Entrepreneurship Tips — Business Tips

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...

A Perfect Metaphor For A Startup I use many airplane and military metaphors, not because I was ever in the military, though I am a pilot, but because there are so many special-purpose planes that can be used to show an exact point or purpose just like a market niche. One of the best models I have seen on how to run a start-up was the development of the SR-71 spy plane by Lockheed’s skunkworks. The SR-71 spy plane was so far ahead of its time, that 30 years after its initial design and development, it was still the fastest plane on...

Strategic Planning - Not Just For Fortune 2000 Companies Generally, if you have more than about a dozen people in your company, you need to have an annual strategic planning process.  With a small management team of three or four people, it is not very difficult, and will likely go quickly because you discuss these things daily.  The trick is to look at the longer-term (at least a year out, preferably three years) in the context of a 3 to 5 year vision for the company.  As the company gets bigger the time invested will get bigger too, but either...