Startup Mentor Checklist: Mentors can be invaluable to a founder to act as a sounding board for ideas and planned action. They can also play the role of devil’s advocate, challenging your [...]
Startup Exit Strategy: Founders can plan their exit—or ignore it till it happens and maybe face unexpected challenges. If you have to urge to start a business, why give a moment’s attention [...]
AI For Startup: Artificial Intelligence is talked and written about a great deal, but many of us have little real understanding of what it is and even less, an appreciation of its risks or [...]
Startup Growth on Purpose: Do all entrepreneurs want to grow fast and/or big? The answer is no. There are many ways to consider growth and scale. That is because growth is not necessarily only [...]
Founder Services help make your startup easier. They are available all over the place and often at high cost. Busy and often cash-strapped founders think they need a professional firm to do the [...]
Startup Registration: As soon as your startup is ready to go, you will need to register the business legally. The main types of legal structure for businesses, or business entity types, are shown [...]
Balanced entrepreneurs succeed in the new economy. While there’s no evidence that unbalanced entrepreneurs fail, my observation is that entrepreneurs who succeed, naturally strive, work [...]
Startup Purpose Is Why: Startups, as well as small business and corporations across the globe have four principal terms for purposes aimed at improving social and environmental outcomes for [...]
Startup Ethical Integrity To Do Good and Well: Entrepreneurs must focus their creative energy on products and markets, but without purpose their chances of surviving and thriving are diminished. [...]
Startups for Good Chose Words on Purpose: Entrepreneurs on a mission use a glossary of words that are strongly oriented towards positive action to change the world for the better. For example, [...]
Startup—Small is Beautiful: Mindful entrepreneurs scale to the right size for good. Investors seek scale fast to maximize investment. Over rapid growth may create problems for founders, above all [...]
Startup Citizenship—Enterprise & Common Good: New business creation happens within society and the startup interacts with all stakeholders, whether intentionally or unintentionally. [...]
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Startups: First of all, I suggest that you read my piece on Inclusive Entrepreneurship that discusses the ‘missing venture founders’, who are people [...]
Startup Ecosystem—the Big Picture: “Leave me alone. I just need to perfect this product and get it to market, or I’ll run out of money. I don’t need systems and big [...]
Outward Bound to Startup: Outdoor experiential learning and starting a new venture might seem like an oblique connection. The reality, though, is that such learning has many important lessons for [...]
Inclusive Entrepreneurship: There is a massive potential for startups created by women, young people, seniors, immigrants and racial minorities as well as people with disabilities, those with [...]
Ethical Entrepreneurship: The relationship between people inside and outside the venture and involves the founder being in relationship to many people both directly and indirectly—at the outset [...]
Note—You might want to read the page on Startup Business with Disability, before you read this page. Support for Entrepreneurs with Disability: There is a vast amount of guidance, training and [...]
Ableist Entrepreneurs Disadvantage Themselves: Ableism is an intentional or unintentional system of power and privilege that ranks those with able bodies, intellects or minds over people with [...]
Startup Business With Disability: There are already more than 1.8 million business owners with disabilities in the US (American Community Survey by US Census Bureau—ACS). Those 1.8 million [...]
Funding for Female Founders: This Directory of Funding for Female Founders aims to help increase these numbers. It is inevitably incomplete, so we would cherish any additions or suggestions for [...]
Startups Need Data: Many advisers will counsel budding startups to use national economic and market data to plan their new enterprise and be sure of realistic opportunities. This can be good [...]
Entrepreneurial Altruism—Save One Starfish: One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he [...]
Mission Driven and Purpose Capital Directory—USA: Seed and venture capital funds all have very particular criteria for investment in new and young ventures. Today, the fastest growing special [...]
Practice Makes Purpose: The purpose driven entrepreneur is responsible for the venture’s strategy and behavior. Hence practice delivers the startup’s purpose. Passionate entrepreneurs take [...]
Startup Purpose—benefit all stakeholders. Selfish startups don’t survive. Join the growing numbers of entrepreneurs who embrace stakeholder capitalism, rather than shareholder capitalism. [...]
Strategy and Interdependence We are coexistent; we can achieve nothing on our own; we are all inter-dependent. We are encouraged to be independent from an early age, even while being coexistent [...]
Coworking for Entrepreneurs: 12 Benefits—Community, Contacts & Cost For the creators of new ventures, the availability of a coworking space provides a strong support to the tough and [...]
Venture Founders Coworking Directory—USA: New startups find that shared work spaces are a huge improvement over working from home, an internet café, or committing too early to their own office [...]
Startup Consciously: Startup consciously and brainstorm beyond business. Founders face knotty decisions personally, as well on the project itself. There are many misconceptions about [...]
Purpose Driven Startups Challenge Accepted Wisdom, just as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, led her to exclaim, “Curiouser and curiouser!”. She explored the world conjured up [...]
Startup Books can be a boon for business founders. Startup books can be inspirational, informational and/or huge time savers. Chances are high that you are deeply into your product that is going [...]
Make Meaning Method: A way to help founders go beyond establishing business purpose, to make meaning through products and behavior. “Meaning is making the world a better place,” says [...]
Entrepreneur anxiety: Almost every founder has some anxieties, if not all, of these 20 challenges, each of which has to be confronted and dealt with positively. They can be transformed to [...]
Startup to Flourish—between divisive excess wealth and unjust extreme poverty. Flourishing involves commonwealth, built on tacit agreement of the people for the common good. New ventures are [...]
Customer Respect: “Due to a Higher Than Usual Call Volume…” How many times have you heard this recorded voice message when trying to contact a customer support line? I am almost [...]
Benefit Entrepreneur: Greed, hatred and delusion are characteristics inimical to successful startup. And no, this reflection is neither a polemic on business, nor about foolish entrepreneurs. It [...]
Startup Spirit: The heart of a start lies within the entrepreneur. Reading novels is not normally considered the best way to learn about new venture creation. BUT I recommend two novels for [...]
PEST Analysis: involves the analysis of four external factors that may impact your business: Political, Economic, Social and Technological. It should not be confused with a SWOT Analysis, that [...]
‘Co-opetition’: ‘Co-opetition’ is an increasing popular behavior among both multinationals and entrepreneurial businesses alike. It is a function of competing companies [...]
Sailing to Startup Success: keep your new venture on an even keel. I used to be a dinghy sailor and I can tell you that sailing requires many of the skills that an entrepreneur needs. First of [...]
Bootstrap Startup Finance is a craft that is very widely used in the creation of new ventures. In tough economic times it can be a matter of survival. For many entrepreneurs, it is a natural [...]
Corporate Venture Capital Directory—USA: The Corporate Venture Capital Directory—USA lists most of the big corporate investors. Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) involves large firms taking an [...]
Grassroots Startup Barriers: Determined rural entrepreneurs will make it, whatever barriers stand in their way. More than 68 per cent of people in the US think it’s easy to start a business [...]
Dangers of Startup Mentors: I was a startup mentor for many years. So, why would I warn entrepreneurs about the dangers of using mentors? My warnings are based on my understanding of how such [...]
Being an entrepreneur is a life that has some special needs. It is not for everybody, . There are all kinds of advice available, including on Venture Founders. Even though there are many courses [...]
Small Profits and Quick Returns (SPQR): Think as big as a Roman Emperor and start with small steps towards building your own empire. The reason for a big vision is to have clarity of purpose. The [...]
Founders Affinity Diagram: All entrepreneurs that I know are messy thinkers—for good reason. Things happen and you want to act quickly, not least because your data is scrappy and incomplete. You [...]
Track the Startup: this handbook helps founders keep track of the new business and avoid surprises, thus mitigating risk. Founders Keep Afloat: by tracking 25 vital facts and figures will show [...]
Startup Storytelling: startup storytelling is the most effective form of communication available to the entrepreneur. Startup storytelling enables you to make ‘me’ into ‘we’: to achieve [...]
Buddhist Economics: is giving people a chance to use and develop their skills; enabling them to overcome their self-centeredness, joining with others in a common task; creating the goods and [...]
Startup Storytelling: startup storytelling is the most effective form of communication available to the entrepreneur. Startup storytelling enables you to make ‘me’ into ‘we’: to achieve [...]
Entrepreneur Perception & Intuition: Clearly, successful entrepreneurs see things that others do not. Not surprisingly we tend to have differing perceptions of things, but the key to a [...]
Breakeven analysis for entrepreneurs sounds very dry and like hard work for the founder who’s in love with her idea. But I found it one of the most useful bits of financial calculation, [...]
Maker and Hacker Spaces Directory USA: There are more than 150 entries in the Maker and Hacker Spaces Directory USA, which has been updated and improved in summer 2022. Please write to [...]
Startup Founders Firepower: In 2022, the United States has more guns than people, but only 4 in 10 adults live in households with a gun, that’s 49 million of America’s 122 million households. The [...]
Track the Startup: this handbook helps founders keep track of the new business and avoid surprises, thus mitigating risk. Founders Keep Afloat: by tracking 25 vital facts and figures will show [...]
Let Thousands Invest in Your Startup: Use a Community Round, which lets thousands of your startup’s customers, users, and fans invest alongside VCs and angel investors. You may feel anxious [...]
Fast or Firm Growth: Most of the time founders cannot simply make a choice between a startup’s fast or firm growth, when setting the priorities of new venture development. They get the [...]
Startup Passion and Delight: Ricky D has a passion and takes delight in its consequences. He’s a solopreneur, who has been shining shoes most of his life, but his ideas hardened into a [...]
Startups Change the World: Social impact is now core to how entrepreneurs set their business purpose and assess business performance. Entrepreneurial success has been primarily determined by [...]
Entrepreneurial Mindfulness: These two words are not often seen together. However, business schools that teach a startup course would do mankind a service to have them as a key component of their [...]
Small town startup: People in rural communities and small towns across America are just as likely to be entrepreneurs as the geeks of Silicon Valley, or the app developers of Austin, Texas. There [...]
Public Contracts for Small Business: It is amazing how few startups think about going after business from Federal Government, States, Cities and other public entities. All kinds of bodies put out [...]
Purpose Driven Startup Coherence: purpose driven startups are sometimes exposed to criticism from skeptics, doubting their integrity. If you have a strong commitment of purpose to your [...]
Nearsourcing: Nearsourcing is a way of outsourcing that brings subcontracted services nearer to the client company. Nearer can be in terms of distance, time, language, or culture. Nearsourcing [...]
Purpose Driven ‘Tecopreneur’: A ‘tecopreneur’ is how I describe technically/scientifically knowledgeable entrepreneurs, who see the need for new ventures for creative and [...]
Surprising Countries for Entrepreneurs Costa Rica and Botswana In Central America & Sub-Saharan Africa and full of inspiration and opportunity Surprising Countries for Entrepreneurs: Costa [...]
Systemic Social Enterprise: Social enterprise is a term in common use for many types of venture that “address a basic unmet need or solve a social problem through a market-driven approach”. That [...]
Flourish Honorably: To flourish honorably is a choice. It does not just happen, but it can be ignored. Founded as FaceMash nearly 20 years ago Facebook (now Meta) is a company that fulfills its [...]
Are CEOs worth 351 times the median pay? American CEOs made 351 times more than a typical worker in 2020, but in 1965 it was only 15 to one. Was life miserable back then? It’s not as though we [...]
Equity Crowdfunding Directory—USA: Equity-based crowdfunding allows people to invest in an early-stage, private company (a company that is not listed on any stock exchange) in exchange for equity [...]
Equity Crowdfunding from Friends and Family: per this Founder Institute blog, “a Friends and Family round typically results in anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000 in funding that allows a startup [...]
Funding the Benefit Sector: The Benefit Sector is emerging to fill a gap in the ability of the three traditional sectors to produce balanced benefits for society as a whole1. Social (nonprofit) [...]
Entrepreneurs Are Builders: The word ‘entrepreneur’ is derived from the French verb, entreprendre—to undertake in English. So, an entrepreneur is someone who undertakes things, but in English, we [...]
Small Entrepreneurs Have Global Impact: If you are Don Miguel, of Fincas Familia Castro, a small family coffee plantation and roasters, in San Pedro de Poàs, about an hour north of San José, the [...]
Marketing for Purpose and Profit: Most startups focus their marketing plans on survival and growth—for good reason. Founders believe passionately in their product and care for their customers. [...]
Stakeholder Business Thrives: Communities depend on willing parties enabling them to thrive or causing them to decay. This is true for both democratic or despotic systems. The parties can use [...]
Burn the Business Plan: The title is arresting and has a lot of truth. I am a retired MBA teacher of new venture creation and many of my students produced business plans. For me though a business [...]
Business Incubator and Accelerator Directory—USA: According to Carl Schramm, there were 1,600 business incubators and accelerators in the US in 2016. The Business Incubator and Accelerator [...]
The Stakeholder Strategy Evaluation Tool facilitates the challenging planning process for purpose-driven startups and entrepreneurs who want their new ventures to contribute to a better world. A [...]
Perception, Purpose and Persistence: a model for purpose-driven startups Safwan Shah and PayActiv, the company he founded in 2012, are a model for purpose-driven startups today, demonstrating [...]
Sales Funnel: simply a way to think about all the steps in the sales process and to be able to log them so that you can avoid a sudden dip in sales. If the sales funnel is not topped up at every [...]
Sources of Startup Finance: creating a new venture is going to require money. The sources of money are almost endless. The successful entrepreneur will be financially ingenious about finding ways [...]
Purpose-driven Ventures Thrive Sustainability benefits your startup and the world. Purpose-driven ventures thrive, creating both shared value and profits. Successful founders set sustainable [...]
Purpose of the Venture: David Hieatt, co-founder six years ago of Hiut Denim Company, the UK fashion jeans manufacturer with his wife, Clare, suggests that the question a new entrepreneur must [...]
New Business Normal: For health reasons, most non-essential businesses closed in order to diminish the spread of Covid-19, often at the request of government. As forecasts of the healthcare [...]
Remaking Capitalism: The interdependence of business has not traditionally been part of business vernacular. However now, especially in post pandemic society, it is an imperative word for the [...]
Balanced entrepreneurs succeed in the new economy. While there’s no evidence that unbalanced entrepreneurs fail, my observation is that entrepreneurs who succeed, naturally strive, work [...]
Connection, Trust, and Love in the New Economy1: The generally accepted aim of a business venture is to maximize financial gain for its owners. On the other hand, the aim of a nonprofit [...]
Founders—Pause for Breath! Founders often forget they’re breathing, because they are so busy making things happen. This is true for other high pressure occupations, too. That is one of the [...]
Mindful Work: A growing number of leading businesspeople openly meditate. They may have been meditators for a long time, but now they are not shy about saying that they meditate. The late Steve [...]
Early Stage Funding: Most startups are not highly capitalized. Of course it varies by sector. You are unlikely to find airline startups with hundreds of thousands dollars in startup funds. On the [...]
Purposeful Startup: David Shahan, is the founder of SunState Laboratories, based in Broomfield, Colorado, having previously worked with Jani-King, a company with 9,000 franchisees offering [...]
Airline Share Buybacks: The US airline industry is seeking $50 billion from the Government—half in grants and half in loans—to compensate for the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its [...]
Botswana Women’s Coworking Space: The first coworking space for women has been opened in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, by The Institute of Entrepreneurial Development (IED). Bonang [...]
Equity Crowdfunding for Purposeful Startups: Wefunder is simply the best way to raise capital from people who share your intent to change the world for the better, and with whom you want to build [...]
Purpose and Profit Framework: Today, it is finally safe to say that collective business wisdom accords purpose and profit virtually the same weight of importance in planning and leading a [...]
Profits and Purpose: It is in the founder’s interest to start the business knowing that we are all interrelated and interdependent. That is quite easy to recognize, but hard to act on. [...]
Missed Opportunity for Startup Funding Family Offices and Venture Capital: Founders of new ventures are frequently ignorant about an excellent source of equity investment: family offices. With [...]
Startup with Purpose
Share Value(s) for Positive Outcomes
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