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Tuesday, February 19, 2019 -- Seed Stage Startup Pitch Competition. startups and entrepreneurs pitch on stage for product, business model, and investing feedback, and one winner will take home a valuable prize package. Startup Coil. See [link] (more)
Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. For my partner, Craig Cummings, and I - 2019 was our first full year as Venture Capitalists! Since 2010, $6.3B
Wednesday, June 5, 2019 -- ACG101's 3rd Annual Emerging Growth Pitch Competition and Showcase. 10 selected startups will pitch to attendees, guest judges (investors and seasoned entrepreneurs) in a showcase/demo table style presentation.
Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. While 2018 was all about better understanding the SoCal opportunity, 2019 was about honing our focus and defining our core programs.
Saturday, November 16, 2019 -- Caltech Entrepreneurs Forum - Transportation. Emerging Opportunities in Urban Mobility and the Business Models It Will Enable. The ways that people and products move around cities worldwide are rapidly changing.
Both are required to stay competitive. I have added my own insights, based on my experience advising and working with entrepreneurs and startups: Pay for results, rather than pay for work. 57 million workers identified themselves as freelancers in 2019, up 4 million since 2014. Measuring results in itself is not new.
Thus, in my consulting with entrepreneurs, I always encourage them to get more comfortable asking for help. She suspects, like me, that no self-respecting entrepreneur wants to seem weak, needy, or incompetent, and none of us like to feel indebted to someone we see as a peer or a competitor.
Most entrepreneurs are quick to assert to potential investors that their product or solution will kill the competition, but unfortunately your opinion alone is not enough to convince most experienced investors. A competitive advantage to a non-problem or tiny niche is not interesting to investors.
I was in it for the love of working with entrepreneurs on business problems and marveling at technology they had built. It was a way to make it hard for your competition to compete. In a world when LPs benchmark VC performance on a 3-year time horizon from deploying one’s fund (is your 2019 fund in the top quartile!!??)
It really is possible for an introvert to succeed as an entrepreneur, even though you can’t expect to start and build a business alone. Every entrepreneur, especially an introvert, can benefit from the perspective of another business person, ideally one who has prior experience in the domain you are about to enter.
Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. We went out on a limb in a competitive category with Wheels, and we did it because we believed in the founders. in 2005 for $680M.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019 -- CLU New Venture Fair. The New Venture Fair (NVF) is a valuable part of Cal Lutheran's entrepreneur education experience, in which student teams share their innovative startup projects in a competitive environment. They represent the brightest, most motivated, aspiring entrepreneurs on campus.
So in 2019 she founded Eano , a San Francisco-based startup that aims to walk a homeowner through a renovation and help connect individual contractors with new clients. Eano, she said, offers competitive and transparent pricing so that homeowners aren’t surprised as a remodeling project goes on.
The rate of new entrepreneurs increased between 2013 and 2019, from 280 out of 100,000 to 310 out of 100,000 of the adult population. Of course, that’s both the good news and the bad news for aspiring entrepreneurs, since it means more competition, and the business landscape is changing faster than ever.
In reality, it takes a collaboration of many good people to build and run a business, even though the original idea probably did come from that innovative entrepreneur. Solo or autocratic entrepreneurs usually don’t survive, due to required skills and a workload far beyond the capacity of a single human.
. “If big companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are prevented from acquiring startups, that actually reduces competition,” Sirinivasan writes. If big companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are prevented from acquiring startups, that actually reduces competition. Srinivasan (@balajis) March 8, 2019.
One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. I believe their competitive advantage is their top on-site leadership, exclusivity, and connections to investors.
In my experience working with entrepreneurs, once they feel they have a winning formula for their business, they are often hesitant to change or update it. What worked for you yesterday probably won’t keep you alive and competitive tomorrow. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 12/20/2019.
Created in 2014 and acquired by Dentsu in 2019, MuteSix was recommended to TechCrunch by Rhoda Ullmann, VP Consumer at Sense, a Boston-based startup building a home energy monitor. In today’s highly competitive ad environment, both content and data are kings. The key takeaway? What can you tell us about MuteSix as an agency?
What were doing in 2019, is scaling the company. The last fundraising we did was use to prove out our technology, and weve now had head-to-head competition with our competitors and others in the space to prove out our technology, our unique capabilities, and our unique approach to solving this problem.
As a business and entrepreneur advisor, I have no trouble getting owners and managers to agree that change is happening faster and faster in the consumer and technology world, requiring them to keep their business more agile , just to keep up. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 11/04/2019. It’s the only way to avoid losing.
Editor's note: All this week, and into the start of next year, we'll be featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. For the second year in a row 8 of the 10 companies selected for Techstars LA were local and we anticipate that trend continuing in 2019.
Fast forward to 2019, and Shopify now has over a million stores in the world, man of them direct-to-consumer stores. They are really focused on their core product, and they have an ecosystem where they want other entrepreneurs and other businesses to help their entrepreneurs.
With the advent and popularity of crowdfunding platforms, including Kickstarter and IndieGoGo , as a winning alternative for funding your new venture, I find that many aspiring entrepreneurs are confused about the need to ever seek a professional angel investor. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 11/21/2019.
In my work with new and aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that most struggle with putting together a written business plan, often pointing out that someone they know started a business without anything written down. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 12/14/2019.
The simple answer is that we all have to start thinking like entrepreneurs, rather than entitled employees. To me, that means treating your career more like a business than a job – with a continual and global focus on keeping up with competition, finding customers, preparing for changes ahead, and taking responsibility for your own finances.
Institutional venture capital dispensed in 2019 was down a bit from record highs the previous year, but up significantly over the last few years. Yet, in my view, every early-stage entrepreneur should be exploring this new funding alternative before approaching VCs.
In the old days, every entrepreneur dreamed of easily taking their startup public, and making it big. Smart entrepreneurs are just now starting to look at this option again, due to its unpredictability and the challenges of running a public company. Public companies are always at risk for takeovers.
What every entrepreneur needs more than anything else, after they have built an innovative new product or service, is visibility, credibility, and trust by customers, potential employees, and future business partners. Successful businesses require the best people to deliver your vision and services one step better than the competition.
Yet I find in my business advisory activities that busy entrepreneurs and professionals, especially the introverts like me, find it hard to spend the necessary time networking and nurturing the relationships they need to get ahead. That’s more than enough to put you ahead of your competition. Make the investment today.
Every entrepreneur and business leader believes that he or she has the full trust of their team and their customers, and in fact most do in the beginning. Thus it is incumbent on new entrepreneurs and leaders to start early practicing the principles outlined here, to build a trusting culture and a powerful competitive advantage.
Every aspiring entrepreneur I know is convinced that his or her idea could be the next big startup, blossoming into a billion dollar unicorn. In fact, customer experience can be a greater competitive advantage than your product. More diagnostic tools to fix problems may not be competitive.
These things are clearly good for morale, but its not so clear that they translate into a competitive advantage. The overall approach to culture change that I and the authors recommend is to first assess your current culture for a liability, or a competitive disadvantage. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 06/14/2019.
A theme I often hear from the entrepreneurs and startups I advise is that once they see that first surge of traction from customers, they can relax and enjoy life for a change. In today’s world of growing competition and customer evolution , holding your own, and growing to the next level is a constant challenge that can never be ignored.
After working in business at all levels, and consulting to entrepreneurs for years, I’m still surprised to see so many situations where things that should be easy are painful to customers, and lead to customers hating your business. Accelerating worldwide competition and financial upheavals are undermining established market positions.
Much has been written recently about the requirement to focus today on the total customer experience, as a competitive edge or even for survival. The challenge I hear from savvy business owners and entrepreneurs operating on a shoestring is that providing a superior customer experience costs money.
In the entrepreneur world, it’s still a popular misconception that the “idea” is everything. Very few businesses can grow organically fast enough to stay ahead of competition. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 09/27/2019. The power is in the people, their business relationships, and their connections.
As an advisor to entrepreneurs for many years, I strongly disagree, and still see the value of at least combining intuition with logical analysis, as we face customers and markets driven by relationships, emotions, and unpredictable social trends. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 03/04/2019.
For example, I too often see entrepreneurs with great determination failing to get investor funding to start a capital-intensive business, such as building a new automated factory. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 05/22/2019. Also, opinions are sometimes over-stated as facts.
Yet in today’s competitive and rapidly changing world, top notch sales and marketing skills are critical to the success of every business. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 01-11-2019. In reality, leadership requires first selling yourself, so these same steps apply.
Highlight your competitive value, not your technology. Most successful CEOs now recognize motivated teams and a strong culture as one of the greatest sources of competitive advantage and long-term growth. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 07/03/2019. Turn value creation (revenue) into value capture (profit).
You need to have these as backup, in case the gig economy catches up to you, or you need a side hustle for extra income, or being in control of your dream role as an entrepreneur finally becomes a passion. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 10/14/2019. A single job is not adequate for today’s lifestyle.
Conventional business wisdom tells us that entrepreneurs are today’s main source of innovation. In fact, a Wharton Business School study in this decade of the “Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years,” concluded that only eight were first conceived by entrepreneurs, and twenty-two were conceived by employees.
Do the research to find your best competitive advantage, and then highlight and live the differentiation. Use analytics to assess your efforts and your competition. Marty Zwilling First published on CayenneConsulting on 01/15/2019. You can’t win by being “just another” company that sells on price.
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