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The Lemonade Principle – What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Eight-Year-Olds
October 21, 2008 | 9 Comments
What motivates busy people to make dangerous u-turns on busy streets to patronize a lemonade stand? Is it simply for the opportunity to sip overly sweet drinks made under questionable health conditions? Doubtful. The psychological rewards received from helping childhood entrepreneurs meet their financial goals more than offset any indigestion customers might suffer from consuming a child’s culinary delights. You would be well served to understand how to engender such exuberant consumer behavior.

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Buzz Kill – Entrepreneurs Cannot Afford To Muddle Their Message With Empty Catchphrases
October 14, 2008 | 3 Comments
In his book, The Map of Innovation, DoubleClick Co-founder Kevin O’Connor emphasizes the importance of describing your adVenture in clear and concise terms. When discussing his book, Mr. O’Connor often gives the audience a quiz similar to that shown below. Select the description below that describes an actual software product. A. Assimilated, zero-administration, standard database-queuing schema B. Open-architected, workforce-neutral, productivity assimilator C. Modularly reduced Graphical User Interface heuristic D. Profit-focused, fault-tolerant encoding interface If you can select the legitimate product from the list above, you are well on your way to buzz-cutting through the forest of buzzword BS.

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Nair – Remove The Hair From Your AdVenture Before Seeking Funding
October 7, 2008 | 3 Comments
Nair was developed during the 1970s as a hair-removal product for the emerging population of busy, professional women. Despite potential side effects such as itching, burning and scarring, Nair continues to help women effectively remove unwanted hair and leave their skin “smooth and shiny, with no nicks or cuts.” Ask any venture investor. They would love to slather their startup investments with Nair. Why? Because every deal has unwanted hair – one or more significant flaws which make the deal imperfect. Savvy entrepreneurs also understand this reality. As a result, they do everything within reason to reduce the hair on their adVenture before they seek investment capital.

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Spilling The Beans – When Is It Safe To Talk About Your Entrepreneurial Ideas?
September 30, 2008 | 21 Comments
Who is this character? Hint: It is not a mouse. The fact that you likely cannot name this creature confirms the reality that ideas are cheap. All too often, inexperienced entrepreneurs struggle with sharing their ideas with potential investors, Donors and others who might be in a position to help them. The next time you wonder if it is safe to share your ideas, recall the fate of this long-eared, anonymous cartoon character.

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Kiss of Death – Contract Provisions Entrepreneurs Should Avoid at All Costs
September 19, 2008 | 21 Comments
Agreements with Big Dumb Companies (BDCs) are like DC Comic’s evil villainess, Poison Ivy. Both are seductive and alluring and both are potentially fatal. As a startup, your most meaningful agreements will likely be struck with BDCs. You will no doubt craft agreements with companies of similar or even smaller size compared to your own, but the risk associated with such agreements will be tempered by the fact that you will negotiate such agreements as a relative peer. As such, your greatest risk and greatest opportunity will arise from the deals you cut with larger entities. Fortunately, it is possible to craft lucrative deals with BDCs that do not limit your adVenture’s ability to charter its own destiny. Just as Batman must avoid Poison Ivy’s kiss of death, so too must entrepreneurs avoid the Kiss of Death provisions which BDCs often attempt to include in their agreements.

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Johnnie Cochran was an effective, albeit smarmy, defense lawyer who would say or do anything to defend his clients (anyone up for a glass of...

Roping in the Legal Eagles
September 10, 2008 | 6 Comments
Johnnie Cochran was an effective, albeit smarmy, defense lawyer who would say or do anything to defend his clients (anyone up for a glass of OJ?). He was a master at encouraging jurors to disregard facts and base their legal verdicts on emotions and conjecture. Yet, despite his exceptional courtroom theatrics, you would be foolhardy to hire good old Johnnie to review your software cross-licensing agreement. A startup-oriented lawyer may not be able to convince a jury of a guilty man’s innocence, but they can guide your adVenture through the menacing legal shoals it will no doubt face. Working with startup lawyers also minimizes the risk of losing control of your adVenture, as they can help you avoid common fundraising and investor pitfalls. Such attorneys can also add tremendous value in your negotiations with Big Dumb Companies (BDCs), as they can ensure that you focus on the deal points that are of most significance to a small entity. As such, a startup-oriented lawyer is a critical member of your extended adVenture team.

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Thrill The Messenger – How An Entrepreneur Can Put Words In Media Messengers’ Mouths
September 2, 2008 | 9 Comments
After patiently listening to a messenger deliver the Persian King Xerxes’s request for Sparta’s capitulation, the Spartan King Leonidas unceremoniously kicked the messenger down a well. Anger at receiving bad news is a natural human reaction. Sophocles, Shakespeare and the Bible all reference the killing of the bearer of bad news. When someone is critical of your adVenture, it is natural to dismiss the detractor and even demonize them to undercut the validity of their message. Fortunately for your competitors and detractors, you do not have a license to kill. However, as an entrepreneur, you do have a license to thrill. Every successful entrepreneur must eventually learn to delegate. An even more challenging skill is learning what to delegate. As noted in PR Passion, shaping your adVenture’s messaging is not something you should leave to others. Control your messaging by crafting it yourself and exciting your messengers to the point that they willingly deliver your company’s message on your behalf. Energize your messengers and encourage them to tell your story in a spirited, fervent and accurate manner.

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Peace & War Corps – Creating A Low-Pay / High-Reward Startup
August 26, 2008 | 3 Comments
As noted in Frugal Is As Frugal Does, it is unlikely you will be able to pay your startup employees market-rate compensation. So how can you recruit top talent while rationing your cash and equity ownership? The answer may lie within successful, yet cash-strapped organizations that lack the ability to grant their employees stock ownership, lucrative performance bonuses or other incentives often deployed by entrepreneurs. How are such organizations able to recruit and retain talented and motivated team members?

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Excludesivity – Avoid Becoming Excluded From Future Revenue Opportunities
August 19, 2008 | 4 Comments
Marketers have long known that people are drawn to exclusivity. Some people pay small fortunes to attend exclusive, private colleges while others wait in line for hours for the opportunity to buy exorbitantly priced drinks in an exclusive nightclub. As noted in Kiss Of Death, exclusivity can kill a small company. Unfortunately, many Big Dumb Companies (BDCs) believe that the only way they can effectively compete is to skew the market in their favor by precluding you from freely working with anyone you choose. Exclusivity excludes the BDC from competing in the free market while excluding the startup from taking full advantage of future customer, partner and market opportunities. Such deals are not exclusive, they are excludesive.

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The Book – How Rookies and Startups Can Maintain Their Unfair Advantage
August 12, 2008 | 2 Comments
Late in the 1936 baseball season, a 17-year-old Iowa farm boy struck out 15 St. Louis Browns batters in his first Major League game. Shortly thereafter, that same pitcher went on to strike out 17 Philadelphia Athletics batters, an unprecedented feat for anyone, let alone a youth with no professional sports experience. How could such a young, inexperienced athlete baffle so many major league veterans? The answer is simple: the Browns and the Athletics had the misfortune of facing Bob Feller before anyone wrote The Book on him.

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