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With the current strong economy, and sparked by the last recession, I’m seeing a real resurgence of entrepreneurial spirit, and more startup activity than ever before. I believe the days of the “job work” mentality are thankfully waning, with more people looking to get satisfaction by making the wo Read More

As an advisor to new business owners, and an occasional angel investor, I see new business proposals daily, many seeking investors to fund early research and development (R&D) of a new product idea. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs don’t realize that the words “research” and “development” are red Read More

Maybe starting a new business isn’t your passion, but in these days of rapid change, where everyone is dealing with uncertainty, I believe that thinking and acting like entrepreneurs will help you get ahead in any profession. In simple terms this means taking control of your life, going after somet Read More

In my experience, the initial idea for a new product usually comes from a single entrepreneur, but the implementation plan for a new business requires a team, or at least a co-founder. The reason is that any one person rarely has the bandwidth, interest, or skills to manage all the tasks required t Read More

With the current strong economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. There just aren’t enough angel investors and VCs to go around. Thus I’m getting more questions on new mechanisms, like crowd funding, or go Read More

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this Read More

Every entrepreneur I know is short on resources, including time, money, and skills. The last thing they can afford is to waste any of these, but in my mentoring and coaching activities, I see it happening all too often. Waste in a startup is any activity that spends resources, but creates no value Read More

Millennials have come a long way in business since I started writing about them almost ten years ago. They started out as that spoiled generation of kids, born between about 1982 and 2004, who had everything, and could care less about business. Today they are in every business, and will likely comp Read More

In my experience with technical entrepreneurs, they work hard on creating an innovative and elegant solution, and assume that customers will flock to them (“if we build it, they will come”). The reality is that successful businesses these days require an equally elegant business model, with the rig Read More

As an advisor to entrepreneurs, I often have to deal with people who are convinced that they must get me to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before they begin talks about their new venture. They seem shocked to learn that most professional investors and advisors, myself included, routinely dec Read More