Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 1, 2011

Welcome to the New Year 2011! You’ve probably already made your resolutions, but if not, I suggest a renewed commitment to finding happiness and satisfaction in your work. After all, most of us spend more hours in this role than any other, and life is too short to spend most of your life unhappy. If you haven’t tried it, one way to be happier at work is to be an entrepreneur, according to a recent survey in the UK , and an older one in the US.

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Restful Analytics Matching Entrepreneur 262

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 5, 2011

If you startup is your dream, why would you want to think about an exit? It’s going to be so successful and so much fun that you don’t need to think about what comes after. Wrong. There are two very real and practical reasons why you need to plan an exit: Outside investors want to collect their return. Remember that equity investments are not like loans with interest.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 3, 2011

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 4, 2011

For those of you who want to get in on the ground floor of a new venture, but haven’t yet worked up the nerve to start your own, begin with a job at a startup. But first you should ask yourself if you are prepared for the realities. Working for a startup is not a career choice, but more of a lifestyle. The long-term opportunities may be large, but near-term paychecks will be small, compared to large companies in the same industry.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 6, 2011

One of the biggest red flags I see in many Internet-related business plans today is advertising as the initial revenue stream, or a key part of it. If challenged, the founder usually cites the Facebook business model (free service to users, revenue from ads), but forgets that Facebook has had several hundred million in funding, and has been profitable only in the last two years.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2011

Now that President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package has been out for a while, including $50 billion aimed at alternative-energy initiatives, applying for grants has become the rage for high-tech startups. I applaud the initiative, and encourage startups in this direction, but there are costs. In the US, many entrepreneurs see grants as “free money,” since they are not loans and don’t have to be repaid.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 7, 2011

Every investor is looking for the “dream team” of executives to put money on. Often I find that experienced investors scan ahead to the management page of a business plan, even before they read the product description. That’s how important the people are. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) role is usually considered second only to the CEO, because financials are critical.

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