Entrepreneurship Tips

Consultants And Getting The Most Value Added As a CEO I struggled long and hard over any decision to use a consultant. There are many issues that need to be managed by the client to keep a consultant from going overboard on time and costs. Too many need to long to get up to speed on your business (on your dime), cost too much, and can not provide tangible results on a limited project basis. Too many are unproductive and do things in ten hours that I know I could have done in 2-3 hours, as paying by the hour...

From www.Joelonsoftware.com   Many software companies these days are built using some form of venture capital. But the VC industry has been hurting lately. A lot of investments in dot-coms turned out to be spectacular flame outs. As a result, VCs are becoming ever more selective about where to put their money. To get funded these days, it's not enough to be a pet shop on the web. Nope! You have to be a pet shop on the web with 802.11b wireless hotspots, or your business plan is going right in the dumpster. The formerly secretive world of VC has become...

What gets most early-stage companies in trouble is the areas that they just don't understand, that they don't know enough about.  In other words, the biggest problem is that they don't know what they don't know.  Nearly every failed company will say they ran out of cash, couldn't raise enough capital, or just did not get the sales they expected quickly enough. But these situations are generally the effect, not the cause. Generally speaking,  other problems that the company or entrepreneur does not understand very well are usually the root cause. This situation is actually far more dangerous than just...

Note: This article was written in 2004 and has been updated, though the evolution of the market has continued traditional expectations in 2013 still seem to have faded. The financing landscape today has changed radically. Everything you learned in the last 5 years is obsolete. We are back to looking like the early 1990s again as everyone has "moved up the food chain" one to two levels. True Series A financings with money designed to develop the product are very rare and most first institutional investments are in companies with proven "traction", this means lots of sales completed. In the...

You can't be all things to all people Ever notice how that last 10% of almost any job takes half the time or more? This is a simple fact of life in most tasks because the more detail you try to finish the further you get up that exponential cost/time curve to perfection. Even painting your house perfectly is an unachievable and ridiculously expensive goal. In fact, an excellent job will cost twice as much as a very good job, and that will cost twice as much as a "good" job, which will cost twice as much as an OK...