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.” This sentiment is probably familiar to many entrepreneurs and it must certainly resonates with anybody who suspects he or she has ADD. Then she bought me a book that changed my life. Reading 5 or 6 books at once but never completely finishing any. The book profiles the founder of JetBlue who is apparently classic ADD.
” It’s the most common refrain I hear from investors and even entrepreneurs these days. So much so that if you read Ken Auletta’s wonderful book “ Googled ” you’ll see that Larry and Sergey had for years stated they would never do paid search results. “There’s something going on in LA.”
So, to help other female entrepreneurs, they founded TuesdayNights (www.tuesdaynights.org), a group in LA which helps female entrepreneurs connect with capital and each other to improve their access to capital. What is the most difficult challenge that women entrepreneurs face?
Most of the time, I’m all about providing encouragement and inspiration to entrepreneurs. They need it and they deserve it, because entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of our economy. Here is a sampling of ten themes from the book that I think are just as relevant today as they were then: The reality of starting.
The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that most aspiring entrepreneurs never even imagined.
First, I recently read the must-read book Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton. I’m friends with several people in the book and I’m sure they didn’t love being written about – nobody ever does in this sort of book. But the book is a must read for entrepreneurs. I love politics.
Yet every business and every entrepreneur I know struggles with this challenge, focused on hiring the right people and implementing the right process. I was happy to see my own view reinforced in the classic book, “ Innovation Thinking Methods for the Modern Entrepreneur ,” by long-time entrepreneur and innovation expert Osama A.
Sometimes entrepreneurs are so focused on making change happen for customers that they forget that continually changing themselves and their company is equally important. In his classic book “ Invent, Reinvent, Thrive ,” Lloyd E. Negative advice on an unknown is easy and safe to give, so every entrepreneur hears it over and over.
New entrepreneurs routinely jump into a startup with a full charge of passion and energy, but often find themselves drained of both after a few months by the workload and challenges. Of course, this same challenge extends well beyond the entrepreneur, into all walks of life and work. These keys are meaning, interactions, and energy.
As an angel investor in early-stage startups, I’ve long noticed my peers apparent bias toward the strength and character of the founding entrepreneurs, often overriding a strong solution to a painful problem with a big opportunity. He has completed a study of more than 100 CEOs, with feedback from over 8,000 of their employees on this topic.
With the appearance of do-it-yourself services on the Internet, entrepreneur curriculums at every university, and a wealth of new books on the subject, the need for expensive consultants and business advisors has also been mitigated. Work out of your home, and keep your own books.
Therefore, the least you can do is take advantage of some of the self-assessment tools and guides around, like the classic book “ The Entrepreneur Equation ,” by Carol Roth, which highlights personal characteristics and skills required. That should indicate that a lot of entrepreneurs get more than they bargained for.
As a mentor to startups and new entrepreneurs, I continue to hear the refrain that business plans are no longer required for a new startup, since investors never read them anyway. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or if your last startup failed, it’s all about standing out above the crowd of others like you, and demonstrating your readiness.
Being called a lifestyle entrepreneur should be a point of pride, not an insult. Of course, even lifestyle entrepreneurs want to be happy, and want their business to be “successful.” I’m told that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook started out as a lifestyle entrepreneur. It seems that more people are focused on money today.
Over my many years of mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals, I often hear a desire to start a new business, with a big hesitation while waiting for that perfect idea and perfect alignment of the stars. Most aspiring entrepreneurs don’t have the resources alone to “bootstrap” or fund their new business alone.
It’s a special mix of entrepreneur and company, regular in every respect except for having the courage and foresight to make an idea happen that was supposed to be impossible. As an entrepreneur in a startup, how do you know if you have this potential, and what are the steps to get from an innovation to a revolution?
If the country is to recover financially and politically, new leaders will have to emerge to fill the leadership deficit – new leaders who understand that leadership is a privilege, not an entitlement, according to executive coach Michael Schutzler in his classic book “ Inspiring Excellence – A Path to Exceptional Leadership.
The Los Angeles startup community is joining the rest of the world in mourning the death of NBA superstar, entrepreneur and investor Kobe Bryant who was killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., “He not only played at the peak of his sport but everything he did was quality from film, to books to philanthropy. .
Founded four years ago by Matt Danna and Sean Stavropoulos, Boulevard was inspired by Stavropoulos’ inability to book a haircut and Danna’s hunch that the inability of salons and spas to cater to customers like the busy programmer could be indicative of a bigger problem.
In retrospect, however, Bill Gates did a lot of things right as a startup that I still look for today in aspiring entrepreneurs and their companies: Build a strong team. In fact, there are several good books written about Bill Gates and Microsoft. There is a lot more to this story than I can put here.
Dave’s note: This is a reprint of a 2015 insight that seems to have struck a chord with investors and entrepreneurs. None of this advice has changed… Let me tell you a few short hair–raising stories of entrepreneurs who have raised money and regretted it later. The problem, of course, comes if the business fails.
The answer is a resounding yes today, and I’m convinced that it will be even more true tomorrow, as young idealistic entrepreneurs try to adapt to the long-standing business culture if success is only measured in the money you make for yourself and your business. Focus on practices that help you stay open and have faith, but don’t force it.
The one word the best entrepreneurs never accept. I used to ask Deborah to book my travel plans in France and Germany were I went 1-2 times / month. There were online tools to book this stuff but the Internet booking sites were early. It’s a skill you’re going to need as an entrepreneur. Stay with me.
Most entrepreneurs believe they are “different,” but they can’t quite understand how. The classic book, “ Hunting in a Farmer's World: Celebrating the Mind of an Entrepreneur ,” by serial entrepreneur and business coach John F. All this made more sense to me as Dini defined the types of entrepreneurs into four categories.
By most definitions of the term, an entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business, incorporating innovative changes to existing products, services, business models, and creating new markets. One way of identifying the right characteristics and approaches is to take a hard look at entrepreneurs who have done it.
As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. More than one smart entrepreneur has been caught in the lofty lifestyle of big money investors, viral growth, and movie star status. A smart entrepreneur learns to embrace failure as a badge of learning that provides a competitive edge.
In case you don’t know – as VCs we have have 2 sets of customers: LPs (limited partners) who invest money in our funds and entrepreneurs (who we in turn give money to and help support them in building businesses we hope will be valuable). Who else is going to tell a VC if he got a bad reference from an entrepreneur or fellow VC?
It could be as simple as reading the right book Because I believe that negotiation is so important to our success in the business and in the social world, I re-read my favorite book on the subject again every couple of years, just to keep myself aware and sharp using the tools and techniques so important to a successful negotiation.
Entrepreneurs seem more quickly frustrated these days when their “million-dollar idea” doesn’t turn into a sustainable business overnight. So why do entrepreneurs think that building a business is intuitively obvious, and should happen overnight? In his classic book, “ The Practicing Mind ,” Thomas M.
Doctours , a Los Angeles-based online platform for booking trips and treatments for medical and dental care around the world, is expanding its services to 35 countries. Once the procedure is booked, Doctours puts together itineraries that provide different options for flights and hotels based on the needs of the patient, the company said.
Dave’s book and ebook on raising money available on Amazon.com. However, most often, these funds are solicited by a well-meaning entrepreneur from investors who are not qualified as accredited investors under the law (currently requiring a proved income of $200,000 a year or $1 million in net worth for an individual investor).
Driven by the current pandemic, smart entrepreneurs of all ages are jumping into the fray with new ideas, new recovery strategies, and discarding outmoded business models. I see it most in the newest generation of entrepreneurs (Gen-Y), who were shocked out of entitlement into action by an economic downturn.
Every business professional I know, or have met in my consulting role, has given serious thought to the alternative of switching to the entrepreneur lifestyle , pursuing a long-standing dream, and controlling their own destiny. He has built more than a dozen businesses and seen everything ranging from failure to immense success.
But I have always warned of the consequences of not very well regulated situations in wish investors (and even entrepreneurs) produce information bordering on financial malfeasance. Does he blog about venture capital and try to advise entrepreneurs? Has written a book on venture capital. Is this investor on AngelList?
This is a very common scenario when entrepreneurs pitch VCs and frankly is a very common scenario when VCs try to raise money from LPs. It’s predictable, there is no reason to get mad about it and with a well-designed play book you can overcome this much of the time. What do I do now? I call it, “Remind me why I love you again?”
And there is so much money around being thrown at so many entrepreneurs that many firms don’t even care about board seats, governance rights or heaven forbid doing work with the company because that would eat into the VCs time needed to chase 5 more deals. And the truth is that several entrepreneurs prefer it this way.
Every entrepreneur realizes that change is now the norm, and they have to adapt their business quickly to survive and prosper. In fact, the best entrepreneurs seem to see breakthrough changes coming even before they really happen, and are able to turn them into huge new opportunities. Technically, this is known as perceptual acuity.
We all know at least one entrepreneur who always gets things done, and appears unstoppable in his quest. What are the attributes that make an entrepreneur unstoppable, and is it possible for people to learn to be unstoppable? Successful entrepreneurs do. Everyone dreams and talks. Limit focus to the top three or four priorities.
The rate of new entrepreneurs increased between 2013 and 2021, from 280 to 360 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.
Based on my experience as a business advisor, I’m convinced that most startup investors invest in the entrepreneur, as much as a solution or product. The attitude of taking nothing for granted, of disbelieving the conventional wisdom, of challenging the way things are done, is essential for a winning entrepreneur.
Some people are good at it and some are not – independent of their IQ or their book smarts (there may even be an inverse relationship here). Entrepreneurs who are great problem solvers within any business are the best prepared to solve their customers’ needs effectively as well. The best entrepreneurs have both.
Every entrepreneur I know is short on resources, including time, money, and skills. More recently, the concepts have been applied to the general business management context, in a classic book by Certified Turnaround Professional, Thomas H. Too many entrepreneurs confuse action with momentum and results.
I had been thinking a lot about this recently because I’m often asked the question of “what I look for in an entrepreneur when I want to invest?” Why will people invest 5x the money to get book smart and struggle so much to take a big salary cut to get real life experience? I normally finish with my soap box speech.
There is no skill more vital to an entrepreneur than effective networking. This was illustrated well in the classic book, “ Hopping Over The Rabbit Hole ,” by Anthony Scaramucci, a well-known entrepreneur, financier, and television co-host of Wall Street Week. If you humbly treat people as equals, relationships will work.
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