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6 Mistakes Often Made By Entrepreneurs Due To Passion

Startup Professionals Musings

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. Just because you would have loved to have your groceries picked out and delivered, doesn’t mean the mainstream customer was ready for Webvan in 1999. But I’m not convinced that it’s as simple as that. Fail fast and pivot.

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6 Ways To Doom Your Startup Despite A Great Solution

Startup Professionals Musings

As an entrepreneur mentor and startup investor, I see with sadness the 50 to 90 percent that fail. Just because you would have loved to have your groceries picked out and delivered, doesn’t mean the mainstream customer was ready for Webvan in 1999. But I’m not convinced that it’s as simple as that. Fail fast and pivot.

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Should Founders Be Allowed to Take Money off the Table?

Both Sides of the Table

A friend of mine is a serial entrepreneur and is running a high-profile, early stage company in NorCal. We exchanged ideas when I was an entrepreneur along side him in NorCal in 05-07 and my point-of-view on founder / VC relationships hasn’t shifted even 1% since I went to the dark side. >50% of our revenue in now viral.

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Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

I had previously raised VC in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. There was no viral social networking products back then like Twitter where people could easily discover your content. Experienced and serial entrepreneurs in the content management space. I hadn’t thought about the fact that he would become aware of my link.

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Apply Hospitality-Driven Thinking to Your New Venture

Startup Professionals Musings

As a self-made entrepreneur and former chairman of Diamond Resorts International, he asserts that the five biggest companies by market value today, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, aren’t really tech, but hospitality companies. He got even by going viral, so easy to do these days, costing shareholders perhaps $180 million.

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It’s Morning in Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

The movie, “The Social Network” might have had more of an impact on creating future entrepreneurs than any other event of the past 5 years. In 1998 it was 150 million, 1999 250 million and by 2000 it had crossed 350 million. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin! There are 20x more consumers online.

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15 Entrepreneurs Explain Why They Started Their Business

Hearpreneur

Then I realized what that qualifies me to be: an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs have to wear a hundred different hats, be good at dozens of skills. Armchair philosophy aside, I truly believe that people with diverse skills, people who are well-rounded and good-but-not-great in many areas can make perfect entrepreneurs.