This post started in the sane confines of my office but was completed on a holiday cruise with my family (I am sitting on the sun deck near Barbados right now). Emotional references abound! Happy Holidays! My wife and I recently celebrated our 12th anniversary. Certainly not a massive...
Entrepreneurship
This post started as a discussion on Mark Suster’s blog that became far too long. So I thought I make it an even longer blog post… The nature of my job brings me into frequent contact with entrepreneurs, and the nature of entrepreneurship means that a lot of their...
Paul Graham recently published an essay on founder control of start-ups. How much control over the business should the founders have once the company reaches a certain size? Paul’s answer bucks the “golden rule” of investor control past Series A. But what does control actually mean? As valuations for...
At a recent talk on student entrepreneurship at McGill I received an audience question about the limited alignment between academic and entrepreneurial focus. This hit the nail on the head. Focus makes ventures succeed. Paul Graham goes as far as predicting instant death for companies funded by active graduate...
Frugality has become the watch word in the start-up blogsphere. It is rare to find a blog that doesn’t advocate lean business models, unpaid founders, and generally spending as little as possible. We are told that the new development tools dramatically lower the cost of your first product and...
As promised, here is the first detailed follow-up to the introductory post for the topic of university spin-offs versus conventional start-ups. One of the most common recommendations for entrepreneurs is to focus on customer engagement early in their new venture. In fact, a whole set of new online nomenclature...