Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 3, 2015

Entrepreneurship is all about leading – leading customers to a new product or service, leading a startup team to peak performance, and leading a new business to the market opportunity, while providing maximum return to stakeholders. Authentic entrepreneurs lead through the power of personal influence, rather than coercion.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2015

When pitching to investors, entrepreneurs always seem to start with a customer pitch, then add a slide or two about the business. Remember, investors are buying into the business, not the product. Investors are business experts, while the entrepreneur is more likely the product expert.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2015

If you are like most entrepreneurs I know, there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get all your own work done, as well as run the many one-hour meetings each team member seems to demand for decisions and mentoring. Team members need your critique of their work to learn, but attacking the person is never productive.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 1, 2015

Image via Flickr by Jupiter Labs Many first-time entrepreneurs find themselves unable to bootstrap their startups, and also unable to find early funding at the venture capital level or even with angel investors. These are the only people likely to believe in newbies, with only minimal product evidence or business experience.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2015

Surviving as an entrepreneur requires unbridled passion, enthusiasm and a certain naiveté in the face of many unknowns. Of course, entrepreneurs of any age can be young at heart and equally fearless, and still able to use their greater experience as an advantage. These are the people that every smart investor seeks, but rarely find.

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Tech.Co

JULY 31, 2017

Being intentionally productive is something we all strive for, but often fail to achieve. Yet as an entrepreneur, you can rarely hide under the rock and pretend there’s nothing else happening around you and no one is demanding your attention. Routine work is the worst enemy of productivity. Add Simple Automations.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 21, 2017

More recently, the desire for extra income has become the key driver in new startups, according to a 2015 study. Being called a lifestyle entrepreneur should be a point of pride, not an insult. Of course, even lifestyle entrepreneurs want to be happy, and want their business to be “successful.” According to William R.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 23, 2015

If an entrepreneur can’t build a culture of excitement and commitment at a startup, the chances of long-term success are negligible. As a mentor to entrepreneurs, I often get asked what you can do to build the right culture. Entrepreneurs who are too busy for people never get the culture they envision. Every investor knows this.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 7, 2015

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Companies with a purpose culture have more productive teams. Customer loyalty and trust go up for companies with a purpose culture.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 10, 2015

Most entrepreneurs I know want to do the right thing for their businesses, as well as themselves, but they are not always sure what that means. By demand, entrepreneurs are crisis managers, and can be busy reacting 24 hours a day to urgent short-term issues. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 9/30/2015.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2015

Modern communication tools, including WebEx, Skype and video conferencing are a good start, but virtual teams remain a productivity nightmare for many companies. Virtual team leaders must be especially proactive in following up and resolution, before productivity and trust are lost. Clear objectives and metrics are established early.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

Aspiring entrepreneurs often ask me what to do first when starting a business. Instead, entrepreneurs need to focus first on execution disciplines and timing. Your credibility as an entrepreneur is at stake. Entrepreneurs who have no patents, trade secrets or trademarks are usually deemed non-fundable and non-competitive.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 26, 2015

Every entrepreneur needs to keep a priority focus on these big-picture business issues, well before he commits his resources and his future to a technology that he loves. Good entrepreneurs know they have to be experts in business as well as technology. Develop written business plans as detailed as product plans.

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Tech.Co

FEBRUARY 19, 2021

Selz, run by a team of around 50 in Sydney, Australia, bills itself as a one-stop-shop for small businesses to start selling products and services online. ” However, the platform shuttered in 2015, just five years after its launch. Physical Product Sales. Digital Product Sales. Why Has Amazon Purchased Selz Now?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 10, 2015

Every entrepreneur I know can’t find enough hours in a day to do the good things they want, and yet they often find themselves saying yes to new requests. In addition to saying yes too often, some entrepreneurs under pressure say no poorly, by attacking the requestor or by avoiding any definitive response.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 29, 2011

Other writers, like Guy Kawasaki, have irreverently called some of these “entrepreneur lies,” but I prefer to think of them as innocent over-enthusiasm or over-confidence that can kill your deal. If your product really represents a paradigm shift, you probably haven’t figured out yet what problem it solves.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

Most entrepreneurs are too stubborn to seek a mentor for guidance: They have so much confidence in themselves and their ideas that they don’t see the need to ask anyone for advice. Age is irrelevant, but, normally, experienced retired executives have more time and interest in helping new, aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Marketing, recruiting, building data products & tools, event management, analyzing the portfolio, etc. Kara will now be really involved with what goes on to successfully create and run a firm but while still handling her core duties of funding great entrepreneurs. And all the platform stuff. Does This Mean You’re Retiring?

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 4, 2015

That's why recognizing, hiring and retaining the most productive people is “job one” for every leader in every business. Highly emotional reactions and outbursts are rarely productive in business environments. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 11/25/2015. The success of your business depends on it.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

Successful entrepreneurs must never stop looking for ways to improve their own productivity, as well as the efficiency and momentum of the team. The need for this focus may seem obvious to you, but I still hear many complaints from entrepreneurs and employees alike on the hours they work, and how they are underpaid for their time.

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socalTECH

AUGUST 26, 2019

For this morning's interview with an entrepreneur, we spoke with Thomas Russell , the Ceo and co-founder of ETC Solar (www.etc-solar.com), a Los Angeles startup developing technology to improve the efficiency and cost of solar cells. Afterwards, we heavily engaged with the solar cell community to identify product-market-fit.

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InfoChachkie

JANUARY 23, 2019

However, the adjective “electric” was eventually dropped when all the devices in a product category utilized the technology. Even Salesforce abandoned it’s silly “No Software” tagline, after the company had to explain in 2015 that it meant, “No legacy software, just cloud software.”. ASP To SaaS To Software.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 25, 2015

Every entrepreneur I know is dismayed by the number of friends who approach them with a line such as “I have an even better idea that will change the world, and one of these days I’m going to get around to starting my own business.” Pragmatists create a minimum viable product (MVP), test it in the market and iterate to success.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 2, 2015

Yet, as an advisor to startups, I see some common disasters, and recommend some anticipation and recovery moves that can save every entrepreneur some painful time and money. Five major elements of every business include your people, product, opportunity, money and marketing. The solution fails to come together.

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InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 20, 2014

Want to be an entrepreneur? In addition, Entrepreneur Magazine recently included UCSB in its Top 50 Schools For VC Backed Entrepreneurs at number 37. This allowed the curriculum to efficiently find its product / market fit. A version of this article previously appeared in Forbes. Don''t go to Wharton or Harvard.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

A popular myth these days is that successful entrepreneurs must attract investors to get their businesses going, when the reality has been that more than 80 percent of new businesses are started and grown with no outside investment at all. They forget that the product or service makes the brand, not the environment.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2015

Every entrepreneur is quick to tell friends and potential investors about his or her vision of changing the world, about all the customers who have expressed an interest, and about all the other investors who are lining up to get a piece of the action. Especially for free or freemium products, the rate of new signups is critical.

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socalTECH

MARCH 12, 2018

One of those companies is Los Angeles-based Love Goodly (www.lovegoodly.com) co-founders Justine Lassoff and Katie Bogue Miller , who sat down and told us about their company, focused on cruelty-free, non-toxic beauty and skincare products. We wanted to make it easy to buy cruelty-free and nontoxic beauty and skincare products.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

In fact, an entrepreneur friend of mine, who made millions on her marketing expertise, asserted recently that most inventors fail in business because they refuse to believe that any business expertise or experience is worth more than 5 percent in partner equity. Most founders bootstrap product development.

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Tech Zulu Event

JULY 21, 2015

Hundreds of founders, speakers, mentors, and students flocked to the University of Southern California on March 28 th , 2015 to be inspired by female entrepreneurs. As a founding partner of SoGal Ventures , Pocket will now influence the next generation of startups and entrepreneurs worldwide, helping many amazing females along the way.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 11, 2015

Being an entrepreneur seems to be one of the most popular lifestyle aspirations these days. Thus it behooves every entrepreneur to pick the startup model that best matches their real motivation. You have proven that you can create an innovative product, but creating a business is a whole new challenge.

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socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

Andrew Schydlowsky: We work with manufacturers of products, things you might use, the clothes you might wear, things you use around the house, things you use in the car, and what you buy in stores, and are now buying online. Andrew Schydlowsky: I'm a serial entrepreneur. It allows us to start peeling the onion.

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InfoChachkie

JANUARY 21, 2019

As shown in the accompanying graph, below a certain price, the price/demand dynamics are consistent with conventional products – higher prices result in a lower demand. Veblen products are typically luxury goods, such as super-cars, which routinely sellout before production is begun, despite (or due to…) prices in excess of $2 million.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 31, 2015

It seems that everyone I know who works in a corporate environment dreams of escaping to become an entrepreneur, and every entrepreneur wishes he or she had the security of a regular paycheck. As someone who has experience on both sides of this fence, I’m convinced that the move from employee to entrepreneur is far more risky.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2015

Most entrepreneurs I meet are reluctant to disclose anything about their idea to investors before getting a signed confidential disclosure agreement (CDA). Yet I can assure you that people who are paranoid, or want to avoid all risks, won’t be happy as entrepreneurs, so it’s all about balancing the risk-reward scale.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 21, 2015

Even if you ignore all the hype around crowdfunding, there can be no doubt that it is a real alternative for entrepreneurs to achieve visibility and funding today. Product pre-order model. With this model, a startup pre-sells their product early, at a cheaper price, in exchange for a pledge.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

As a startup advisor, when I suggest cooperating with competitors, most entrepreneurs initially think I'm crazy or suggesting something illegal. Similar startups, with competing products, almost always have overlapping areas, which cost money to develop and annoy customers with a new learning curve. Be visible and be proactive.

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