November, 2012

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Forget Presidential Politics: Here’s How We Create Jobs — And How You Can Help

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As I write this, days after the 2012 presidential election, I’m probably not alone in feeling relieved that the political jeering and soapboxing that reached a feverish pitch during the seemingly endless campaign season has finally subsided. Yet amidst all the partisan cheerleading and name-calling, there has been some discussion of substance.

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6 Clues That You May Be Cool as an Entrepreneur

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Google's Larry Page image via Coolspotters.com. A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work.

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10 Rules of Thumb for Startup Investment Valuation

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Image via eHow.com. Once you have a potential investor excited about your team, your product, and your company, the investor will inevitably ask “What is your company’s valuation?” Many entrepreneurs stumble at this point, losing the deal or most of their ownership, by having no answer, saying “make me an offer,” or quoting an exorbitant number. I’ve written about this before, but it’s a mysterious subject, and I’m always learning more.

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How many start-ups in the US get seed/VC funding per year?

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In very general terms, roughly 1,500 startups get funded by venture capitalists in the US, and 50,000 by angel investors. VCs look at around 400 companies for every one in which they invest; angels look at 40. There are several million “startups” that are formed each year, so one way of looking at it is that there are several million “great people with a good idea who give up because they just cannot get initial funding” On the other hand, those VCs and angel investors sp

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7 Keys to Positioning Your Competitors to Investors

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Steve Jobs and Bill Gates image via Facebook.com. Every entrepreneur should spend plenty of time thinking about competitors, and how they relate to your business, but you need to be very careful what you say out loud about them to your team, your investors, and your customers. What you say speaks volumes about how you think about your startup, how smart you are, and your personal integrity.

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What are the downsides of communicating a key differentiation in your name?

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One reason is that because of rapidly changing nature of business, today’s competitive advantage can easily become tomorrow’s disadvantage…or at least irrelevancy. Think about how useful the name Tote.com would be for a shopping site developing a social-sharing universal shopping bag/cart. Pretty cool, huh? But what happens when that doesn’t work particularly well so they pivot to socially-sharing images?

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What is an effective “pre-incorporation-agreement” between possible founders of a startup?

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The bottom line is that the very question you are asking is one of the trickiest things of all when it comes to startup founding. On the one hand, if you DON’T make things explicitly clear up front, you are just begging for a future disaster by ‘kicking the can down the road’ On the other hand, if everything is locked in stone before you even start, you may find yourself with a completely untenable structure even six or twelve months out, when it becomes clear that not everyon

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