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Investing in entrepreneurs and startups is a fun but different world from investing in conventional stocks, bonds, and commodities. First of all, it’s more of an investment in people than in a business, since the startup is usually an idea barely half-baked when they need your money. Secondly, the Read More

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. After celebrating success at that level, they often find themselves ill-prepared to move to the next stage, for scaling their business into a high-performing enterprise. That’s where I see too much entr Read More

What every entrepreneur needs more than anything else, after they have built an innovative new product or service, is visibility, credibility, and trust by customers, potential employees, and future business partners. In my experience as a business advisor, one of the best ways to get all of these, Read More

Starting a new business is fraught with challenges, and none of us has the bandwidth to kill them all. As an advisor to business owners, and an occasional angel investor, my job is to separate the actual challenges from the common misconceptions that distract many promising entrepreneurs while buil Read More

In the beginning all businesses are just people playing out an idea. It’s never the other way around – there is no idea so big that it doesn’t need people to make it succeed. Investors know this, hence the saying “Bet on the jockey (founder), not the horse (idea).” A great jockey is a great role mo Read More

Based on my own experience as a business professional, employees who are not seriously engaged in the business should be totally obvious to everyone, including the manager or CEO. Yet many managers and executives seem to ignore the situation, or have no idea how to fix it. The result is that the pe Read More

Successful startups seem to follow similar paths to greatness, and unfortunately all too often that path leads them back down the hill much faster than they went up. Big company powerhouses, like IBM and Xerox, took fifty years to make the cycle, but new companies today, in the age of the Internet, Read More

For a few, delegating comes easily, maybe too easy. For others who are perfectionists, letting go of even the most trivial task is almost impossible. If you are in this second category, you probably don’t like the references behind your back that you are a “control freak” or a “micro-manager.” Read More

As the economy flourishes after some tough economic times, more and more people seem to be turning to entrepreneurship as an alternative to traditional employment. I applaud this trend, but caution all of you thinking this direction to approach entrepreneurship with your eyes wide open. It is not f Read More

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders quandaries in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. People may jump into the lifestyle to be their own boss, achieve great wealth, start a new trend, Read More