Entrepreneurship Tips — Business Tips

The lack of a good business design process is the number one reason why most businesses fail today.  Almost everything else, like poor market, running out of capital, unexpected risks and poor sales, is just a symptom of this root problem.   Defining "Business Design"  For purposes of this discussion, let us consider the inner concentric circle of the vision pie below as the definition of a business design.  Therefore:   DEFINITION: A Business Design - The sum of the complete strategies for each of the business disciplines required to deliver a product or service to the market. We can assume the tactics...

The lack of a good business design process is the number one reason why most businesses fail today.  Almost everything else, like poor market, running out of capital, unexpected risks and poor sales, is just a symptom of this root problem.   Why Business Design Must ALWAYS Be The #1 Priority of Any New Venture?  Designing a business is more art than science because it is something that takes lots and lots of real-world experience.  Personally, I do not think you can learn it at any university, or by any amount of study, until after you have spent many years working in...

When The Liabilities Exceed theBenefits of Being a Director By Peter Cohen In the last week, some corporate directors have written checks out of their personal accounts to settle suits against the companies on whose boards they served.  Earlier this week, 10 former WorldCom directors paid a total of $54 million -- $18 million from their own pockets, representing 20% of their net worth.  Today announced that 18 Enron directors agreed to pay $168 million, 10 of them paid $13 million from their own pockets, to settle their portions of securities class action suits.  These events probably mark the beginning...

 Reprinted from the Red Herring: https://www.redherring.com I don't republish a lot of content from other people, but this article is just too good not to pass on to my followers.  It's a great checklist to hold up against your company no matter where you are today, big or small.  So, I suggest you ask yourself these 16 questions, and even have your management team print this entire article out and check off the ones they think your company may be in danger of committing.    Identifying just one of these deadly problems could save your company, or make or save you millions....

Venture capitalists are not known for their humility, so take note of the following confession: Venture capitalists are chickens. Compared to entrepreneurs, they're spectators in the great game of small business hardball. They would no sooner personally guarantee a corporate bank loan than they would jump off the cliffs of Acapulco. Contrary to popular opinion, however, they are not totally worthless - they work long hours, sift through more garbage than a trash collector, and have to get used to disappointing 99 entrepreneurs for everyone they please. They are veteran roller coaster riders, but never get used to those big...