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Despite what you might think, you are never too old to benefit from the helpful guidance of a mentor. Jason Nazar, Co-Founder and CEO of Docstoc , and a self-professed "Mentee Whore," discusses his secrets to finding and keeping a mentor in this compelling article. and set up meetings with people that you want to be like.
I was at a dinner recently in Chicago and the table discussion was about building great companies outside of Silicon Valley. I then got my MBA at University of Chicago so I secretly pull for local entrepreneurs as long as they don’t make me visit in the Winter any more. Local mentors matter. Local capital matters.
In a bid to boost the Los Angeles economy and create new jobs in the city, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Friday that he has created a new "Entrepreneur-in-Residence" program, which will help the city in developing initiatives and policies aimed at growing, assisting and sustaining entrepreneurs in Los Angeles. READ MORE>>.
And she didn’t start her company in Northern California. Tracy built her company, Recycled Media , out of necessity. She drove her company to profitability before paying herself a modest salary. She actually IS the prototypical entrepreneur. She put all of her savings into her company. More on that later.
It was difficult to make the transition to a “top down&# thinker but as a senior executive – and as an entrepreneur – you’re far less effective without this skill in your arsenal. We did big, boring but necessary implementations for large companies. I started by doing billing systems.
” It’s the most common refrain I hear from investors and even entrepreneurs these days. What is perhaps different from other regions is that we have large indigenous aerospace industry and a big high-tech import/export trade as opposed to a lot of software companies. “There’s something going on in LA.”
As an angel investor in early-stage startups, I’ve long noticed my peers apparent bias toward the strength and character of the founding entrepreneurs, often overriding a strong solution to a painful problem with a big opportunity. Find and enjoy the company of one or more mentors.
Advice For Emerging Entrepreneurs. Make Mistakes On Someone Else’s Dime – My students are sometimes surprised that I advise them to first work in an industry in which they have an interest, rather than starting a company right out of school. Ask For Mentoring. Drop Everything And Do What Their Boss Asks. Form Friendships.
A continuing question I hear from young entrepreneurs is whether a university degree is important to startup success, or just a distraction in achieving their purpose in the world. Take advantage of free startup programs and mentors. School mentors, professors, and peers will give you the critical feedback without passing judgment.
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. For one-on-one coaching from the startup founder, I call this approach five-minute mentoring. Marty Zwilling.
The money that went into them was usually very inefficiently deployed because it was deployed against infrastructure, it was deployed against a longer arc of build-up and you were into a company a while before you knew whether something was going to work or not. We are actually giving the companies money, rather than taking money from them.
There is a large menu of startup accelerators in the Los Angeles, but one of more established efforts in the area is LaunchpadLA ([link] The effort actually started as an informal mentoring program, but has grown and expanded to follow the accelerator model. It was really just something built for the community to help support entrepreneurs.
We have significant VC commitments (listed below) – every entering company will get $50,000 in funding, mentorship from top VCs and successful entrepreneurs plus free office space. For any company interested in applying please visit the website. To show these companies that they can remain in LA. For the past 2.5
It was standing room only at StartEngine 's Demo Day Wednesday afternoon, held at Santa Monica's Cross Campus , as the startup accelerator launched eight of its latest startups into the world, after a 90 day process of mentoring, honing their business model, and heads down development. Standing room only crowd at StartEngine).
We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on simple Internet products or mobile apps and while great companies are built doing this, our goal as a fund is to try and fund things that can be 100x returns if they work. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. In short, we’re after venture returns.
In my role as a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that most have the technical challenges well understood, but many are a bit short on some basic street smarts , or basic business realities. Although Elon Musk doesn’t talk about it very much, he owns over 350 patents through Tesla, just one of his many companies.
Many years ago, John Hamm published some definitive work on this subject in " Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale " in the Harvard Business Review. This is generally a required quality for a successful entrepreneur, but it can turn into an unhealthy stubbornness during the scaling stage. Trusting your gut at this stage isn’t good enough.
In my role as mentor to business professionals, I often get the question about your potential of going out on your own as an entrepreneur, versus your current role of working for a boss at an established company. Fear of failure or significant risk has stymied many aspiring entrepreneurs, or ruined their health.
At every entrepreneur event I through between 2008-2012 I invite Hamet because he was a great mentor for entrepreneurs. He’s founded 3 companies and I’ll bet he has 3-5 more in him. I was the first operational startup partner added – having built and sold two software companies. I stayed close.
which programs are--and aren't--worth looking at has become very difficult, if not impossible, for startup entrepreneurs. Representative companies: Look.io, Getbonkers, Invested.in, Tidepool, Stacksocial. Representative companies: Funding: No. Representative companies: Funding: Yes. Representative companies: Pending.
As a mentor to startups and new entrepreneurs, I continue to hear the refrain that business plans are no longer required for a new startup, since investors never read them anyway. For aspiring entrepreneurs, or if your last startup failed, it’s all about standing out above the crowd of others like you, and demonstrating your readiness.
With the cost of entry at an all-time low, and the odds of success equally low, more and more entrepreneurs are starting multiple companies concurrently. Other prolific entrepreneurs, like Richard Branson and Elon Musk , simply have several startups on the table at any given moment. Advisors and mentors are busy people.
Kara said “no” because she wanted to start her own company, which she did and I backed. The core of the investing job of course is investing dollars into startup companies and helping as a mentor, advisor and board member on the companies in which you’ve invested. So What Does All This Mean? I’m only 52!
I recently read Brad Feld’s thought provoking piece encouraging founders to sit on the board of another startup company. I found it thought provoking because I’ve always believed startup founders need extreme focus on only their company to succeed. You’ll view a company from a different vantage point. .
Every year, at the end of the year, we share some reflections on the past year from our readers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, sponsors, and others in the local technology community. What was the biggest news for you/your company this year? It takes a community of supporters, connectors, mentors, and doers to make it happen.
Even an extraordinary engineer or product lead who have built a breakthrough product aren’t guaranteed success unless they can get access to capital, get much needed press to drive low-cost customer acquisition and persuade fickle business leaders to join their company and help them shape their businesses beyond tech innovation.
And it got me thinking about all of the people like him behind the scenes who never get recognized for their significant contributions to the success of companies. But a couple of people replied with responses of such lack of comprehension that I thought it was worth expanding on for first-time entrepreneurs. And I agree entirely.
The truth is – there isn’t a “right&# answer so for your company. And these ideas have ways of seeping into board discussions with portfolio companies as in, “have you ever thought about trying A, B or C?&# In my experience, entrepreneurs who are overly paranoid or are information hoarders rarely do well.
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. Of course, there are thousands of other companies that don’t achieve their minimum goal, requiring all contributions to be returned. Product pre-order model.
What''s the idea behind the incubator--which gives its startups $20,000 in capital, education, mentoring, working space, and more--and how is it tied to USC? Ashish Soni: I don''t want to talk for them, but what I can say, is they are a big believer in engineering backed companies, technology ventures which are led by engineers.
In a bid to change that, there are a few groups working on helping women entrepreneurs, investors, and others, including the Pipeline Fellowship (www.pipelinefellowship.com), which recently launched itself into the Los Angeles market. My participation has been on the impact investing and education side, where I''ve been involved as a mentor.
Today we’re in a world where 10 accelerators are bombarding you with emails to meet their 10-15 companies. Of course these are great places to network with other investors, meet great entrepreneurs and keep your connections strong with senior execs at larger companies like Yahoo!, You have to deal with CEOs who resign.
During Mark's tenure, Citrix has grown from 50 employees and few million dollars of revenue to a company 7,000 employees strong, generating revenue in excess of $2.4 He then went on to identify four approaches entrepreneurs can take to enhance their chances of achieving success. Mentors are the people you are copying.
He shared tons of information about how how they were using marketing to quantitatively make marketing decisions at HauteLook and acquire customers for prices that were far cheaper than similar companies. He was also the first one to challenge my conventional wisdom that it made no sense for tech companies to advertise on television.
As a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I’m always surprised by the fact that some never seem to be able to that first startup going, while many others never seem to stop, starting their second or third initiative before the first one is fully hatched. Real entrepreneurs start experiments. Real entrepreneurs start experiments.
The road to becoming an entrepreneur is a journey , and it’s not a short trip. Every entrepreneur starts by accepting the reality that you have a rare mindset of joy of discovery, with an intense curiosity about how certain things or people work, or why a new technology hasn’t yet been accepted.
Most entrepreneurs believe they are “different,” but they can’t quite understand how. The classic book, “ Hunting in a Farmer's World: Celebrating the Mind of an Entrepreneur ,” by serial entrepreneur and business coach John F. Dini makes the case that entrepreneurs are hunters, while the rest of us (large majority) are farmers.
In my role as a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I find that many of you have your most creative ideas for your company’s first big bang , but often get bogged down with details as the company grows. You rely on your team for the continuing creativity required to thrive in a today’s rapidly changing business landscape.
In my experience as a business mentor, one of the biggest challenges I see is a failure to focus. Most of you aspiring entrepreneurs have new ideas on a regular basis, and find it hard deciding which to pursue, or try to tackle several at the same time. Highlight results and urgency, rather than variety of activities.
That company was Invoca, which just announced a $20 million fund raise led by Accel. At the time I pointed out: “If I had realized exits almost certainly it would be because I invested in a company that failed. Lemons ripen early, great companies take time.” 5 years ago. ” Still. Since then? None have exited.
Thiel and friends will also agree to mentor these young entrepreneurs. Actually, they’ll get even more attention because this selection will put them in an even more exclusive peer group and will introduce them to even more connected mentors. You built a company at 22. At least not as an entrepreneur.
These resources are definitely not limited to students, since every university seeks out and needs the real world exposure and experience of entrepreneurs who already are active in the real world marketplace. Collaborative efforts with local companies, like Siemens Venture Capital, are available for certain technology and focus areas.
Most aspiring entrepreneurs look to their alma mater, or any university, as a source of classes that can help them, but neglect to think outside the box or take advantage of all the other resources to be found there. Access to entrepreneurs-in-residence, business mentors. Access to intellectual property and current research.
Startup entrepreneurs in San Diego have yet more resources at the EvoNexus startup incubator, after EvoNexus and Cisco said that they will be launching a new, joint incubation program called CiscoEIR@EvoNexus. The two said that Cisco will help provide financial support, use of co-working space, access to mentors, and more. READ MORE>>.
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