Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 7, 2023

Young entrepreneurs often are so excited by new technology or their latest invention that they forget to translate it into a value proposition that their customers or potential investors can understand and relate to. They become frustrated with investors, senior executives, and even customers who don’t seem to “get it,” with the result that everyone loses.

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Elevator Pitch Social Network Agile Technology 272

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 26, 2023

As a business consultant and mentor to many young entrepreneurs, I often get questions about leadership challenges , and what you can do to solidify your leadership position and impact. It seems that today’s worker generation is more demanding, and less willing to accept guidance and direction from anyone with a leadership title. They want a role in every leadership decision.

Leadership 281

Leadership Agile Demand Developer 281

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2023

Many business leaders I meet in my consulting practice are frustrated by the challenge of getting their teams working together, increasing engagement, and tackling market change requirements. We all realize that the pace of change is increasing, and new global markets makes it critical that every team member is focused on the market, rather than internal battles and risk aversion.

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Social Media Global Campaign Leadership 294

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 6, 2023

Aspiring entrepreneurs who rely only on traditional learning vehicles (teachers, classrooms, and risk-free practice) are doomed to failure in anticipating change today. Either they are never really ready to commit, study an opportunity until it has passed, or fail with tools and techniques from a bygone business era. The Internet and the current information wave have changed everything.

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Social Media Curation Internet Entrepreneur 301

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2023

Most technical entrepreneurs I know demand the discipline of a product specification or plan, and then assume that their great product will drive a great business. Serious investors, on the other hand, look for a professional business plan or summary first, and hardly ever look at the product plan. Is it any wonder why so few entrepreneurs ever find the professional investors they seek?

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Business Plan Product Architecture Business Model 280

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Every entrepreneur I know has their favorite excuse for a previous failure – an investor backed out, the economy took a downturn, or a supplier delivered bad quality. These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and angel investor, I still see too many strategies leading to failure that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm.

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Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 312

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 23, 2023

If you can’t deal with failure, then the entrepreneur lifestyle is not for you. Don’t believe that urban myth that all you need is a good idea, a little fun work, and the money will start rolling in. When you are pushing the limits, nobody gets it right the first time, or even maybe the tenth time. That’s why the term “pivot” was invented, so you don’t have to call every change a failure.

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Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Restful Cost 360

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 21, 2023

The average length of a funding pitch to angel investors is ten minutes. Even if you have booked an hour with a VC, you should plan to talk only for the first fifteen minutes. The biggest complaint I hear from fellow investors is that startup founders often talk way too long, and neglect to cover the most relevant points. Or they get sidetracked by a technical glitch due to poor preparation.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 3, 2022

It’s been happening for some time, but business changes, accelerated by the recent pandemic, have highlighted the need for all of us to review our positions, image, and satisfaction at work. As a business consultant, I see and hear all around me people questioning their current and future career interests and growth, and wondering what they can do to make a decision and prepare.

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Social Media Media Internet Community 314

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

After many years in business, working in large companies as well as startups, I’m no longer surprised at why mature and successful companies struggle with introducing innovative new ventures as the market and environment changes. Their track record is dire, with only twelve percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 from fifty years ago still even in business today.

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Advisory Board Incubator Dilution Agile 359

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 5, 2022

As a business consultant with experience in large companies as well as startups, I often hear about dysfunctional management hierarchies, as well as the value provided by exceptional ones. We have all heard about the successes of flattened management organizations in the last decade at Facebook, Valve, Zappos, and others. Individual team members all dream of being unleashed.

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Management Dilution Forecast Leadership 333

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

Every entrepreneur believes that their product or service is memorable, and that every customer will quickly see the advantage over competitors. Yet true product differentiation in the eye of the customer is rarely achieved. According to an old but still relevant survey by Bain & Company , 80% of businesses believe they have differentiated offerings, but only 8% of customers agree.

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Differentiation Social Media Reputation Cost 308

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

These days, it is almost impossible to find a small business where everything is done by full-time employees, in the office or at home. We are in the age of outsourcing, by any of many popular names, including subcontracting, freelancing, and virtual assistants. These approaches allow your startup to grow more rapidly, save costs, but costly mistakes can lead to business failure.

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Cost Philippines Bandwidth Cofounder 346

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 1, 2022

In my experience as an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs in business, one of the biggest failures I see is a lack of self-leadership. You can’t lead a business to success, if you can’t lead yourself. I define self-leadership as the capacity to set direction and make decisions, to positively drive your own performance. Leadership in business starts with making good personal choices.

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Leadership Reputation Venture Capital Global 285

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2022

Perhaps sparked by the recent pandemic, I’m seeing a new era of the entrepreneur, with startups springing up all around. Based on my own mentoring and investing experience, the best entrepreneurs are pragmatic problem solvers. They have an uncanny ability to find elegant, easy, and fast solutions to pain points in the marketplace, as well as their own challenges.

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Startup Technical Review Partner Restful 338

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 10, 2022

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. Yet very few achieve that great aspiration of really driving economic, social, and environmental changes on a global scale. What does it take to get to that level?

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Technology Entrepreneur Social Network Networking 328

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2022

Today more than ever, the evidence is clear that business people need to find and communicate a purpose that goes beyond making a profit, in order to ensure customer engagement, as well as your own, and drive results in the marketplace. In my work with entrepreneurs, I have concluded that finding and communicating that purpose is often more important than the solution offered.

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Technical Review Green Social Media Lean 357

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 18, 2022

A popular approach for aspiring entrepreneurs these days seems to be to corner anyone who will listen, with a pitch on their current “million dollar idea.” The initial monologue usually ends with the question “How much money do you think this is worth?” In my opinion, ideas are a commodity, and are really not worth much, outside the context of a visionary leader who can execute.

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Bootstrapping Angel Investor Differentiation Leadership 374

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2022

New entrepreneurs tend to focus only on getting the product right, and assume that the right culture and ethics will come later simply by hiring good people. In fact, they need an early focus on developing their moral compass, as well as setting the right ethical tone. Building an ethical business is more than just compliance and meeting legal requirements, and it has big paybacks.

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Software Review Offshore Entrepreneur Leadership 291

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2022

It’s always been tough to start a new business, even when the bottom line was just making a profit to stay alive. A few years ago, a second focus of sustainability (“green”) was added as a requirement for respectability. Now I almost always hear a third mandate - social responsibility. Entrepreneurs are now measured against the “triple bottom line” (TBL or 3BL) of people, planet, and profit.

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Green Dividend Angel Investor Global 275

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this valley, and there are some good ones I will outline here.

Intellectual Property 261

Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator Bootstrapping 261

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2022

The entrepreneur’s challenge is to effectively communicate their value proposition, not only to customers, but also to vendors, partners, investors, and their own team. Especially for technical founders, this is normally all about presenting impressive facts. But in reality facts only go so far. Stories often work better, because humans don’t always make rational decisions.

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Chad Audience Founder Security 307

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 7, 2022

Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right. What does it take to create a positive workplace culture?

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Startup Founder Customer Product 290

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 3, 2022

Startup investors tell me they invest in a new venture with a higher caliber of people, rather than the product or service, and I agree. In my role as a business advisor, I see successful businesses most often emerging from great teams rather than great products. Yet I find the people building teams are usually product experts, often with no experience in team building.

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Hiring Technical Cofounder Cofounder Retention 337

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2022

Fundraising is brutal. Actually, according to Paul Graham of Y-Combinator fame, “Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup. The hardest part is making something people want.” More startups may fail for that reason, but a close second is the difficulty of raising money. Quite a while back, I outlined “ The 10 Best Sources of Cash to Start Your Business ” for startups, listing angel investors as alternative six.

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Angel Investor Advisory Board Database Institutional Investors 384

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 1, 2022

I tell entrepreneurs that Google was an “exception” to all the investment and startup rules, but I’ve always wondered what it takes to be an exception. Since every business is built by unique individuals, I’m totally convinced that exceptional people are the key to an exceptional company. To check out the Google founders, and because I still see so many business plans that are modeled after Google (more search engines, and more billion dollar growth models), I had to take a look at the classic b

Startup 328

Startup .Net Advertising Search 328

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 10, 2021

During my many years in business, both as a professional and an entrepreneur, I always wished I knew the secret to success. Although I was never able to pinpoint any single one, I have gathered some insights which I’m certain are key. In more recent years as a mentor and angel investor, I’ve been even more determined to pass this guidance to those now entering the workforce.

Leadership 342

Leadership Angel Investor Global Conversion 342

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 19, 2021

As an entrepreneur, you have to improvise and adapt quickly to survive and thrive in the face of the unpredictable challenges of the market. But this improvisation a not a comedy, although there are some distinct correlations, in relation to reacting, adapting, and communicating. In business and in comedy, you win most often with “Yes, and …” instead of “Yes, but ….

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Agile Restful Employee Entrepreneur 347

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Traditional business intelligence (and data mining) software does a very good job of showing you where you’ve been. By contrast, predictive analytics uses data patterns to make forward-looking predictions that guide you to where you should go next. This is a whole new world for small businesses seeking enterprise application opportunities, as well social media trend challenges.

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Analytics Retention Social Media Startup 248

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 29, 2021

Even before the recent pandemic, when more people began working remotely , I noticed the dynamics changing in many workplaces, both between employee interaction with peers, and interactions with customers. People on both sides seem to have a shorter attention span, appear less tolerant, and less interested in building personal relationships related to business.

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Social Media Cloud Hosting Employee 270

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 27, 2021

Based on my own experience in business, the best results come from a balance of vision and creativity, combined with a clear focus on logical problem solving and results. This balance is rare and often called “ whole-brain ” thinking, versus the traditional right-brain or left-brain orientation. Recent studies indicate that less than ten percent of business leaders show this balance today.

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Technical Review Metrics Leadership Technology 332

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2021

Most of you business leaders focus first on providing guidance to your team, but neglect self-leadership as an equally important dimension. In my experience, many entrepreneurs rely too much on the perspective of a trusted advisor, or try to emulate a competitor who is getting attention. Personal leadership is setting your own direction and making real decisions first.

Leadership 330

Leadership Reputation Entrepreneur Developer 330

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Back in the early 2000s, the Maker Movement took hold in California, based on the emergence of such do-it-yourself (DIY) tools as 3-D printers, and now sites such as SketchUp and Makerspaces have all the tools you need to make almost anything computer related. Thus entrepreneurs were able to build prototypes and design new products without the traditional huge prototyping cost.

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Startup Cofounder Incubator Early Stage 397

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe that a great idea alone will assure business success. Experts argue that it’s more important to have a great plan, and personal business acumen. Hardly anyone mentions selling principles. Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business.

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Sales Startup Bootstrapping Technical Review 348

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2021

Are you one of those people who believe that happiness at work is an oxymoron? If so, maybe it’s time to rethink your perspective, and perhaps start enjoying work for a change. As an advisor to new entrepreneurs and new ventures, I’m seeing a refreshing new focus by Millennials on work and successful new companies with a purpose, and more productivity through happy employees.

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Bandwidth Employee Restful Email 398

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2021

Most entrepreneurs avoid setting up a board of directors for their new business unless or until they sign up an investor who demands a seat on the board. That implies that a board of directors has no value to the founder, and is just another burden that to be assumed for the privilege of attracting outside investors or going public. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Advisory Board IPO Government Acquisition 362

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 18, 2021

Businesses always seem to take longer to succeed than an entrepreneur expects. Seth Godin once said that overnight success in startups takes about six years, and Seth is an optimist. Thus we all look for shortcuts. Execution shortcuts would be hidden strategies to achieve the endgame sooner, without losing 40 to 60 percent of the financial potential along the way.

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Startup Demand Entrepreneur Product 435