Entrepreneurship is creating and building something of value from practically nothing. It is the process of creating or seizing an opportunity and pursuing it regardless of the resources currently controlled. Entrepreneurship involves the perception, creation, and distribution of value and benefits to individuals, groups, organizations and society. It is very rarely a get-rich-quick proposition; it is rather one of building long-term value and durable cash flow streams - adapted from Jeffry Timmons, New Venture Creation.
A Startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty - Eric Reis, The Lean Startup.
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Startup Owl is the website of Venture Founders LLC. Many free resources are available on the site. Make a visit and help yourself!
Venture Founders mentors startup individuals and teams, clarifying value propositions and business models to get revenue flowing quickly and sustainably.
Managing Director, Will Keyser, is a veteran entrepreneur and an MBA teacher of entrepreneurship and strategy at Marlboro College.
If you'd like feedback on your startup elevator pitch, for free, send it to me: will@startupowl.com.
On the other hand, if you'd like feedback on your Business Plan, I can do that within 7 days for $495. Write to will@startupowl.com, with your need.
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Alphabet of Entrepreneur Types
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 Here is an alphabet of different entrepreneurial types that I have observed over the years.
Do you recognize yourself or anyone you know? What type are you? Are there misconceptions? Do let me have your reactions.
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Who
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What
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Advantage
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Achilles Heel
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Artisan
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Practical craftsperson
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Produces the goods
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Stick-in-the mud
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Bootsratrapper
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Ingenious non-cash finance
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Keeps equity; saves cash
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Energy diverted
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Copycat
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Me-too business
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Well-traveled road
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Crowded marketplace
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DIWO
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Do It With Others
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Crowdsourcing
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Collaboration takes time
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Edgewalker
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Walks between two worlds
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High ambiguity tolerance
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Falls between 2 stools
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Fireball
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Never a dull moment
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Sets everyone alight
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Slashes and burns
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Guardian
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Supervisor
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Checks up on things
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Creativity block
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Healer
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Attentive & cooperative
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Brings people to the table
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Impatient with routine
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Ideator
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Endless innovator
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Problem-solver
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Dropping balls
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Juggler
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Lots of balls in the air
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Keeps market's interest
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Forgotten when it's over
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Kestrel
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Always hovering for prey
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Very good eye
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Never satisfied
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Lone Ranger
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One man band
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Answers only to self
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Blind to mistakes
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Missionary
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Social entrepreneur
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Does well by doing good
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Dual purpose
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Noodler
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Always aiming to improve
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Keeps on trying
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No finished prototype
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Opera singer
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Hits the high notes
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Practices a lot
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Repetitive perfrmances
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Pivoter
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Can change path quickly
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Very responsive to change
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May lose the plot
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Quartermaster
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All resources marshaled
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Got what it takes
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Never quite sells
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Rainmaker
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Makes it happen
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Great producer of deals
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One-offs, not consistent
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Strategizer
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Vision and clarity
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Knows where to go
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At a loss as to how
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Tap-dancer
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Delights the audience
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Draws the crowd
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When it's done, it's over
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User
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Knows who can do what
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Gets others to do it
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Gets found out
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Vagrant
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Moves on without regret
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Spots chances on the go
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Never reaps reward
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Wonk
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Studies in depth
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Knows it all
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Misses wood for trees
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X-er
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Born 60s-70s
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Natural partner
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Lacks clear direction
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Yeoman
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Stays in own backyard
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Minimizes risk
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Stays small
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Zapper
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Covers the field
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Always on the ball
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Goals are elusive
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© Venture Founders LLC 2014
There is a story behind each one of these types. Telling stories about your startup is one of the most effective ways to persuade your audience that your team can change the world.
First capture the emotions, and then convince the listener with persuasive evidence. You can get help from Telling Startup Stories, the ebook written by the Startup Owl-aka William Keyser. By clicking the link you can order it from Amazon at $4.99.
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Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid
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Daniel Isenberg's New Book
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Daniel Isenberg's book is subtitled, "How
 contrarian entrepreneurs create and capture extraordinary value." What that leaves out is his significant point that the value has to be perceived in the first place. That is what cuts out entrepreneurs from managers. They see what others don't.
Daniel taught at Harvard Business School, one of the biggest entrepreneurship cradles in the world. He also has been around the block as an entrepreneur himself. For me, as an entrepreneur and MBA entrepreneur teacher myself, that is vital. You cannot teach this stuff unless you have also been there, done that and suffered the pain and indignity of setback and failure. The author excels at telling not only his own stories, but recounting those of students and friends around the world. He talks of people probably unknown to you, not the stereotype entrepreneur as hero, like Branson, Brin, and co.
In Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid, he tells their stories in rich and personal terms that take you under their skins and into the highly differing philosophies of what entrepreneurship and value is all about. He also talks about what he considers to be the three myths of the entrepreneur and who he is. I resonate with these thoughts: they have to be innovators (I was not), they have to be experts (I was not) and they must be young (I was 43 when I started my first business). Also he points out that there's no best time to start except now. I started in 1982, a very low ebb in the British economy.
Budding entrepreneurs can learn a lot from this book. It is not a manual of 'how to', but rather a sharing of the experience of what entrepreneurship feels like. It's almost a book about the philosophy of entrepreneurship. Daniel Isenberg shies away from a definition of entrepreneurship, not because he is unsure of his ground, but rather because he is sure that for any one definition, the opposite may also be true. |
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Is Lean Startup, Bootstrapping?
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 Lean StartupLean Startup: the Build-Measure-Learn principle, has a long history, though the term is only now in the entrepreneurial vernacular, thanks initially to Eric Reis. But it goes back through lean manufacturing and before that to Dr Joseph Duran and his concept of managing business process quality. Juran, like Deming, was invited to Japan in 1954 by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers. Now lean startup lays heavy emphasis on customer focus and getting products out quickly to receive feedback, leading to improvement and better user experiences.
Bootstrapping Bootstrapping is what entrepreneurs have done instinctively since ever to conserve resources and find creative ways to fund the startup. Ash Maura, author of Running Lean, says, "Both cover techniques for building low-burn startups by eliminating waste through the maximization of existing resources first before expending effort on the acquisition of new or external resources. While bootstrapping provides a strategic roadmap for achieving sustainability through customer funding (i.e. charging customers), lean startups provide a more tactical approach to achieving those goals through validated learning."
My own experience In my view, while the two processes are not the same thing, they are complementary, since both focus on getting to market as quickly as possible with the minimum viable product, both to generate revenue and to get customer feedback. I started my main business using both principles, before I had heard either term. The biggest funder of the business was the revenue we generated.
My startup opened for business in the 1982 economic slump, giving no personal guarantees to the bank, no second mortgages, no credit card debt, but on day one we had three clients. The learning was rapid, nearly going bust in month three. We kept very close to our users, listening closely and jumping when they needed us to. Of course it was hair-raising, and the moment we signed a sale, we were out seeking the next one.
How Much Money? So often, startups, even ones not needing substantial capital investment or with long development times, assume they need to seek loans and equity investment. This often flows from the knee-jerk creation of business plans with massively over-optimistic five-year forecasts, that are likely to be wrong as of day one.
A combination of lean startup and bootstrapping might rather suggest that the entrepreneur begins with a keen understanding of the value that the customer can expect from the product and a sharply defined business model that will cover all the variables involved in achieving revenue from the value to be delivered. This in turn, can change the question of how much money into a question of how little money is needed?
How Little Money? We often hear how well-funded startups tend to lead to very fast burn rates. Because the money is available, it can lead to plumped up spending, making too many assumption, rather than stopping to think about the potential revenue consequence of the expenditure.
Asking how little money is needed has two important consequences. The first is to contain costs and the second is how it drives a shorter time to market, since only revenue will provide the necessary cash. In that way, bootstrapping will lead to lean entrepreneurship and a focus on customer development.
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