So, I was at an event a few weeks ago, scribbling away on big paper to keep from gouging my eyes out (short attention span). Came up with this “fundability matrix” to visually demonstrate how investors think, and how they tend to classify 4 main types of entrepreneurs.
(By the way, this isn’t the verbiage they [...]
Hate to be so nostalgic/reflective/sappy, but that’s what New Year’s is for. If you’ll indulge me, here’s a quick look back at this past year. (FYI, here was my year-in-review post from 2006.)
January
Wrapped up promotion for The Entrepreneur Story.
Trained a new class of junior analyst interns and wrapped up my involvement at the Eastern Idaho [...]
Disclaimer:
Working with the homeless is a cause that I feel passionately about, but each of us has our own opinion about the causes of homelessness and the ways in which society can/should/shouldn’t intervene.
This blogpost may or may not resonate with your core values on the issue, and that is just fine. In any case, [...]
Business are inherently complicated, sticky, fuzzy, large-scale, operationally chaotic entities– which is probably at least one reason the 50-90% small business failure rate exists.
Let’s make it simple. A business is:
A translation of that would look like:
And finally, an example would be:
Often, startups get frustrated when looking for investment (or other external partnerships/support/resources) because they think [...]
Over the past few months, I’ve had some conversations with local tech entrepreneur Marcelo Calbucci, of Seattle20.com, regarding how we can get more people in the startup community to blog.
We decided to write a joint blog post going over the basics of business blogging, and invited Scot Herrick and Ian Lurie to join us.
Here are [...]
During this past year, I had something like 200 coffee meetings with startups.
What a privilege! Every entrepreneur I have met with is a fierce combination of hardworking, innovator, scrappy, passionate, with a dash of out-to-change-the-world-or-else.
More impressively, they all have one thing in common: building a company on $0, trying to make a dollar out of [...]
So, I was thinking lately about how difficult it for entrepreneurs to translate the vision into reality.
Why? Because entrepreneurship is like… buiding a house from scratch, with no master plan, no help, no materials. And no money.
And it has to be better than all of the other houses out there.
And if you [...]
To follow up on the “6 Questions Every CEO Should Ask On A Weekly Basis”…
I have been using the checklist, and it got me back on track FAST, in a way where I had a comprehensive grasp on the major sections of the project I need to be making progress on.
It was awesome!
So [...]
I’ve been thinking often about operations– specifically, how to keep things on track in a simple but effective way.
Startups don’t have time to spare– CEOs to keep tabs on things overall on a regular basis, but without creating unnecessary tasks.
I put together this list, and will start using it to monitor CoffeeWithAnExpert.com on a weekly [...]
Earlier, I wrote about the Brain-to-Hand Spectrum of turning your idea into a reality.
In a more nuts-and-bolts description, there are three steps to getting your idea out of your brain, and into a customer’s hands:
Step 1: Define the concept.
Do this by going through a pitch-writing exercise (see Basic Pitch Guidelines and Basic Pitch Worksheet) [...]
