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In my experience as an employee, up to an executive, in large companies as well as small, I’ve found that people who are consistently negative and complain are a big constraint on productivity, as well as the most difficult management problem that most business leaders face. The challenge is to get Read More

In a corporate environment, the focus of a job interview has long been demonstrating your match to the skills and experience outlined in the job description. In my experience with startups, that is still necessary, but not sufficient. Today’s business world has become totally customer driven, so cu Read More

A common request I hear from aspiring entrepreneurs is for an assessment of their latest idea. I don’t even try to assess things at the idea level, since I can’t read minds. I can assess execution plans, if you have any. Yet I believe that business success is more a function of the person than the Read More

Every inventor seems to think their invention is worth a million dollars, but I haven’t seen anyone pay that much for one yet. In fact, I often have to tell aspiring entrepreneurs that their inventions have zero value, at least not until they are put in the context of a business plan, with qualifie Read More

In my role as a business advisor, I find that most still resist change, especially change they can’t control and did not choose, rather than accept it as the norm, and seek to capitalize on it. I believe that that by adopting a more positive change mindset, you can actually make surfing the waves o Read More

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have enough resources to bootstrap our own startups, so we are completely dependent on investors to help turn great ideas into great businesses. Yet in my experience on both sides of this equation, I find that many aspiring entrepreneurs focus only on the best idea, Read More

Back in the early 2000s, the Maker Movement took hold in California, based on the emergence of such do-it-yourself (DIY) tools as 3-D printers, and now sites such as SketchUp and Makerspaces have all the tools you need to make almost anything computer related. Thus entrepreneurs were able to build Read More

You can’t survive as an entrepreneur without resilience, because you are going to fail at least once, maybe multiple times. That’s the nature of trying something that’s never been done before. Resilience means not giving up, and being energized by what you have learned. As Thomas Edison said, "I ha Read More

As a startup mentor and investor, I am approached regularly by aspiring entrepreneurs who assert that business plans take too much time, are inaccurate, and rarely add value. They cite sources like Profitable Venture Magazine, “Why Business Plans are a Waste of Time” and this Forbes article. From m Read More

Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” What does traction really mean to investors, and how much is enough? Let me try to clarify the rules, and what it takes Read More