Entrepreneur Archive

Article first published as Eleven Startup Tips From Mark Cuban on Technorati. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include:...

Eleven Startup Tips From Mark Cuban
December 5, 2011 | 2 Comments
Article first published as Eleven Startup Tips From Mark Cuban on Technorati. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include: Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson. Mark Cuban is a lifelong serial entrepreneur, launching his startup career with a variety of teenage schemes, including buying and selling collectable stamps to pay for college. In 1983 he founded MicroSolutions, a personal computer software reseller and system integrator, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. He steadily grew MicroSolutions over the next seven years and eventually sold it to CompuServe in 1990.

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Note: This is Part IV in the Startup Team Building series. Read Part I HERE, Part II HERE and Part III HERE. A Fortune 500 CEO once...

Bank Robber Or ATM Operator – Which Are You?
November 28, 2011 | 5 Comments
Note: This is Part IV in the Startup Team Building series. Read Part I HERE, Part II HERE and Part III HERE. A Fortune 500 CEO once told me that I was a Bank Robber. Initially, I was offended. However, once he explained what he meant, I was flattered. Entrepreneurs are law-abiding Bank Robbers. They enjoy the hours spent plotting and scheming and pulling together a team of skilled specialists to accomplish the heist. The outcome might be jail time (i.e., failure and bankruptcy), or it might be a haul so big that they never have to rob another bank. It is not the actual amount of money in the vault that motivates them. Rather, a bank robber is inspired by the seemingly unlimited challenges associated with each bank job.

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Article first published as Len Short (Red)ily Discusses Google, Bono and Steve Jobs on Technorati Len Short is truly an online marketing pioneer, heading up...

Len Short (RED)ily Discusses Google, Bono & Steve Jobs
November 17, 2011 | 2 Comments
Article first published as Len Short (Red)ily Discusses Google, Bono and Steve Jobs on Technorati Len Short is truly an online marketing pioneer, heading up marketing at Charles Schwab, AOL and then (PRODUCT)RED. He is now leading Chug, a car buying search engine, as its Founder and CEO. Before his career moved online, Len worked on major marketing campaigns for credit card companies and rolled out MCI's highly successful "Friends and Family" marketing campaign. I recently caught up with Len outside of George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. He was kind enough to conduct a video interview from his car. Fortunately, he spoke with me while he was parked and not careening down the highway. Unfortunately, his iPhone flipped his image to landscape mode. Despite this technical glitch, I opted to publish our discussion, given the high-quality content of his comments. If watching the video is too distracting, simply minimize the screen and listen to Len's insights as you would a podcast. You can watch my interview with Len below or on YouTube here: http://youtu.be/ivJhv6g7bA0  

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Article first published as Why Selling To The Government Can Downgrade Your Startup on Technorati. First Greece, now Spain and Italy. Across Europe, historically solvent...

Why Selling To The Government Can Downgrade Your Startup
November 15, 2011 | 5 Comments
Article first published as Why Selling To The Government Can Downgrade Your Startup on Technorati. First Greece, now Spain and Italy. Across Europe, historically solvent sovereign governments are suffering from an acute case of systemic deficits. Now, more than ever, government agencies in the US and abroad are lousy startup customers. I am not a government contracting expert. In fact, during my many years as an operational entrepreneur, I explicitly avoided working with governments, for the reasons described below. However, I am familiar enough with the government procurement process to know that it can result in the down grade of an unwary startup’s credit rating.

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“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s...

What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From The Grateful Dead
November 10, 2011 | 8 Comments
“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” Lewis Carroll, from Through The Looking Glass Entrepreneurs often must take counter-intuitive, contrarian positions in order to succeed. As noted in Entrepreneurship Is A Compulsion, entrepreneurs often view the world from a slightly different vantage point, rejecting the oxymoronic term Conventional Wisdom. 

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Nearly one year ago, I published my first infoChachkie interview, with Kevin O’Connor, Co-Founder of FindTheBest.  At that time, I was not utilizing video. Thus, I...

Kevin O’Connor Discusses The Secrets Of Success
November 7, 2011 | 6 Comments
Nearly one year ago, I published my first infoChachkie interview, with Kevin O’Connor, Co-Founder of FindTheBest.  At that time, I was not utilizing video. Thus, I was very excited when Kevin graciously agreed to make an encore appearance via Skype. If you care to review my prior discussion with Kevin, you can do so HERE. Before starting FindTheBest, Kevin was the Co-Founder and CEO DoubleClick (sold to Google, $3.1B and a seed investor ISS (sold to IBM, $1.3B). He is truly an Internet pioneer, having also been a seed investor in 1-800 Flowers and HotJobs. He jokes that in the photo below, he was the only guy who could get up on the file cabinet. You may recognize a few other folks in this photo, including: Jeff Bezos, Jerry Yang and Steve Jobs.   You can watch my video interview with Kevin below or on YouTube here: http://youtu.be/is3NrWti6aI

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As an Instructor of entrepreneurship at UC Santa Barbara, I welcomed the chance to read Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson’s Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than...

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Take On Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson’s Venture Deals
November 3, 2011 | 11 Comments
As an Instructor of entrepreneurship at UC Santa Barbara, I welcomed the chance to read Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson’s Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer And Venture Capitalist. As the authors make clear in the book’s preface, their goal is to create a “definitive guide to venture capital deals” and “demystify the venture capital financing process.” Their primary intended reader is a “first-time entrepreneur”, but clearly other stakeholders within the startup universe can also benefit from the book’s hands-on advice. Even though I have raised significant venture capital as an entrepreneur and have participated in dozens of transactions as an investor, I still found the book to be informative, especially with regard to the dilutive impact of some of the more onerous deal terms that we avoid at Rincon Ventures.  

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Article first published as Eleven Business Tips From Richard Branson on Technorati. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include:...

Eleven Startup Tips From Richard Branson
October 31, 2011 | 7 Comments
Article first published as Eleven Business Tips From Richard Branson on Technorati. Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include: Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. Last weekend, a friend gave me and my family a wonderful ride in his plane. Departing from Edwards AFB, we flew over the Mojave Air and Spaceport, home of the world’s largest private manufacturer of spacecraft, The Spaceship Company (TSC). TSC is building spacecraft for Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space fleet.  Despite the fact that the specific date of Virgin Galactic’s maiden voyage remains unscheduled, over 450 citizen astronauts have put down a deposit of at least $20,000 on the $200,000 per-person fare. In October of 2011, the company announced a $4.5 million deal with NASA to use Virgin Galactic spacecraft to conduct experiments, filling the void left by the retirement of America’s shuttle program. It is undoubtedly impressive that Richard Branson has motivated a government organization and hundreds of intelligent, affluent people to commit millions of dollars to secure a service that does not yet exist. Even more striking is that this super-salesman is a self-taught, high school dropout.

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Note: This is the third installment in the Startup Team Building series. Read Part I HERE and Part II HERE. When hiring ATM Operators at...

When Hiring Entrepreneurs, Ignore Their Resumes
October 27, 2011 | 6 Comments
Note: This is the third installment in the Startup Team Building series. Read Part I HERE and Part II HERE. When hiring ATM Operators at a Big Dumb Company (BDC), assessing each candidate’s ability to execute predictable tasks is of paramount importance. As such, the recruitment process revolves around applicants’ resumes, which highlight what they have previously done in their professional careers. What is important at a BDC, because most duties performed at mature entities are repetitive, structured and involve minimal ambiguity. Thus, evaluating the tasks a candidate has previously performed is a valid methodology when filling job openings in relatively static organizations.

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Note: This is the fourth installment of an ongoing Guerilla Marketing series. The other installments address: 1)  FUEL’s use of faux Monks dominates the social...

DoubleClick’s Guerilla Marketing Legacy
October 20, 2011 | 8 Comments
Note: This is the fourth installment of an ongoing Guerilla Marketing series. The other installments address: 1)  FUEL’s use of faux Monks dominates the social consciousness of a major media tradeshow 2) TestFlight’s clever distribution of free meals garners Steve Jobs’ attention 3) Social Stay’s failed attempt to utilize parcours to liven up a hospitality tradeshow nearly lands them in jail Before it became a monolithic, multi-billion dollar organization, DoubleClick was a wily, nimble startup. In those early days, the DoubleClick team used a variety of guerilla marketing tactics to rise above the chaos endemic in the online ad world during the Internet’s nascent evolution.

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