A lot has been written about why startups fail. Most of the causes cited are external forces. Things like no market, competitive pressures, supply chain challenges, and lack of investor interest. Less has been written about how startups kill themselves. Internal missteps and self-inflicted wounds can be just as fatal as external forces. Since a startup has …
Most Common Follies of First-Time Founders
So much has to go right for a startup to survive and thrive, it’s wise to know the most common, avoidable mistakes, made by first-time founders. Many first-time founders don’t know what they don’t know. Others are told, but they just don’t want to hear it and fumble. They lack the good sense needed to …
The Startup Founder Imperative: Balancing the Important with the Immediate
The startup founder imperative is to decisively act on what’s most important and most immediate each week. What’s important and what’s immediate are two very different things. These two decision-drivers also change dramatically at each stage of the venture’s life cycle. For example, what’s most important and most immediate in the conception stage (finding Product-Market Fit while avoiding confirmation …
The Devil is in the Dependencies: Part 1, Startups
You are no doubt familiar with the idiom, “The devil is in the details.” It’s a well-known truism that almost nothing is as simple as it seems. This is especially true in business. Starting, buying, building and ultimately selling a business is almost always more complex than it seems when looking in from the outside. This is …
How to Create a Thriving Startup Ecosystem: 5 Tips for Leaders and Feeders of Entrepreneurial Communities
A lot has been written about entrepreneurs and what makes them successful. A lot has been written about startups and why so many of them fail. Less has been written about entrepreneurial communities and what it takes to create a thriving startup ecosystem. I’d like to bridge these topics and share with you five very …
19 Startup Lessons from 19 Years Working with Startups
Today marks the 19th anniversary of my company, StartupBiz.com. That’s a lot of chapters…a lot of lessons. Figured I would share a few. It’s Friday, I’m celebrating with a glass of wine and reminiscing. Grab a glass and join me. (Thank you, BTW, to all my friends, colleagues and connections that sent me a congrats …
The Nuts & Bolts of Writing Successfully On Linkedin (P2)
This is a follow up to my last post, “What I’ve Learned About Writing Successfully On Linkedin.” In that post, I define what it means to write successfully on Linkedin by using a system of objective and subjective metrics. I describe the metrics I use to gauge the success of posts and encourage writers to …
The Difference between Having a Company & a Business
Just about everyone I know has a company. It’s a fashionable thing to have these days. Even people who work full time at a company have their own company on the side. Most of these companies are not businesses. If you are not intimately familiar with the startup world, it’s easy to confuse the two. …
Creating Good Processes in a Startup (Part 2)
In my last post, I argued the need for startups to create and institute good processes. I explained the differences between good processes and bad processes. In this post, I will suggest a process for creating good processes. This process can be used by the founders to create company-wide processes, or by the various department …
The Process of Creating Good Processes in a Startup (part 1)
Many of the entrepreneurs I work with dislike process. Some refuse to institute any type of process in their startup. That is usually their undoing. My first business partner prided himself on being an “idea” guy. He would say, “Don’t bother me with the details.” One of my partners in a more recent venture loved …
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