are the future Steve Jobs’, Mohandas Gandhis, Madame Curies and Pablo Picassos who will instead eke out a living as drug dealers, child soldiers, prostitutes and destitute slum dwellers. The three trillion dollars or more we have wasted in misguided development aid...
A few years ago, Alexander Osterwalder invented a new way to talk about and visualize business models, creating the Business Model Canvas. This tool has made it far easier for entrepreneurs to understand, iterate and communicate their business models. I’ve taught the Canvas to hundreds of entrepreneurs and business owners, and found it quite useful. However, every time I did so, the...
