Remaking Capitalism: The interdependence of business has not traditionally been part of business vernacular. However now, especially in post pandemic...
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Idea & Opportunity
Idea & Opportunity: The Insights in this category are are for the formative stage of new business creation and early post-startup period. There are many creative ways to bring a business to life and design ways to give it the best chance to survive and flourish. Take a look and see what may either spark your interest or cover a challenge that confronts you.
Some Insights are short and more inspirational, while others are full of detailed information and methods and references that can be followed up. If you don’t find what you are looking for in this category, then try the other two: Plans & Operations or Growth & Maturity.
I write new Venture Founders Insights on topics that I think are important and/or timely—both for your business and its stakeholders. In the spirit of community, please do make contact (will@venturefounders.com) and suggest topics which you consider important to include in the future—or make comments if you wish.
Click below on the category you want to visit
Passion or Autonomy
Purposeful Startup Dazz—Bubbles with Intent
Purposeful Startup: David Shahan, is the founder of SunState Laboratories, based in Broomfield, Colorado, having previously worked with Jani-King, a...
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Spin Out Startup Hidden Entrepreneurs Come Out and Flourish
Spin Out Startup: the experience of three women who created their startup from the ashes of their former employer's business...
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Timing or Market Opportunity
Entrepreneur Perception & Intuition Founders See What Others Do Not
Entrepreneur Perception & Intuition: Clearly, successful entrepreneurs see things that others do not. Not surprisingly we tend to have differing...
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First-class Noticers Founders Are Good at Noticing What Others Miss
The bits that make up the whole First-Class Noticers: What are first-class noticers and where does the word 'noticer' even...
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SWOT Analysis A Grid to Log Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats
SWOT Analysis: the initials stand for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and provides a simple, but effective means of considering...
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Product or Innovation
Management Process and Procedures Product or Innovation Business Plan and Initial Funding Benefit Venture Blog
AI for Startup Potential and Risks of AI for Entrepreneurs
AI For Startup: Artificial Intelligence is talked and written about a great deal, but many of us have little real...
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Maker and Hacker Spaces Directory—USA Community Workspaces for Creative and Technical People
Maker and Hacker Spaces Directory USA: There are more than 150 entries in the Maker and Hacker Spaces Directory USA,...
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Smart Technology 10 Design Implications for Founders
Smart Technology: How dumb can smart technology be? Many products are described as smart, without fully explaining in what way they...
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Startup Data Reliability Grid Successful Evaluation of Market Data for Strategic Decisions
Startup Data Reliability Grid: Good strategic decisions take account of market intelligence and the conclusions we draw from the data....
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Creeping Disruption Startups Need to Be Aware of Many Innovations in So Many Fields
Creeping Disruption: Market disruption is presented as if it is a big bang like digital photography ending film photography. But...
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Business Plan and Initial Funding
Startup Exit Strategy Founders Can Plan Their Exit—or Ignore It
Startup Exit Strategy: Founders can plan their exit—or ignore it till it happens and maybe face unexpected challenges. If you...
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Management Process and Procedures Product or Innovation Business Plan and Initial Funding Benefit Venture Blog
AI for Startup Potential and Risks of AI for Entrepreneurs
AI For Startup: Artificial Intelligence is talked and written about a great deal, but many of us have little real...
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Directory of Funding for Female Founders—USA Growing Sources of Finance for Women-led Startups
Funding for Female Founders: This Directory of Funding for Female Founders aims to help increase these numbers. It is inevitably...
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Mission Driven and Purpose Capital Directory—USA Seed & Venture Capital Committed to Social Progress
Mission Driven and Purpose Capital Directory—USA: Seed and venture capital funds all have very particular criteria for investment in new...
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Startup to Flourish Relational Plans Make Business Plans Work
Startup to Flourish—between divisive excess wealth and unjust extreme poverty. Flourishing involves commonwealth, built on tacit agreement of the people...
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Breakeven Analysis for Entrepreneurs Calculate Your Startup's Move Into Profit
Breakeven analysis for entrepreneurs sounds very dry and like hard work for the founder who's in love with her idea....
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Community Round: Let Thousands Invest in Your Startup Customers, Friends & Supporters at the Same Time as Angels & VCs
Examples of Community Round Investors Let Thousands Invest in Your Startup: Use a Community Round, which lets thousands of your...
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Equity Crowdfunding Directory—USA Not All Crowdfunding Sites Can Be Used for Raising Capital
Equity Crowdfunding Directory—USA: Equity-based crowdfunding allows people to invest in an early-stage, private company (a company that is not listed...
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Equity Crowdfunding from Friends and Family from Jonny Price, VP of Fundraising at Wefunder
Equity Crowdfunding from Friends and Family: per this Founder Institute blog, “a Friends and Family round typically results in anywhere...
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Burn the Business Plan A Review of Carl Schramm's Book
Burn the Business Plan: The title is arresting and has a lot of truth. I am a retired MBA teacher...
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Business Incubator and Accelerator Directory—USA Workplaces for Budding Founders to Work, Learn and Network
Business Incubator and Accelerator Directory—USA: According to Carl Schramm, there were 1,600 business incubators and accelerators in the US in...
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Sources of Startup Finance The obvious & not-so-obvious ways to fund the startup
Sources of Startup Finance: creating a new venture is going to require money. The sources of money are almost endless....
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Early Stage Funding How Little Cash Do You Need?
Early Stage Funding: Most startups are not highly capitalized. Of course it varies by sector. You are unlikely to find airline...
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Family Offices and Venture Capital Founders Overlook a Source of Funding
Missed Opportunity for Startup Funding Family Offices and Venture Capital: Founders of new ventures are frequently ignorant about an excellent...
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Side Business to Startup Safe way to learn what works before launching the new venture
Side Business to Startup: About 57 million Americans have a side business, in addition to their regular paid employment. That...
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Startup Strategy Right Actions at the Right Time
Startup Strategy is a subject much written about. Many business school professors and strategy consultants like Bain, BCG and McKinsey...
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Startup Statements of Intent A Formal Means of Defining and Committing to the Purpose of the New Venture
Startup statements of intent have a critical role to play if your new venture has a strong social purpose and...
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Logo for Startups Founders Should Choose a Logo with Great Care
Logo for Startups: Choosing a startup's logo is hard and subjective. Sometimes it can be obvious and flows from the...
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Vision Statement A Perilous Way to Set Strategy
Vision Statement: My former home city, Georgetown in Texas, is one of the first US cities of more than 50,000...
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Loans from Family and Friends How They Work and the Necessary Paperwork
Loans from Family and Friends: The first port of call for borrowing money for startups is family and friends. Historically,...
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SOAR Analysis Strategize by Naming Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results
SOAR Analysis much resembles a SWOT Analysis. A SOAR Analysis is a tool to improve the strategic planning process and...
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Risk Mitigation Tools An Orderly Way to Consider Downside Risks
Risk Mitigation Tools: Entrepreneurs that survive tend to be very good at risk mitigation, or considering the downside risks of...
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Startup Milestones and Accountabilities A Tool to Ensure that Plans Are Actually Executed as Intended
Startup Milestones and Accountabilities: Don't be fooled by the simplistic appearance of the Milestones and Accountabilities Chart below. Setting plans...
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Startup B-Words Lots to Learn from Single Words
Startup B-Words: Here is my list of Startup B-Words for business building. Have productive fun thinking about how these startup...
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Business Plan Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Make Sure You Hit the Target: Get Feedback and Sharpen Your Aim
Business Plan Mistakes: If you have never attempted to write a business plan before, beware! The territory is full of...
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Business Plan Outline Table of Contents for a Business Plan, with Proportionate Space for Each Chapter
Classic business plan: Sun Microsystems—the first few words say it all. Business Plan Outline: This is a business plan outline...
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Business Model Canvas One-page Way to Design, Describe, Challenge or Pivot a Business Model
The Business Model Canvas is now perhaps the most widely used tool to help entrepreneurs and managers both in the...
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Strategy for All Stakeholders
Business Purpose: Priorities & Models
Business Purpose: Priorities & Models Size and Place Remaking Capitalism—Future Economy Change Direction Benefit Venture Blog
Startup Growth On Purpose Right-Size Your New Venture
Startup Growth on Purpose: Do all entrepreneurs want to grow fast and/or big? The answer is no. There are many...
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Startup Purpose Is Why CSR—DEI—ESG—SDG
Startup Purpose Is Why: Startups, as well as small business and corporations across the globe have four principal terms for...
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Practice Makes Purpose Entrepreneurial Passion Delivers
Practice Makes Purpose: The purpose driven entrepreneur is responsible for the venture’s strategy and behavior. Hence practice delivers the startup's...
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Make Meaning Method How to Determine Meaning for Startup
Make the meaning obvious Make Meaning Method: A way to help founders go beyond establishing business purpose, to make meaning through...
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Purpose Driven Startup Coherence Lesson from ‘Big Pharma’
Young Beauty or Old Hag? Purpose Driven Startup Coherence: purpose driven startups are sometimes exposed to criticism from skeptics, doubting...
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Stakeholder Strategy Evaluation Tool Facilitate a Challenging Planning Process
The Stakeholder Strategy Evaluation Tool facilitates the challenging planning process for purpose-driven startups and entrepreneurs who want their new ventures to contribute...
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Perception, Purpose and Persistence A model for purpose-driven startups
Perception, Purpose and Persistence: a model for purpose-driven startups Safwan Shah and PayActiv, the company he founded in 2012, are...
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Purpose of the Venture Not What is the Business, but Why is the Business?
Purpose of the Venture: David Hieatt, co-founder six years ago of Hiut Denim Company, the UK fashion jeans manufacturer with...
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Successful Startup Behaviors Match Purpose Founders Can Learn From Corporate Deceit
Founders Can Learn From Corporate Deceit*: Founders can learn more from corporate mistakes than the things they appear to be...
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Startup Statements of Intent A Formal Means of Defining and Committing to the Purpose of the New Venture
Startup statements of intent have a critical role to play if your new venture has a strong social purpose and...
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Strategy Map Diagram to Show Organizational Strategy on One Page
Strategy Map: This is one of the more complex tools I offer, but nonetheless effective. If well done, it can...
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Mind Mapping Graphic Way to Plot Thoughts On a Theme to Better Understand
Mind Mapping: A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and...
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McKinsey 7-S Framework A Visual Means of Considering All Strategy Components
McKinsey 7-S Framework was the outcome of much earlier work, but was crystallized by Bob Waterman and Tom Peters in...
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Business Model Planner Simple Means to Define Characteristics for All the Criteria of the Plan
Business Model Planner: Here is a tool to help you create an effective business model (the way in which revenue...
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Blue Ocean Matrix Four Main Actions to Move Into a Less Contested Space
Blue Ocean Matrix: the matrix is a graphic way of expressing Blue Ocean Strategy, which is a marketing theory from...
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Remaking Capitalism—Future Economy
Business Purpose: Priorities & Models Size and Place Remaking Capitalism—Future Economy Change Direction Benefit Venture Blog
Startup Growth On Purpose Right-Size Your New Venture
Startup Growth on Purpose: Do all entrepreneurs want to grow fast and/or big? The answer is no. There are many...
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Startups for Good Choose Words on Purpose Strategic Glossary for Entrepreneurs on a Mission
Startups for Good Chose Words on Purpose: Entrepreneurs on a mission use a glossary of words that are strongly oriented...
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Entrepreneurial Altruism Save One Starfish
Entrepreneurial Altruism—Save One Starfish: One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something...
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Purpose Driven Startups Challenge Accepted Wisdom
Purpose Driven Startups Challenge Accepted Wisdom, just as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, led her to exclaim, "Curiouser and curiouser!". She...
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Stakeholder Business Thrives Tripartite Thought and Action Works
Stakeholder Business Thrives: Communities depend on willing parties enabling them to thrive or causing them to decay. This is true for...
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Rewriting the Rules of Business Founders Lead the Way, Without Waiting for Politicians
Rewriting the Rules of Business: Most governments support the existing unreasonable and unfair way we organize our community social and...
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Movement for Business Purpose Entrepreneurs Impact Multinationals
Movement for Business Purpose: entrepreneurs who create new ventures with both a declared sense of purpose and who live it...
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Values: Ethics, Honesty and Compassion
Balanced Entrepreneurs Succeed Being While Doing
Balanced entrepreneurs succeed in the new economy. While there's no evidence that unbalanced entrepreneurs fail, my observation is that entrepreneurs...
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Startup Ethical Integrity To Do Good and Well Empathy Outshines Control
Startup Ethical Integrity To Do Good and Well: Entrepreneurs must focus their creative energy on products and markets, but without...
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Startup Founders Firepower Entrepreneurs with Purpose Take a Stand
Startup Founders Firepower: In 2022, the United States has more guns than people, but only 4 in 10 adults live...
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Flourish Honorably Business Purpose and Moral Fiber
Flourish Honorably: To flourish honorably is a choice. It does not just happen, but it can be ignored. Founded as...
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Balanced Entrepreneurs Succeed Being While Doing
Balanced entrepreneurs succeed in the new economy. While there's no evidence that unbalanced entrepreneurs fail, my observation is that entrepreneurs...
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Profits and Purpose Benefits of Doing Social Good
Profits and Purpose: It is in the founder's interest to start the business knowing that we are all interrelated and...
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Startups and Sockpuppets Founders Beware Blindly Trusting All Internet Identities
Startups and Sockpuppets: Founders are crazily busy and may gloss over certain risks, especially when they involve issues with which...
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Founder Compassion Passion Drives Your Venture, Compassion Defines It
Founder Compassion: You will have heard that having a focused passion for delivering benefit is a paramount quality for successful...
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New Ventures and Sustainability
Startup Citizenship Enterprise & Common Good
Startup Citizenship—Enterprise & Common Good: New business creation happens within society and the startup interacts with all stakeholders, whether intentionally...
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Startups Change the World Activism in business is moving the dial
Startups Change the World: Social impact is now core to how entrepreneurs set their business purpose and assess business performance....
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Purpose Driven ‘Tecopreneur’ Opportunities on Route 176 in New Mexico and Texas
Purpose Driven 'Tecopreneur': A 'tecopreneur' is how I describe technically/scientifically knowledgeable entrepreneurs, who see the need for new ventures for...
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Surprising Countries for Entrepreneurs Costa Rica and Botswana
Costa Rica: Sustainability Botswana: Entrepreneurship Surprising Countries for Entrepreneurs Costa Rica and Botswana In Central America & Sub-Saharan Africa and...
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Startups Build a Better World Corporate Cross-border Cooperation
Startups Build a Better World: New ventures started with an international dimension are likely to prosper, because they will be...
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Re-Startup Founders of New Ventures in the Loop Economy
Re-Startup: Startups are new ventures that seek to meet a need through a viable business model for a product, service,...
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Entrepreneurial Types and Traits
What It Takes To Start and Manage a New Venture
Outward Bound to Startup Experience Enlivens Entrepreneurs
Outward Bound to Startup: Outdoor experiential learning and starting a new venture might seem like an oblique connection. The reality,...
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Startup Books—for Purpose Driven Entrepreneurs Learn Quickly and Cheaply—from Books
Startup Books can be a boon for business founders. Startup books can be inspirational, informational and/or huge time savers. Chances...
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Sailing to Startup Success Keep Your New Venture Balanced
Sailing to Startup Success: keep your new venture on an even keel. I used to be a dinghy sailor and...
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Being an Entrepreneur 10 Reflections on What It Takes
Being an entrepreneur is a life that has some special needs. It is not for everybody, . There are all...
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Entrepreneurs Are Builders Putting Things Together
Entrepreneurs Are Builders: The word ‘entrepreneur’ is derived from the French verb, entreprendre—to undertake in English. So, an entrepreneur is someone...
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Founder Team Balance Avoid Gender Stereotypes
Founder Team Balance: I am a male entrepreneur, who values female founders. I had a female co-founder of my main...
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Create and Build Something From Nothing But How?
“Entrepreneurship is the ability to create and build something from practically nothing,” says my hero, the late Jeffry Timmons. He...
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Hemp Entrepreneurs A neglected natural fiber has a growing future
Hemp entrepreneurs are mostly known in the commercialization of marijuana in those States that have legalized commercial sales. But though...
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Entrepreneur Types A Founders Alphabet
Entrepreneur Types: This list of entrepreneur types is partly for real and partly for fun. There is a huge raft...
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New Venture Creation—the Timmons Model Opportunity is the Driver of Startups
New Venture Creation—the Timmons Model: My own conclusion about what drives startups above all else is strongly influenced by the ideas...
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Behaviors of Successful Founders Essence of What it Takes to Be the Founder of a New Venture
Behaviors of Successful Founders: You'll find endless ideas about what it takes to be a successful founder—and none is perfect. Internet...
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Non-entrepreneurial Mind Founder Characteristics That May Prevent Startup Survival
Non-entrepreneurial Mind: So much is written about the entrepreneurial mind, including by me. Much less is written on the non-entrepreneurial...
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Entrepreneur Personality Know Your Own Preferred Way of Being and Appreciate Others
Entrepreneur Personality: Everyone who starts a new venture wants the keys to startup success. Many people think there's a special...
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Variance Analysis Identify Reasons for Differences Between Expected and Actual Amounts
Variance Analysis: The monthly activity of comparing either/both of forecast/budget numbers with actual out-turn proved for me to be a...
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Value Proposition Matrix Test All the Components of the Value Proposition Across the Whole Value Chain
Value Proposition summarizes the reason to buy a product/service, convincing a prospective customer that it will add more value or...
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Critical Success Factors Benchmarks for Essential Actions to Achieve Purpose of Objectives
Critical Success Factors: You want to succeed, obviously, but as I remember it, the determination of what things are the...
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Challenges, Hurdles and Learning
Coworking Directory—USA Better Than Working from Home + Networking with Other Founders
Designed by Freepik Venture Founders Coworking Directory—USA: New startups find that shared work spaces are a huge improvement over working...
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Entrepreneur Anxiety Founders Transform 20 Tough Challenges
Entrepreneur anxiety: Almost every founder has some anxieties, if not all, of these 20 challenges, each of which has to...
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Founders—Pause for Breath! Effective Founders Take Time to Breathe Consciously
Founders—Pause for Breath! Founders often forget they're breathing, because they are so busy making things happen. This is true for other...
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Mindful Work Many Positive Consequences Arise from Meditation, Especially for Entrepreneurs
Mindful Work: A growing number of leading businesspeople openly meditate. They may have been meditators for a long time, but...
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Opportunity Gap Business founders need people with curiosity and concern for the world
Opportunity Gap: The Opportunity Gap concerns the arbitrary circumstances in which people are born—such as their race, gender, ethnicity, ZIP...
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Five Whys Technique Enabling a Group to Find the Root Cause of an Issue
Five Whys Technique: Young kids are often dissatisfied with the first answer you give to their questions, and bug you...
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Effective Startup Learning Double Loop Learning: Things Right or Right Things—Get it Right Fast
Effective Startup Learning: new ventures need to learn, and they need to learn fast, or they will fail fast. The...
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Startup Workshops Refine Your Ideas and Be Stimulated by Fellow Learners
Startup Workshops: The best startup workshop that I ever attended was one designed to enable a venture capital company to...
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Fishbone Diagrams Graphic Means of Figuring Out the Components of a Problem
Fishbone diagrams: Popularized in the 1960s by Kaoru Ishikawa, who pioneered quality management processes in the Kawasaki shipyards, and in...
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Co-founders, Partners or Solopreneurship
Coworking for Entrepreneurs: 12 Benefits Community, Contacts & Cost
Coworking for Entrepreneurs: 12 Benefits—Community, Contacts & Cost For the creators of new ventures, the availability of a coworking space...
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Startup Passion and Delight Shoeshine Solopreneur's Secret
Startup Passion and Delight: Ricky D has a passion and takes delight in its consequences. He's a solopreneur, who has...
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Who Is Worth What
Are CEOs Worth 351 Times the Median Pay? Shared Values, not Share Values
Are CEOs worth 351 times the median pay? American CEOs made 351 times more than a typical worker in 2020,...
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Inequality Immorality Entrepreneurs Subvert the Trend
Inequality Immorality: Greed is seldom a motivation for starting a new enterprise. Of course, founders can be selfish, but in...
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Self-Aware Startup Teams Johari Window Helps Founders Develop Greater Self-Awareness
Self-Aware Startup Teams: The creation and development of a winning team depends on the founder's leadership. The Johari Window is...
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Staffing a Startup How to Make the Best Decisions on Hiring and Lead the Venture Where You Want it to Go
Staffing a Startup: What staff does a startup need? The data does not show that solo founders do any worse...
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Sweat Equity Value is in the Eye of the Beholder—the Seller or the Buyer
Sweat Equity: You have heard the term 'sweat equity'. It is the opposite of 'financial equity'. Many entrepreneurs pride themselves...
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