10 Deadly Startup Sins
It’s a well-accepted axiom in the investor community that entrepreneurs learn more from their failures than their successes. Thus a well-explained startup failure often can actually improve your odds of…
Lessons Learned Posts
What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Spin-Offs
You would think that a startup spun off by a mature parent company would have a considerable survival advantage over the lowly startup. Yet spin-offs often fail in the real…
Lessons from Google’s Larry and Sergey
I tell entrepreneurs that Google was an “exception” to all the investment and startup rules, but I’ve always wondered what it takes to be an exception. Since every business is…
Startups Can Create Their Own Luck
If you have had some success in a business, I’m sure you bristle just like I do when someone says “You were just lucky…” I’m a strong believer that we…
Reality Check: Timeless Lessons from Guy Kawasaki
Most of the time, I’m all about providing encouragement and inspiration to entrepreneurs. They need it and they deserve it because entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of our economy. But every…
Six Myths That Limit Your Startup’s Potential
All true entrepreneurs operate off a set of tenets that are built into their psyche or drilled into them through training and by mentors. These are represented by sayings like…
Procrastination is a Real Startup Killer
If I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, “One of these days, I’m going to start my own company,” I’d be rich. If this day…
How to Bounce Back After Your Startup Fails
If your first startup fails, you are in good company. Most startups fail; therefore, most entrepreneurs fail on at least one attempt. Investors agree that an entrepreneur who has never…
Spot Dysfunction at the Top
Founders almost always cite lack of money as the reason for failure, but if you look deeper, I believe the reason is more often about dysfunctional people and leadership. Sometimes…
An Overnight Success Takes Years
Every startup founder knows implicitly that startup success is a long hard road. Yet we always dream that we are the exception to the rule. So once in a while,…