An entrepreneur describes his idea and then asks “Do you think people would pay for it?”. It’s practically implied in the question that “people” is a single homogeneous entity. The answer they are looking for is “yes – people would pay for that”, or “no – people won’t pay for that”. The entrepreneur might ask [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: Startup
Sometimes I lose focus and start to feel like I’m not getting anything done. This frustration usually leads to the following dialogue:
What do I want?
The next business goal or objective.
How do I think I can get there?
Take a step back and look at the original business plan.
Why am I not already there?
What is preventing [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: focus, leadership, productivity, Startup
It’s a really, really tough question that I can’t hope to answer in a short essay. Nonetheless, something I get asked about and think about a lot – so here goes.
Research
You need to know who the competitors are, what their products look like, who the customers are, what their buying processes are, what the [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: business, entrepreneurship, Startup
The writing is on the wall. No startups will receive angel or series A funding before March 2009.
I know it’s not what we (entrepreneurs) want to hear. We’re optimists. We can visualize that term sheet coming next week. We can each personally justify why our specific venture is more attractive than any of the others [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: Financial Crisis, Funding, Investors, Series A, Startup
One of the coolest things about going to business school at MIT is the General Catalyst Breakfast Series. Once a month, 10 MIT students and 10 HBS students wake up painfully early to go to General Catalyst’s office in Harvard Square to listen to a speaker give their take on entrepreneurship. Last Friday, we [...]
Categories: Internet, Startups
Tagged: Airline, Core Competency, Flight, Internet, Kayak, Lead Generation, Search, Startup
Ashwin Navin, the president and founder of Bit Torrent Inc. gives a podcast describing how Bit Torrent Inc was started. Bit Torrent was originally an open source peer to peer file sharing protocol developed by Bram Cohen to deliver large amounts of data over the internet quickly. Initial users and evangelists of the [...]
Categories: Startups
Tagged: Bit Torrent, Media, Startup
I’ve recently become a fan of Stanford Technology Ventures podcasts of interviews with entrepreneurs. What a great source for information directly from the mouths of successful entrepreneurs. To hear these points of view, you typically have to go to an expensive conference (or enroll in an MBA program) and Stanford lets you download [...]
Categories: Startups