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- To directors and advisors: “Noses in; fingers OUT!”
- Are your board members as valuable as you?
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Category Archives: Ignition! Starting up
How many innovations are carefully planned?
Most innovations come from responding to a customer’s needs, or finding a niche where products need improvement or extension. It is rare to innovate using a blank sheet of paper in a room with bare walls and no other contributors. … Continue reading
Posted in Growth!, Ignition! Starting up
1 Comment
Burn the bridges behind.
By Frank Peters I became an entrepreneur because I had to. My life in Corporate America wasn’t going so well. I never got fired, but I did quit one job the day before I was to be let go. I … Continue reading
Posted in Ignition! Starting up
4 Comments
It’s mostly in the execution.
“Everybody’s got a plan – until they are punched in the face,” stated boxer Mike Tyson. My experience personally reviewing over three hundred executive summaries each year, all sent to me unsolicited, seems to bear out the truth in Tyson’s … Continue reading
Posted in Growth!, Ignition! Starting up
1 Comment
The three step dance – creating a great company
Creating a gerat company in a relative vacuum is an exercise in complete trust that the entrepreneur knows what’s best for the customer, perhaps even without interaction with such a customer. It’s probably happened, but not often enough to trust … Continue reading
Ready, aim, fire. Really?
You’ve surely heard the variations on this theme. “Ready, fire aim” was popular in the 1990’s, accredited to any of several authors. I used the term to describe my efforts in the artificial intelligence field, experimenting with new devices, the … Continue reading
Build a company – not just a product.
Some businesses are built around a single idea. And sometimes that idea is just too small a slice of the big picture to be interesting to investors. There was a recent investor event where I was keynote speaker, on stage … Continue reading
How to make a business partnership a success
By JJ Richa Dave’s note: Our guest insight this week is from JJ Richa. JJ is a successful entrepreneur and technologist giving back to the entrepreneurial community in many ways, including his weekly Internet TV program on entrepreneurism, and participation … Continue reading
My dad said: “Never take on a business partner.”
My dad was a smart businessman, even if not formally trained. He occasionally gave me advice that turned out to be more than wise, looking back at subsequent experience and events. His personal teaching event was a typical experience, as … Continue reading
Posted in Depending upon others, Ignition! Starting up
9 Comments
Include your labor value in your plan.
Investors love it when entrepreneurs draw little or no money from their startups. It extends the cash available for research and other necessary fixed costs and gives the fragile, young company more “runway” to get to breakeven. But when forecasting … Continue reading
Posted in Growth!, Ignition! Starting up
1 Comment
Accurate assumptions lead to defendable plans
The biggest error in planning may not be spreadsheet calculation error. Or cost estimation. It is most often missed assumptions about the market, the competition, the speed of adoption, or other critical metrics you’ve researched, or selected, or even just … Continue reading
