6 Key Attributes of a Winning Business Culture

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (4 hours, 56 min ago) Marketing , Recruiting , Productivity

I’m seeing a renewed appreciation of culture and values in business these days. Maybe it’s just another example of nature abhorring a vacuum, but I prefer to think it’s a natural evolution of the pervasive social networking communities, where people relate to and expect to interact with businesses and products they like. They drive the market, rather than the other way around. Your values as you create a startup are the key to creating an enviable culture that attracts more customers, according to Ann Rhoades, in her book “Built on Values.” She would assert, and I agree ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

You Can’t Be the Victim as an Entrepreneur

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 19 2012)

People with a victim mentality should never be entrepreneurs. We all know the role of starting and running a business is unpredictable, and has a high risk of failure. For people with a victim mentality, this fear of failure alone will almost certainly make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m sure you all know someone who is the perennial victim. The problem is that most of these people aren’t likely to accept your assessment, so it’s hard to help them. They don’t see themselves as others see them, and many simply refuse to accept the reality of ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

7 Ways to Gauge Your Commitment to Your Startup

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 18 2012) Productivity

We’ve all heard the old joke “In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.” This quote epitomizes the true essence of commitment. We all know at least one self-professed entrepreneur who claims to committed, but seems to treat it like a part-time hobby, won’t put any personal skin in the game, and is quick to give up when things are tough. There are no middle roads to real commitment, and if you are not ready to fully commit to all the rigors of a startup, you are better off sticking with your current ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

Keep a Grand Vision but Execute With a Laser Focus

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 17 2012) Marketing , Productivity

It’s great to dream big, but your startup needs a laser focus in the beginning to get market and investor attention. Google did it with search engines, Apple did it with a personal computer, and even Wal-Mart did it through low prices. A business plan I saw a while back to combine all the good features of several popular social networks on one site does not do it. Trying to do everything at once probably means that none of the items will be done well. Plus it’s almost impossible to craft a message that will make your offering ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Apple   Marty Zwilling   Wal-Mart

Know the Right Resources for Your Startup Stage

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 16 2012) Funding , Marketing , Productivity

Some entrepreneurs start polling venture capitalists for that multi-million dollar investment before they even have a business plan. That’s like trying to sell part of something to a stranger for big money when you haven’t fully defined it yet. It won’t work, it costs time and money, and hurts your credibility for when you need them later. Every entrepreneur needs help and support along the way, from developing the initial idea, to selling off the successful business (exit strategy). The challenge is finding and using qualified affordable support organizations for each stage. Don’t waste your resources ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

Great Businesses Evolve Innovation to a Revolution

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 15 2012) Productivity

Great businesses these days start with innovation, and then take it up a few notches to make it a revolution. An example is Google, who turned a new search technology into a tool that most of us couldn’t live without. As an entrepreneur, how do you know if you have the potential to innovate, and what are the steps to get from innovation to revolution? While digging into this subject, I came across a recent book by Patrick J. Howie, called “The Evolution of Revolutions,” which makes the points that resonate with my experience. He starts with a discussion ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Google   Marty Zwilling

Test Your Business Model Against These 10 Elements

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 14 2012) Marketing , Productivity

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. There are no “overrides” – for example, businesses don’t thrive just because they offer the latest technology, or because everyone wants to be “green, or because their goal is to reduce world hunger. I expect that should seem intuitive to all entrepreneurs, but every investor I know has many stories about startup funding requests with major business model elements missing. The most common failures are solutions looking for a problem ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling   Elizabeth Edwards

Successful Startups Often Come With a High Price

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 13 2012) Marketing , Productivity

Most entrepreneurs expect to face the “normal” challenges of starting a business, which include finding the right opportunity, building and executing a winning plan, and financing their venture. But many forget the pitfalls associated with traditional business jobs which can apply even to the smartest and most dedicated people running their own business. Often these facets of entrepreneurship don’t rear their ugly head until well down the road. Yet before you start, you should think about what the impact might be on your psyche, and how to neutralize these challenges in your own plan. I’ll summarize them here ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Kawasaki   Bill Gates   Marty Zwilling

Smart Entrepreneurs Plan Multiple Rollout Iterations

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 12 2012) Funding

The traditional mode of starting a company is to plan a serial process, where you complete only once all the steps, leading to the “big bang” launch of the company. I strongly recommend a dramatic departure from this model, called “planned iteration,” where you assume you won’t get it right the first time. This idea was well articulated by Paul Graham in an old essay, called “Startups in 13 Sentences” in which he talked about “making a few people really happy rather than making a lot of people semi-happy.” One of his key points is that “launching teaches you ...

(Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Paul Graham   Google   Marty Zwilling

10 Tips on the Value of Collaboration in Startups

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 11 2012)

Any entrepreneur with a vision can postulate a new business, but it takes a collaboration of many people to make it a success. Today the complexity of forces required for success include multi-disciplinary skills, competencies, and experiences in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Entrepreneurs who embrace the “lone wolf” approach usually live to regret it. I just finished a new book, “The Collaboration Imperative,” by Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, which makes the case very well for why collaboration matters in every business, as well as startups. Every entrepreneur should heed the following lessons ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

The Best Entrepreneurs Are Undaunted by Failure

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 10 2012)

If you haven’t had a failure, you aren’t pushing the limits. If you are really an entrepreneur, you are a risk taker and less cautious by nature, so failures should be expected. Wear you startup failure as a badge of courage. Don’t go after failure, but embrace it when it does happen and grow from it. People who are afraid of failing should not become entrepreneurs. They can't overcome the psychological fears of making a mistake, and are afraid of losing money. They are better off keeping their day job. Successful entrepreneurs, on the other hand ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Apple   Thomas Edison   Steve Jobs

How to Show Your Customers a Little Extra Love

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 8 2012) Marketing , Productivity

I deal often with early-stage startups, and many of these don’t have any customers yet (but wish they did), so it’s not surprising they still don’t think of customers as their friends. More disturbingly, others do have customers, but the customer service program consists of an informal focus on “problems,” rather than a proactive effort to establish a positive relationship with friends. The right time to put a formal customer service program in place, with measurements, is before the first sale of your product or service to a customer. You can’t manage what you don’t ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

6 Reasons Why Startup Prototypes Attract Investors

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 7 2012) Marketing , Productivity

It’s a long way from an entrepreneur’s “idea” to a working product with a real market and paying customers. A necessary intermediate step for proof of concept, credibility with potential investors, and communication with your team, is a working prototype. Building a prototype should be an early and high priority task for every startup. A prototype doesn’t need to look great, or be built to scale, but it better accurately translate your vision into something real and tangible. For less tangible p (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

How to Succeed in Living the Entrepreneur Lifestyle

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 6 2012) Marketing , Productivity

As we recover from some tough economic times, more and more people seem to be turning to entrepreneurship as an alternative to traditional employment. I applaud this trend, but caution all of you thinking this direction to approach entrepreneurship with your eyes wide open. It is not for everyone, as the entrepreneur’s path is fraught with challenges. Many experts have tried to clearly lay out the criteria for success in a way that allows you to judge your own situation and your own temperament, and make a rational decision before starting down this path. One of the best summaries ...

(Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Harvard   Marty Zwilling   Bill Murphy

Startup Investors Bet on the Jockey, Not the Horse

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 5 2012) Productivity

In the beginning all businesses are just people playing out an idea. It’s never the other way around – there is no idea so big that it doesn’t need people to make it succeed. Investors know this, hence the saying “Bet on the jockey (founder), not the horse (idea).” A great jockey is a great role model. Like it or not, everyone looks to the entrepreneur as the jockey role model in a new business. Typically this energizes new startup founders, but some struggle trying to live up to their own, as well as everyone else’s expectations. In ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

6 Tips to Max Your Business Problem Solving Skills

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 4 2012) Productivity

If you can’t solve problems and enjoy it, you won’t make it as an entrepreneur. By definition, an entrepreneur is the first to undertake a given business, and firsts never happen without problems and people frustrations. The toughest problems are people problems, like personnel issues, but there are tough operational problems as well, such as vendor delays. The real entrepreneurs I know are good at overcoming both people problems and business obstacles, and get satisfaction from the challenge. Some people think this is a talent that you must be born with, but experts disagree. You can definitely train ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

Inventor-Entrepreneur Pairs are Ideal for a Startup

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 3 2012) Marketing , Productivity

In my experience, inventors aren’t interested or aren’t very good at building a business, and entrepreneurs aren’t usually good scientists. These people need to find each other, and can jointly make a great team for a new startup. Historically, it’s also not often that a good inventor was also a good entrepreneur. Some now argue that even our entrepreneur heroes, like Thomas Edison, really cheated on the invention side. Only a few great entrepreneurs of recent times, like the young Bill Gates, seem to have elements of both sides. Even he had some great help from ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Steve Ballmer   Bill Gates   Thomas Edison

Startup Founders Need to Build a Dream Team

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 2 2012) Recruiting , Productivity

If you are a young startup founder, how do you find that CEO or other executive for your “dream team” to close on funding and kick start your company? It makes logical sense to scour the job boards, engage an executive recruiter, or scan the networking sites like LinkedIn for a good array of candidates, and then interview the ones with the best resumes. If that’s as far as you go, you haven’t done the whole job. In reality, none of these alternatives is as effective as face-to-face networking. As I’ve said before, there is no substitute ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling   Peter Drucker

7 Success Maxims from Savvy Business Leaders

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (May 1 2012) Marketing , Productivity

Even though I have seen many business leaders succeed, and many that failed, I still struggle with what really makes the difference. It seems like some CEOs are just more tuned in to the market realities, customer dynamics, people interactions, and are better leaders. But what does that really mean? A while back I found some great business leadership insights in “The Secrets of Tuned In Leaders”, by Craig Stull, Phil Myers & David Meerman Scott. They did a series of interviews with CEOs to understand how technology companies create success, and why most fail. They found many similarities between the ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   David Meerman Scott   Marty Zwilling   Craig Stull

Most Entrepreneurs Need to be Inspired to Perspire

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Apr 29 2012) Marketing

I’m fully convinced that both inspiration and perspiration are always required in a startup. Yet many people seem to be stuck on one end or other of this equation – all perspiration with no dream, or all inspiration with no reality. Success is the right balance of both for fun and profit. Aspiring entrepreneurs ask me why their great idea hasn’t sold; they talk about it endlessly, and they expect others to do the development, finance, and marketing work for them. Those at the other extreme don’t look up from the grindstone long enough to notice whether all ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

Entrepreneurs Need to Have Fun to Be More Innovative

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Apr 28 2012) Productivity

I’m convinced that people who have fun at work are more innovative, as well as happier. I don’t have any big scientific studies to prove this, but in my considerable business experience, I haven’t seen many successes come out of a group of fearful pessimists or unhappy people. As I was looking through the literature, I did find evidence that many strong business leaders, like John D. Rockefeller, knew how to laugh at themselves. Humble leaders with this trait seem to create cultures that don't take themselves too seriously; cultures willing to take risks; cultures capable ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling   John D. Rockefeller

9 Attributes of the Best Entrepreneurial Leaders

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Apr 27 2012) Productivity

Creating and building a business is not a one-man show. It requires a team effort, or at least the ability to build trust and confidence among key players, and effectively communicate with partners, team members, investors, vendors, and customers. These actions are the hallmark of an effective leader. Behind the actions are a set of principles and characteristics that entrepreneurial leaders, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, seem to have in common. Look for these and nurture them in your own context to improve the odds of success for your own startup: Clarity of vision and expectations. You must be ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Bill Gates   Steve Jobs   Marty Zwilling

Define Startup Social Media Goals and Metrics Early

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Apr 26 2012) Marketing , Productivity

If you are an entrepreneur these days, or trying to grow an existing business, everyone is telling you that you need to use social media. There are many ‘experts’ out there telling you how to do it, or even offering their services. But very few are talking about how to measure your results, and the right metrics for optimizing your marketing environment. Jim Sterne, who has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing, and customer service, tackled this complex world of social media metrics in his book titled "Social Media Metrics." He has one of the first books on this ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

Entrepreneur Startup Share Depends on Contribution

Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Apr 23 2012) Funding

One of the first tough decisions that startup founders have to make is how to allocate or split the equity among co-founders. The easy answer of splitting it equally among all co-founders, since there is minimal value at that point, is usually the worst possible answer, and often results in a later startup failure due to an obvious inequity. Another common “failure to start” situation I see is one where the “idea person” insists that the idea is 90% of the value (and 90% of the equity). In the real world, the "idea" is a very small part of the ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling