Benefit Venture Blog

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 [...]

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 [...]

Co-opetition: Co-opetition is an increasing popular behavior among both multinationals and entrepreneurial businesses alike. It is a function of competing companies that also cooperate for [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Coworking Directory—USA: New startups are finding shared work spaces are a huge improvement over working from home, an internet café, or committing too early to their own office lease. The [...]

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 (tec + eco) is how I describe technically/scientifically knowledgeable entrepreneurs, who see the need for new ventures for creative and innovative ways [...]

Mission Driven Capital Directory—USA: There are more and more sources of seed and venture capital which have a bias in favor of sustainable business. Their number is growing very rapidly; this [...]

Surprising Countries for Entrepreneurs Costa Rica and Botswana In Central America & Sub-Saharan Africa 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 [...]

Funding for Female Founders: According to Pitch Book in February 2021, venture capital funding overall has surged in recent years, but the numbers haven’t leapt forward for female founders [...]

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) [...]

Startup Citizenship: Entrepreneurs have plenty of concerns other than the social impact of their new venture. From Day One of the business, on the other hand, their new business will particularly [...]

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 [...]

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 survival of 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 [...]

Introduction Coworking for Entrepreneurs: Startups are booming. According to the US Census Bureau, 2020 Quarter 3 has shown a phenomenal growth over the second quarter—a 77% increase in business [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Company and Community: The business and community surrounding it are in a symbiotic relationship, whether desired or ignored. At the negative end of the spectrum, the inter-relation is easily [...]

Say the Customer’s Name: “Hello My Keyser, said Pricilla. Nothing very extraordinary about that, but Matt greets me that way, too. Both are Pharmacy Technicians at my local Walgreens, [...]

Opportunities for Purposeful Startups: there are many areas of opportunity for new ventures to address critical social issues, either directly or indirectly. Startups cannot ignore injustice [...]

Side Business to Startup: About 57 million Americans have a side business, in addition to their regular paid employment. That amounts to nearly half of American full time workers who have a side [...]

Founders Can Learn From Corporate Deceit*: Founders can learn more from corporate mistakes than the things they appear to be doing successfully. The big boys often say one thing and do another. [...]

Blooming Beauty Business: The cosmetics and toiletries sector is about improving the appearance and health of the body and is in a period of significant growth in sales and new products, [...]

Mailbox Storyboard Startup: a new personal service has been born in Houston, Texas to give stories to friends, relatives and colleagues to delight them by receiving hand drawn greetings through [...]

Startups Build a Better World: New ventures started with an international dimension are likely to prosper, because they will be sensitive to a wide variety of options. Those who start a business [...]

Startup Strategy is a subject much written about. Many business school professors and strategy consultants like Bain, BCG and McKinsey have built their reputations based on their own models of [...]

Smart Technology: How dumb can smart technology be? Many products are described as smart, without fully explaining in what way they can be smarter than the people who use them. The recent Boeing [...]

Inequality Immorality: Greed is seldom a motivation for starting a new enterprise. Of course, founders can be selfish, but in the sense that they are seeking self-actualization, [...]

Re-Startup: Startups are new ventures that seek to meet a need through a viable business model for a product, service, process or channel. Chances of success or scalability are increased through [...]

Startups and Sockpuppets: Founders are crazily busy and may gloss over certain risks, especially when they involve issues with which they are not familiar. The internet is a vital tool for new [...]

Founder Compassion: You will have heard that having a focussed passion for delivering benefit is a paramount quality for successful entrepreneurs, but not about doing so compassionately. [...]

Rewriting the Rules of Business: Most governments support the existing unreasonable and unfair way we organize our community social and economic affairs. On the other hand many new [...]

Opportunity Gap: The Opportunity Gap concerns the arbitrary circumstances in which people are born—such as their race, gender, ethnicity, ZIP code, and socioeconomic status—that determine their [...]

Founder Team Balance: I am a male entrepreneur, who values female founders. I had a female co-founder of my main business back in 1982 and my learning from her was probably greater than anything [...]

“Entrepreneurship is the ability to create and build something from practically nothing,” says my hero, the late Jeffry Timmons. He says that, both in the best founders’ reference book, New [...]

Hemp entrepreneurs are mostly known in the commercialization of marijuana in those States that have legalized commercial sales. But though marijuana and hemp come from the same cannabis strain, [...]

Entrepreneur Types: This list of entrepreneur types is partly for real and partly for fun. There is a huge raft of research about what makes a successful entrepreneur, and types of entrepreneur. [...]

New Venture Creation—the Timmons Model: My own conclusion about what drives startups above all else is strongly influenced by the ideas of an amazing thinker, researcher and teacher, the late [...]

Behaviors of Successful Founders: You’ll find endless ideas about what it takes to be a successful founder—and none is perfect. Internet searches will reveal all kinds of answers. The one [...]

Non-entrepreneurial Mind: So much is written about the entrepreneurial mind, including by me. Much less is written on the non-entrepreneurial mind, which can be catastrophic for a new venture. My [...]

Spin Out Startup: the experience of three women who created their startup from the ashes of their former employer’s business seemed courageous back in 2014, when it was launched. [...]

Movement for Business Purpose: entrepreneurs who create new ventures with both a declared sense of purpose and who live it through their strategy and policies have a significant impact on [...]

Five Whys Technique: Young kids are often dissatisfied with the first answer you give to their questions, and bug you with a few more, whys? They may have a good reason! The first answer may not [...]

Exit Strategy by ESOP or Co-op: An Employee Stock Ownership Plan or Co-operative Ownership are both increasingly popular options as exit strategies for entrepreneurs and small business owners. My [...]

Effective Startup Learning: new ventures need to learn, and they need to learn fast, or they will fail fast. The trouble is that you are already run off your feet. To take time out to [...]

Self-Aware Startup Teams: The creation and development of a winning team depends on the founder’s leadership. The Johari Window is a marvelous tool to help founders to develop greater [...]

Staffing a Startup: What staff does a startup need? The data does not show that solo founders do any worse than those with two or more. However, my advice is that the second member of the team [...]

Entrepreneurial Empathy: The word ‘reveal’ sounds either like showing off, or showing private stuff. Good entrepreneurs who habitually reveal themselves by the way they behave—to show [...]

Startup statements of intent have a critical role to play if your new venture has a strong social purpose and the startup seeks to change the world for the better, with benefits for all. There is [...]

Entrepreneur Personality: Everyone who starts a new venture wants the keys to startup success. Many people think there’s a special ‘entrepreneur character’ you should have for [...]

Creeping Disruption: Market disruption is presented as if it is a big bang like digital photography ending film photography. But it’s much more like a gradual change—creeping disruption, [...]

Startup Workshops: The best startup workshop that I ever attended was one designed to enable a venture capital company to decide on potential startup investments. Lead entrepreneurs from about a [...]

Logo for Startups: Choosing a startup’s logo is hard and subjective. Sometimes it can be obvious and flows from the name itself, the place of business, or the product sold. So it was with [...]