Entrepreneurship

If you want to be successful, you have to harness the talent. The top private equity firms have a genius for hiring superior talent. All organizations need great people, but PE measures talent with one test only: performance. It’s not that private equity firms are heartless. Rather, their three- to five-year time horizon doesn’t allow […]

One study found that people were willing to pay about 21% more for a product when they were told it was crowdfunded.

This simple question can reframe how you sell yourself — and selling yourself is the only way to be successful in today’s economy.

Nine problems that face start-ups who are trying to scale.

Startups typically operate with the mentality that growth and profit come first, higher calling comes second. This strategy, however, is misguided. Increasingly,...

In this article, Bob Zider, president of the Beta Group, a California-based firm that invests in commercializing new technologies, presents an analysis...

What would you do if you only had $5 in startup funding?

I’ve just been rereading Daniel Pink’s famous 1997 Fast Company article on “Free Agent Nation.” It has withstood the test of time pretty danged well. In 1997, Pink had recently left a job as Vice President Al Gore’s speechwriter to strike out on his own, and discovered (or decided, if you prefer) that he was […]

According to a study of German firms.

One of the most enjoyable parts of writing my blog is when I have the opportunity to interview leaders with great experiences and wisdom to share. Recently...

Times change and markets transform themselves overnight. The half-life of common wisdom is shorter than ever. But top private equity firms have distilled a set of institutional habits that boost the likelihood of their success. What’s critical to this success? Attitude. PE leaders take pains to foster a “results-oriented mind-set”. In short, that means creating […]

It’s time to stop treating the situation as a short-term crisis.

Four ways to push an idea through resistance.

Five things to know.

You don’t have to be Amazon to compete on technology.

As a venture capitalist, I am often asked for my views on why some entrepreneurs succeed and others fail. Obviously, there are no cut-and-dried answers to that question. Still, a few general observations about how I evaluate new businesses should shed some light on what I think it takes to make an entrepreneurial venture thrive […]

Be global from the beginning.

Chicanery is common in the start-up world: With so much at stake, founders are apt to exaggerate, obfuscate, and otherwise stretch the truth when courting...

Does high-quality venture financing increase the success of funded ventures? My co-authors, Josh Lerner of HBS and Antoinette Schoar of MIT, and I define...

Entrepreneurship is more celebrated, studied, and desirable than ever. Business school students flock to courses on entrepreneurship. Managers, fearful of losing their step on the corporate ladder, yearn to step off on their own. Policymakers pin their hopes for job creation and economic growth on start-ups rather than on the once-preeminent corporate giants. Belief in […]