Nice articles about the entrepreneurship world. Some may not be directly related, but they're fun anyways !
A very useful website for stories about successful businesses and other start-ups.
Visit Inc.com for the latest issue of Inc. Magazine and get advice, tools, and services that help your small business grow.
Advertising World Guru. If you want some inspiration, HE IS THE ANSWER !
Seth Godin's riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.
Entrepreneurship Guru, writes about many subjects
Over the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.
I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe.
Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs
“Our projections are conservative.”
“Jupiter says our market will be $50 billion in ten years.”
“Several Fortune 500 companies are set to do business with us.”
“No one else can do what we’re doing.”
“Hurry up because other investors are about to do our deal.”
“Our product will go viral.”
“The large companies in our market are too big, dumb, and slow to compete with us.”
“Our management team is proven.”
“We filed patents so our intellectual property is protected.”
“All we have to do is get 1% of the market.”
The average number of these ten lies that I hear in most pitches is ten. At the very least, tell investors new lies.
Top Ten Lies of Investors
“I liked your company, but my partners didn’t.”
“We are patient investors who want to help you build a great company.”
“If you get a lead, we’ll invest too.”
“There are no companies in our portfolio that conflict with what you’re doing.”
“Show us some traction, and we’ll invest.”
“We love to co-invest with other firms.”
“We’re investing in your team.”
“We have lots of bandwith to dedicate to your company.”
“This is a plain, vanilla termsheet.”
“We will get other companies in our portfolio to work with you.”
Do you know what the difference is between the lies of entrepreneurs and the lies of investors? The investors have money.
It’s not all bad news. Think of everything that an entrepreneur needs (tech ones, anyway), and you’ll see that most things are free or cheap.
Marketing: use blogs and social media to promote your products.
Tools: most tools are Open Source and free. Microsoft offers free versions of applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the cloud!
Infrastructure: More cloud goodness—you don’t have to buy servers anymore.
People: callous for me to say, but in a recession, people are free or cheap.
Office space: what office space? You can work out of your garage (like David Hewlett and Bill Packard) or just form a virtual team.
The bottom line is this is one of the cheapest times to be an entrepreneur, so go into your garage and start prototyping. Then when you need to create enchanting documents to raise money using PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, we’re all set to help with Office Web Apps, SkyDrive, and my templates.
Promotional consideration paid by Microsoft.
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A Blog regarding brainstormings
You’re in your neighborhood bookstore looking for a title about “social media.” Do you immediately buy the first book you see, on the first shelf of the business section? Probably not.
You visit a new restaurant for a tasty dinner, do you only read the top menu item and order it – ignoring the rest of the menu? I don’t believe you would.
In both situations, before making a decision, you would first review all your options. You’d scan each of the books in the marketing section. You would read the entire menu. Then, from that full selection of offerings, make the best choice.
We appreciate and expect variety and choice with these decisions, but often when making bigger, more financially critical decisions at work… we deny ourselves options. We thwart our capacity to be innovative.
In the name of efficiency, when faced with problems or challenges at work, we go forward with the first workable option we can think of. Business pressure – to get things done quickly and efficiently – causes us to miss options. This can cause us to miss the best solution.
One Item – If you go with the first, only idea you have, that isn’t decision-making. That’s a last resort. Decisions require choosing from a pool of options.
Two Items – Selecting among two alternative ideas isn’t a decision either — it is only choosing this or don’t do this.
Decisions improve in proportion to the number of interesting, attractive, and doable alternatives you have to consider.
We must pile-up a list of unusable ideas. The more ideas you think up, the more likely you are to arrive at one that is brilliant and remarkable.
Even if you think you’ve happened upon the best idea right from the start, you should think up a few more. Picking one idea from a pool of one isn’t a choice. Don’t stop at the first one that seems to fit. Keep thinking. Come up with at least two more ideas for a total of three to choose from.
If that first idea is the one you go with, you can have the confidence that you’ve made a choice. That you weren’t just forced into using the first idea that popped into you mind.
Choice and options, when it comes to important decisions, isn’t a luxury, but a requirement. The next time you or your team start moving with the first idea that pops into mind, entertain other options. You deserve the right to decide, not simply be forced with an approach due to haste. Brainstorm a few more workable ideas. You deserve choices. Remarkable ideas spring from choices.
Entrepreneurship news gatherer. Useful !
Entrepreneurship.Org - A free, online international resource designed to help build entrepreneurial economies
A website created during an iniciative by Volkswagen - inspirational out-of-the-box ideas !
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Inspirational speeches, occurred throughout the world ! Very nice website
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