Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2021

The ultimate compliment that any entrepreneur can get is that they can “see around corners.” Elon Musk with Tesla and SpaceX may be the most current example of this phenomenon, but others often mentioned include Richard Branson (Virgin Group), Joe Costello (Cadence Design), and Howard Schultz (Starbucks).

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 20, 2021

Based on my experience as a business advisor, I’m convinced that most startup investors invest in the entrepreneur, as much as a solution or product. The attitude of taking nothing for granted, of disbelieving the conventional wisdom, of challenging the way things are done, is essential for a winning entrepreneur.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 31, 2020

In my work with new startups, I often find people who believe that the terms “ entrepreneur ” and “ inventor ” are interchangeable. In my experience, most successful entrepreneurs have indeed created a new product, but most people who claim to be inventors have a hard time starting a business.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

When you see startups like SpaceX and Pinterest grow from a low valuation to a billion dollars in just a few years, it’s easy to assume that if you just keep doing what you are doing, you can get there as well. In my experience, less than half of founding entrepreneurs even aspire to stay and scale their company.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction. Entrepreneurs in this category are real risk takers, such as Elon Musk.

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socalTECH

DECEMBER 21, 2010

We asked the same five questions of a variety of top technology entrepreneurs, investors, and others, to hear what they're thinking about, and are sharing it here over the next two weeks. Between what he's doing between Tesla and SpaceX is pretty remarkable. Yesterday, we heard from DFJ Frontier's David Cremin.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 7, 2023

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction. Entrepreneurs in this category are real risk takers, such as Elon Musk.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2022

Today more than ever, the evidence is clear that business people need to find and communicate a purpose that goes beyond making a profit, in order to ensure customer engagement, as well as your own, and drive results in the marketplace. As you grow, so will your team and customers. Driven to reduce personal hardship and suffering.

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socalTECH

JULY 22, 2019

There are lots of resources available to entrepreneurs in the industry, but they are not necessarily that easy to access, whether that's deep insight into how to work with the government or with NASA, or how to work with the big primes, we felt that we could help create that resource.

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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. The ultimate risk is trying to sell a solution that customers don’t need or want.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

You can’t win as an entrepreneur or business owner without full confidence in your own ability, as well as in your solution and business model. I often hear entrepreneurs talk about wanting to get rich quickly, when I know that money is not usually the key to satisfaction or happiness. Gather more knowledge and consistently apply it.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 29, 2016

Customers are acclimating to change faster than ever before, technology is evolving very rapidly, all markets are instantly global, and the cost of entry is lower than ever. Bold entrepreneurs put more effort into communicating the new market ecosystem value, and their natural product fit. But now I believe that times have changed.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2022

How is it that only a few business leaders and entrepreneurs seem to drive exceptional results and disruptive innovation in this rapidly changing market economy (marketquake)? By constantly mashing up prior ideas, applications, and outcomes, powerful new combinations emerge that have value to customers.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Whether you are a business professional in a big company, or an entrepreneur with a startup, innovation is a key strategy. You will see that I believe innovation is only one of many factors that ultimately determine your position with customers and your own legacy: Ideas are everywhere – success is all about execution.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 21, 2016

There are a few entrepreneurs who seem to always be ahead of the rest, and are able to sense where the market is going tomorrow. Everyone wants to support the entrepreneur with the courage to make bold decisions, and can make it happen. Steve Jobs of Apple and Richard Branson of Virgin Group are other popular examples.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2018

The cost of entry to the entrepreneur lifestyle is at an all-time low, but the challenge of winning and success is at an all-time high. Customers have come to expect disruptive change, so yet another social network is not the way to get traction. Entrepreneurs in this category are real risk takers, such as Elon Musk.

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Entrepreneur Social Network SpaceX Ideas 86

Tech.Co

DECEMBER 29, 2023

While the market isn't short of spritely, innovative entrepreneurs, harsh economic headwinds combined with a pullback in investor spending have made it harder than ever for budding businesses to break through. The startup was listed in TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2023 too, alongside industry heavyweights like Nvidia and SpaceX.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2019

If we build it, they will come ” may have worked as a movie theme for Kevin Costner, but as an investor, I tell entrepreneurs a great solution is not enough. They nurture connections to other innovators and entrepreneurs, financial benefactors, organizational leaders, and potential customers. The cycle repeats.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 31, 2018

Rather than enhancing the offering you have, develop and offer new products that capitalize on the customers that you already know well. Rather than rely only on linear thinking, the best entrepreneurs are always looking to offer in parallel a more dramatic new alternative. Introduce disruptive technologies to this domain.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 11, 2023

In reality, based on my experience as a startup advisor and investor, these constraints lead the best entrepreneurs to the most innovative solutions and new markets otherwise overlooked by their peers and competitors. People respond to positives, such as new growth, versus problems implying costs and loss of customers.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Every business owner and entrepreneur I meet in my consulting rounds dreams of finding that “ disruptive ” innovation that will supercharge their business and move it into the ranks of business unicorns (billion-dollar valuations), such as SpaceX and Apple. Before you act, shut up and listen to employees, customers, and futurists.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 30, 2022

I believe these same mindsets are equally applicable to the entrepreneurs I mentor, and all of you small business leaders, so I offer you my summary of the authors’ conclusions, paraphrased here, with my own insights: Be bold in vision, strategy, and resource allocation.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

How is it that only a few business leaders and entrepreneurs seem to drive exceptional results and disruptive innovation in this rapidly changing market economy (marketquake)? By constantly mashing up prior ideas, applications, and outcomes, powerful new combinations emerge that have value to customers.

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Summary Organization SpaceX Ideas 95

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 30, 2019

You need to make believers out of your board, employees, prospects, as well as customers. Proactively seek out product, service, industry, and customer perception fears rather than suppressing them. They marched firmly ahead with their existing model, rather than reinvent themselves in the face of customers demanding change.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 22, 2016

In reality, that’s the definition of a successful startup these days, so every aspiring entrepreneur should take note, as well as every existing corporate executive. Elon Musk has done it with SpaceX and Tesla, and Steve Jobs did it on a regular basis at Apple. Entrepreneurs who prefer to work alone have a hard road ahead.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 21, 2019

Conventional business wisdom tells us that entrepreneurs are today’s main source of innovation. In fact, a Wharton Business School study in this decade of the “Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years,” concluded that only eight were first conceived by entrepreneurs, and twenty-two were conceived by employees.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 2, 2016

For example, in the entrepreneur world there are people like Elon Musk , who has demonstrated not only innovative ideas, but also impressive results in SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and Hyperloop. Yet if you think about it, it’s not always clear how they do it, or what it takes to be like them.

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Resource Entrepreneur Examples Satisfaction 62

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2018

Customers and analysts are always looking for innovation indicators. I will suggest to you as a business owner and entrepreneur that focus on certain key behaviors will drive innovation without waiting for the next competitive crisis: Be outspoken in communicating proactive required change. People work on what they get measured on.

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Metrics IBM IBM Competition 58

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 3, 2017

How is it that only a few business leaders and entrepreneurs seem to drive exceptional results and disruptive innovation in this rapidly changing market economy (marketquake)? By constantly mashing up prior ideas, applications, and outcomes, powerful new combinations emerge that have value to customers.

IBM 65

IBM IBM Summary Organization 65

SoCal Tech Calendar

JUNE 14, 2016

In the corporate world, events are more than just an event�they are opportunity to connect with your customers and turn potential customers into buyers. Our clients are large, Fortune 1000 companies, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Nike, JP Morgan, Lamborghini, and SpaceX. How do you make those events happen?

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Sales Santa Monica Startup Orange County 100

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

They might be ideas they hatch internally (via a Foundry) or a founder who just left SpaceX and raises money to search for an idea. And the truth is that several entrepreneurs prefer it this way. We can’t wait for customers to use the product for 12–18 months and do customer interviews or look at purchase cohorts.

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SoCal Delicious

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Ten Tech Entrepreneurs Who Are Putting LA on the Map. Tech startup accelerators dot the landscape, feeding investments into the waiting arms of the nation’s most intelligent and driven entrepreneurs. Miller was even honored as an Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2011. Follow PandoDaily: Search.

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Tech.Co

JULY 24, 2017

I suggest to customize your pitch for them. It may be the case that the engineer friend of yours at SpaceX won’t be able to join simply because she’s supporting her parents back home. But how do you go about pitching your friends? First, figure out what motivates them. Next, figure out a venue for the pitch.

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