Archives

Startup Citizenship—Enterprise & Common Good: New business creation happens within society and the startup interacts with all stakeholders, whether intentionally or unintentionally. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 that also cooperate for [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Purpose Driven ‘Teco-preneur’: A ‘teco-preneur’ is how I describe technically/scientifically knowledgeable entrepreneurs, who see the need for new ventures for creative [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

Vision Statement: My former home city, Georgetown in Texas, is one of the first US cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants with 100% renewable energy supply—provided by its own power municipal [...]

Expansion or Extension: Management ‘specialists’ talk about Stretch Goals, or even Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, or BHAGs. Venture capitalists, with whom you are probably not [...]

Reducing Risk to Startup Safely: Strategy is tough for entrepreneurs when they love their product so. They just want to get on with it, producing and selling what they’ve got. Let’s [...]

Value Proposition summarizes the reason to buy a product/service, convincing a prospective customer that it will add more value or better solve a problem than the competition. Defining your value [...]

SWOT Analysis: the initials stand for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and provides a simple, but effective means of considering potential decisions before you implement them. [...]

Strategy Map: This is one of the more complex tools I offer, but nonetheless effective. If well done, it can be a good means of communication with your colleagues inside the company, as well as [...]

SOAR Analysis much resembles a SWOT Analysis. A SOAR Analysis is a tool to improve the strategic planning process and is best done in a group setting. I have a pet theme in the strategic thinking [...]

Risk Mitigation Tools: Entrepreneurs that survive tend to be very good at risk mitigation, or considering the downside risks of their actions. Ignorant people tend to describe entrepreneurs as [...]

McKinsey 7-S Framework was the outcome of much earlier work, but was crystallized by Bob Waterman and Tom Peters in the 1980s, when they were both McKinsey consultants. An enduringly useful tool [...]

Marketing Strategy Grid: A marketing strategy integrates an organization’s marketing goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole. I developed this Marketing [...]

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that will measure outcomes against strategies set at the level of the whole venture, a function of it, and even an individual department. You can [...]

Goal Tracking Tool: Here is a very simple goal tracking tool I devised. You can copy or adapt it for your own use. You can print it or, better, keep an electronic version on your desktop so you [...]

Force Field Analysis: Kurt Lewin created a powerful strategic tool used to understand what’s needed for change in both business and personal environments. I have used it many times in both [...]

Eisenhower Method: the method enables you to organize tasks in order to figure out priorities. General Eisenhower is quoted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is [...]

Customer Profiling: How do you work out who your customers are? Are the important defining characteristics geography, lifestyle, demographics–or what? Take the time to answer your own questions. [...]

Critical Success Factors: You want to succeed, obviously, but as I remember it, the determination of what things are the most critical to that success is far from easy. Among critical success [...]

Critical Path Analysis is an algorithm for scheduling a set of project activities. You will not find the Critical Path Analysis methodology here (!), since there are so many ways to tackle the [...]

Business Plan Mistakes: If you have never attempted to write a business plan before, beware! The territory is full of traps and you want to do your best to avoid them. If you are reading this [...]

Business Plan Outline: This is a business plan outline of a business plan that is less than 20 pages, plus appendices. Naturally you are going to make it specific to your situation. You will [...]

Business Model Planner: Here is a tool to help you create an effective business model (the way in which revenue will be produced), covering all the critical bases. As you think critically about [...]

The Business Model Canvas is now perhaps the most widely used tool to help entrepreneurs and managers both in the commercial and nonprofit world—to describe, design, challenge, and pivot business [...]