Blog – Page 4 – Helge Seetzen

Entrepreneurship

Perspective on Failure

A few weeks ago towards the end of an engineer’s interview she asked me a very interesting question, “Have you ever failed at anything?” That really got me to thinking. Looking back, if I were to describe my life I would say that I have been extremely fortunate. I...

April 3, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship

5 Rules for Cofounder Heaven

Finding a good cofounder is a key ingredient of a successful startup. Having had the opportunity to work with a variety of co-founders over the years, and now pairing up with individual co-founders for TandemLaunch portfolio investments, I have developed a couple rules of thumb for what to look...

March 27, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship , Tech Entrepreneurship

Career Advancement in a Startup Environment

Startups are an environment full of both opportunities and challenges for career advancement. The opportunities usually come in two distinct stages: founding and scaling. During the founding stage anybody can take any title and that’s often precisely what founders do. I have previously written about how this is generally...

March 14, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship , Tech Entrepreneurship

Ownership versus Leadership

Any organization should be continuously on the look-out for talented people who are capable of taking on leadership roles. In this context you hear the word ‘ownership’ a lot, in reference to ‘owning’ a function, project, or deliverable. The words are often used interchangeably but, I believe, have very...

February 14, 2012July 6, 2017

Entrepreneurship

Don’t Take your Foot off the Gas Pedal

This is a cautionary tale from my very first startup, SunnyBrook Technologies. The company was about 2 years old when we happily found ourselves in serious acquisition discussions with a European company. We were at a very advanced stage of the deal, with all of the key deal terms...

January 31, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship

How can a Startup sell its Products and Services to a Fortune 500 Company?

Are you a startup entrepreneur, have a great product, and want to sell it to the ‘big boys’? Selling to a Fortune 500 company is obviously not a walk in the park, but having one or more of them as your customers could be very rewarding and key to...

January 24, 2012July 5, 2017

Startups & Economic Development

A Sustainable Startup Model for Canada

At the end of my last post on the gaps in the R,D,E chain, I talked a bit about why people with the development skill set are attractive to large companies, but ultimately don’t fit in with these companies’ emphasis on engineering (e.g. rigour, discipline, process). Startups are by...

January 17, 2012July 6, 2017

IP & Tech Transfer

Gaps in the Research, Development, and Engineering Chain

I talk a lot about bridging the ‘technology transfer gap’, but there is more than one place where technologies fall to their doom in the development of a new product. When you define each stage in the process (Research, Development and Engineering) you start to see that there are...

January 10, 2012July 5, 2017

Entrepreneurship , People

How to Spot Untrustworthy Leaders

In a recent post on startup ethics, I emphasized the fact that employee equity is an investment like any other, and it is unethical for insiders (CEOs, select investors, etc.) to structure deals in order to screw employees out of their equity shares. I also hypothesised that character traits...

December 16, 2011July 7, 2017

Entrepreneurship

The Worst Enemy of Student Entrepreneurship

I advocate a lot for student entrepreneurship because I think it is a unique way to have a real world impact and learn some really valuable skills before you are in full on career mode. I have explored in other posts some of the strategies for being a student...

December 13, 2011July 7, 2017