Entrepreneurship Tips — Operations

Sure, as long as they own 100% of the stock, they can do pretty much anything they want, within tax laws of course. They can pay themselves any salary, issue dividends, make a loan to themselves, etc.  However, the minute one other person owns one single share of stock, this changes dramatically. Now they have what is called “A fiduciary duty” to the other shareholder(s) to do only things that are in the best interest of the company. This has a very high legal standard called “Utmost good faith”. And if you violate this principle, then you can be sued...

  The clash at Twitter is a master class in management styles and a case study in what works and does not work, as well as radical organizational change. As Elon Musk's hard driving style is injected into Twitter's Millennial/woke/snowflake culture, explosive results must be expected. The two extremes in style and the rush to convert one culture into the other has created a circus to watch that has many lessons for all, including Elon. Elon's Asperger's Syndrome prevents him from understanding the needs of the people in the transition - though clearly many cannot make this transition too. Here...

Absolutely. That is called a “niche” and often is the intersection of a vertical market and application/problem. And even smaller is okay and sometimes an advantage in the beginning. Of course, you also need a vision and steps into larger markets. Generally, $1 billion minimum if you seek institutional capital, as they only invest in companies that can reach $100M in sales after 5–6 years. Even if your price point is $250 that’s a $12.5M market opportunity. Which may be enough to validate your product, tune it, prove your value proposition, price point, marketing, and sales economics to raise funding...

There are too many to list individually, but most come from having someone with experience. People often confuse smart with experienced and think they can do anything new well. Science and logic says this is not possible with anything complex. Few things are as complex as entrepreneurship. Hardly anyone would read a book on flying and hop in a plane alone to fly it. Or try to climb Mount Everest alone. But everyone thinks they can build a new business for some strange reason. As a result, we have an 85% failure rate of new businesses. Ones with coaches and...

I would not say they are “In vogue” at all. They have always been a fundamental building block of good management. Recently the term OKRs has become more common because it has been used and promoted by some VCs, Google, Intel and other successful companies. However, OKR is almost identical to Management By Objective (MBO) that was created in the 1960s by Peter Drucker, The Father of Management. This is a classic management principle that any professional manager should understand, which most business schools fail to teach well. It is the “Blocking and tackling” of management that cannot be ignored. Sometimes...