Every startup that achieves success eventually faces a critical moment — whether to speed up or slow down. It usually looks like this: the can-do attitude and high-bandwidth communication that characterized the first few iterations have produced magic. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. In many cases, they did the impossible, building a new product faster, cheaper, and bette
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The Startup's Rules of Speed
Posted by admin 170 days ago (http://blogs.hbr.org)Where Have All the Entrepreneurs Gone in Japan?
Posted by admin 170 days ago (http://miter.mit.edu)
For a nation that once boasted the likes of Sony, Toyota and Mitsubishi as its entrepreneurial heralds, Japan’s entrepreneurial record in the new millennium is surprisingly sparse. Indeed, entrepreneurs in Japan have become the exception rather than the norm. Common problems faced by aspiring entrepreneurs include the lack of venture capital, labyrinthine government regulations, and the dominance
How to schedule meetings with investors
Posted by admin 170 days ago (http://venturehacks.com)
Scheduling meetings with investors — this topic is so banal you may wonder why someone needs to write about it all. But since we started AngelList, we’ve been making daily introductions between investment-grade startups and top-tier investors like Satish Dharmaraj (Posterous), Jeff Clavier (Mint), and Aaron Patzer (Milo). We see a lot of first time entrepreneurs trying to schedule meetings with
Should Your Startup Give Performance-Based Warrants?
Posted by admin 170 days ago (http://www.businessinsider.com)
Large companies can be strange sometimes. As startup entrepreneurs we all want to work with them because having their name as reference clients makes it so much easier for marketing, PR, selling to other customers, fund raising and even recruiting. Plus, we’re all allured by the false sense that our contract with BigCo is going to “make us” because once they start using us it will spread like w
The Startup Visa Act Must Be Stopped
Posted by admin 170 days ago (http://www.businessinsider.com)
The so called Startup Visa (Startup Visa Act of 2010) is actually a very bad idea. Bad news: the widely-beloved Startup Visa project is a terrible idea -- and this is coming from a guy who desperately wants to see it work. About a year ago, Paul Graham of Y Combinator put out an idea for a Startup Visa that would allow foreign entrepreneurs to set up in the United States if they could raise enoug
Two weeks ago Brian Pokorny resigned as a partner at SV Angel, which most people would call the premier angel investing firm in the world, to run a website where teens and pre-teens post pictures of themselves all day long. Ok, it’s one of the fastest growing sites in Silicon Valley right now, but we can still make fun of him a little bit.
This subject, like the need for a college education (that’s for a later post), almost induces a passion comparable to when we talk about religion or politics. We are taught to never talk to people about religion or politics, because their values are set in such a way that there is no reasoning after a certain point. The subject of technical vs non-technical stirs up some of those same juices, w
Veterans vs. Up-and-Comers in Startups
Posted by admin 171 days ago (http://www.kellblog.com)
The conventional Silicon Valley / venture capital (VC) wisdom is that startups should not bet on first-time managers in just about any position, but particularly at the executive team level. It’s best captured by the statement: a high-growth startup is not the place to learn how to do your job. This is the conventional wisdom because, while counter-intuitive to some, VCs are not actually risk-