This document discusses effective ways for communities to support small businesses through a "feeding" role rather than a leadership role. It argues that small businesses need connections, space, and fair rules rather than top-down programs. Specific feeding strategies include convening events, providing shared work/meeting spaces, clearly communicating regulations, and connecting businesses to media opportunities. The document outlines how to identify when a community may need to take a leadership role, such as when businesses are struggling. It provides scenarios to illustrate how communities can support small businesses and entrepreneurs by feeding existing demand and enabling new opportunities through networking and sharing resources.
Start your Own Thing: Becoming an English-Speaking Female Entrepreneur in Bol...Giacomo 'Peldi' Guilizzoni
The document provides advice and guidance for becoming an English-speaking female entrepreneur in Bologna, Italy. It discusses validating your business idea by solving problems and looking for early customers. It also addresses challenges like exhausting work, finding customers, and balancing business with family responsibilities. Finally, it acknowledges cultural and gender-related issues female entrepreneurs may face, such as lack of role models, investor confidence, and balancing emotion with business decisions.
The document provides advice for starting a small business or startup by finding a niche market, pricing products affordably, using marketing strategies like search engines and mailing lists, outsourcing tasks to virtual assistants, and building the business to eventually sell or run itself with documented processes. It is aimed at developers who want to start their own business but do not want to rely on investors or work long hours like startups in Silicon Valley.
See the video of this here: http://youtu.be/spy6NmD6iPI
Startup life and culture is super sexy and all sorts of founders are appearing in their jeans and t-shirts and boyish/girlish grins on the covers of magazines and newspapers across North America. Seems that millions of dollars of money is being thrown left right and center at anyone with a dream and the gumption to pursue it. There has been no better time to quit your day job and pursue this. It costs next to nothing to build stuff on the web, right?
Only it isn't *exactly* like that and we're only hearing a small portion of the stories. Sure, Tara Hunt would encourage everyone with an awesome idea to pursue their dream, but in this presentation, she lays down what being a startup founder is REALLY like. She also plans to share all the tips and tricks she is learning from (continually) making a whole bunch of mistakes...because nobody is talking about this stuff. By the end of her talk, you'll either hand in your notice and go for it or shelve those dreams forever. Bring it!
The document provides 11 reasons why someone should not do a startup, arguing they will likely fail. It asserts that would-be founders are often wantrepreneurs who lack passion for solving customer problems, are lazy, have unrealistic business plans and ideas without prototypes or customers, cannot sell or market, and would rather watch TV than change the world. The document uses strong language and sarcasm to emphasize these points about traits of founders likely to fail.
What the best startup investors know that you don'tJosh Maher
After a year interviewing the best startup investors all over the world, Josh Maher published a best-selling book Startup Wealth How The Best Angel Investors Make Money In Startups (http://amzn.to/1NUAoz4). While learning what made them tick, Josh found financing innovation as a practice looks truly looks different in the private capital markets than it does within large organizations or public markets. Josh picks apart his findings around what startup investors look for when investing in teams
Start your Own Thing: Becoming an English-Speaking Female Entrepreneur in Bol...Giacomo 'Peldi' Guilizzoni
The document provides advice and guidance for becoming an English-speaking female entrepreneur in Bologna, Italy. It discusses validating your business idea by solving problems and looking for early customers. It also addresses challenges like exhausting work, finding customers, and balancing business with family responsibilities. Finally, it acknowledges cultural and gender-related issues female entrepreneurs may face, such as lack of role models, investor confidence, and balancing emotion with business decisions.
The document provides advice for starting a small business or startup by finding a niche market, pricing products affordably, using marketing strategies like search engines and mailing lists, outsourcing tasks to virtual assistants, and building the business to eventually sell or run itself with documented processes. It is aimed at developers who want to start their own business but do not want to rely on investors or work long hours like startups in Silicon Valley.
See the video of this here: http://youtu.be/spy6NmD6iPI
Startup life and culture is super sexy and all sorts of founders are appearing in their jeans and t-shirts and boyish/girlish grins on the covers of magazines and newspapers across North America. Seems that millions of dollars of money is being thrown left right and center at anyone with a dream and the gumption to pursue it. There has been no better time to quit your day job and pursue this. It costs next to nothing to build stuff on the web, right?
Only it isn't *exactly* like that and we're only hearing a small portion of the stories. Sure, Tara Hunt would encourage everyone with an awesome idea to pursue their dream, but in this presentation, she lays down what being a startup founder is REALLY like. She also plans to share all the tips and tricks she is learning from (continually) making a whole bunch of mistakes...because nobody is talking about this stuff. By the end of her talk, you'll either hand in your notice and go for it or shelve those dreams forever. Bring it!
The document provides 11 reasons why someone should not do a startup, arguing they will likely fail. It asserts that would-be founders are often wantrepreneurs who lack passion for solving customer problems, are lazy, have unrealistic business plans and ideas without prototypes or customers, cannot sell or market, and would rather watch TV than change the world. The document uses strong language and sarcasm to emphasize these points about traits of founders likely to fail.
What the best startup investors know that you don'tJosh Maher
After a year interviewing the best startup investors all over the world, Josh Maher published a best-selling book Startup Wealth How The Best Angel Investors Make Money In Startups (http://amzn.to/1NUAoz4). While learning what made them tick, Josh found financing innovation as a practice looks truly looks different in the private capital markets than it does within large organizations or public markets. Josh picks apart his findings around what startup investors look for when investing in teams
This document provides information about the author, who is a startup founder from Charleston, SC who has worked at Apple and Microsoft. It discusses what a startup is and provides examples of startup ideas. It emphasizes that execution is more important than ideas and outlines reasons both to and not to start a company. The document gives advice on finding co-founders and investors, developing an MVP, and iterating quickly. It stresses focusing first on customers and traction over technology.
Above The Code: Early Stage PR for Palestinian StartupsAlan Weinkrantz
The document provides tips for early stage startups on using public relations (PR) strategies to build their brand narrative and connect with potential customers, partners, investors and media. It emphasizes using storytelling over pitches, treating the startup like a media company that creates and shares content, and developing a body of work to demonstrate expertise to media. The speaker believes narrative is a defensible business strategy and that following some basic PR principles can help startups get media coverage and succeed.
This document discusses the author's experiences with startups. It defines what a startup is and lists four types of risks they face: demand, technology, execution, and financing. It then outlines the author's background and lessons learned over their career in startups. These lessons include the importance of sales, flexibility, customer focus, and smart people. The document evaluates three of the author's startup ideas - TownCommons, Mobile Green, and SMC - based on various risks and issues. It emphasizes that a business should solve a problem and lists influential books and people in the startup space.
Slides from a webinar run by Robert Craven from The Directors Centre for HR professionals. Helping HR to be more business focussed and strategically relevant. Learning from entrepreneurs
This document outlines the key components of a startup ecosystem and provides suggestions on how to develop each component. It identifies 10 core elements: entrepreneurs and leaders, community, talent, terroir, corporate patrons, mentors, services and support, access to capital, spaces and places, and communication platforms. For each element, it provides a brief definition and lists strategies for cultivating and strengthening that aspect of the startup ecosystem. The overall aim is to provide thoughts on how to build a robust local startup community and environment.
Moneyball: A Quantitative Approach to Angel Investing (DC - Sept 2012)Paul Singh
The document discusses an approach to early stage startup investing called "Moneyball startups". It advocates for a quantitative portfolio approach using data analysis, diversification across many deals, and smaller initial investments to allow for experimentation and fast failure. This approach aims to provide controlled risk and outsized returns through high deal volume, early exits, and follow-on funding for top performers. The document provides advice on deal terms, avoiding board seats, and being an active investor focused on information asymmetry.
This document provides advice on incremental innovation and making existing things better through small iterative improvements. It suggests copying and improving upon existing innovations 99% of the time and coming up with your own innovative ideas 1% of the time. Specific examples are given of industries like food ordering that could be improved by reducing overhead costs and improving the customer experience through technology. The document advocates for finding businesses that have potential but "suck" and making them better through these kinds of incremental innovations.
Thoughts by an Italian Tech entrepreneur abroad - Lessons Learned - Vincenzo ...Vincenzo Belpiede
Thoughts by an Italian Tech entrepreneur abroad - Lessons Learned - Vincenzo Belpiede - Startup - Silicon Valley - San Francisco - Italy - Technology - Development - Investors - Fundraising
The document discusses the root causes of the global economic meltdown as being greed, stupidity, self-interest, arrogance, and short-sightedness. It argues that too many "artificial jobs" were created in finance that did not contribute real value. It encourages focusing on meaningful contributions rather than superficial or short-term work and advocating for positive change in areas like sustainable business models, new credit systems, efficiency, and problem solving.
Learning from the Book - Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake MastersRajnish Shirsat
The document summarizes key concepts from the book "Zero to One" about creating new companies and products. It discusses the importance of vertical progress through creating new technologies rather than just scaling existing businesses horizontally. It emphasizes focusing on a strong mission and attracting talented employees who are inspired by an important problem being solved. Superior sales and distribution alone can create monopolies even without product differentiation. Technology can empower professionals like lawyers and doctors to do more.
Presentation to the Old Dominion University (ODU) MBA Association, 3/20/13Marty Kaszubowski
The document discusses several key points about entrepreneurship and new venture formation:
1) Entrepreneurship and new ventures are the primary drivers of economic growth, not small or large existing companies. High-growth startups create the most jobs.
2) Starting a new venture can be a rewarding career path that allows one to create something from nothing, take control of their career, and potentially make a big impact.
3) Successful new ventures focus on proving their business model and solutions before attempting large-scale growth ("Nail it, then scale it"). Having the right founding team and understanding customers are also important success factors.
4) While starting a venture involves significant risks and effort
Intro to the Austin Startup Scene - Damon ClinkscalesDamon Clinkscales
Get the lowdown of what's going on in the Austin startup scene. These slides are from the Intro to the Austin Startup Scene meetup at Capital Factory http://bit.ly/welcome2austin .
Josh Baer's version of this presentation can be seen at this link http://bit.ly/intro2austin.
delivered presentation again (and updated the slides) on July 29, 2014.
The document provides advice on how to improve things and businesses that currently "suck" by copying and incrementally innovating on existing ideas and technologies. It argues that most things that currently suck can be easily improved through the use of technology and by following a few innovators. It suggests identifying inefficient existing business models, reducing overhead costs by going online, improving marketing efficiency with digital tools, and incrementally innovating 1% each month to outcompete incumbents.
The document summarizes key lessons learned from the Hustle Con conference in 2015 for non-technical startup founders. It discusses that many presenters had degrees in business, finance or economics and that independent wealth and connections can help with startup success. It provides tips for founders such as getting a technical co-founder, focusing on product identity, building a strong team, pitching to get funding, talking to users, and getting press through SEO. It emphasizes validating concepts with users, making bold choices, and hustling to continue pursuing opportunities.
Rapid Growth, Disruptive Innovation & ExecutionMichael Tan
Eight uncommonly applied common sense building blocks of innovation and execution that successful, disruptive organizations apply that traditional companies do not.
What it takes to be an entrepreneur? Milena Milicevic at Strasbourg Meetings ...Milena Milicevic
This content was presented at the Youth Forum Strasbourg Meetings: Focus Russia. Milena Milićević was one of the lecturers at the conference. You can find more information about the event:
The document describes the process of designing a magazine cover in Photoshop and InDesign. Key steps include:
1. Editing a cover photo in Photoshop to enhance contrast, brightness, and skin tone.
2. Placing the edited photo and masthead font onto an InDesign document, adjusting sizes using tools.
3. Adding additional design elements like issue details, article titles and descriptions, pricing, and logos.
4. Iteratively adjusting layout and design until the final magazine cover is achieved.
This document summarizes a study on the effect of freshwater inflow on mobile epifauna in Rincon Bayou, Texas. Reduced freshwater inflow altered the salinity and water quality of Rincon Bayou and Nueces Bay. Field and lab work was conducted to collect and analyze samples every two weeks from 2010 to 2015. Analysis using principle component analysis showed an inverse relationship between temperature and dissolved oxygen, and identified seasonality as a strong indicator of prevalent species. The study concluded that higher species abundance correlates with lower water temperatures and higher dissolved oxygen, and that seasonality affects freshwater inflow and the types of organisms present.
This document provides information about the author, who is a startup founder from Charleston, SC who has worked at Apple and Microsoft. It discusses what a startup is and provides examples of startup ideas. It emphasizes that execution is more important than ideas and outlines reasons both to and not to start a company. The document gives advice on finding co-founders and investors, developing an MVP, and iterating quickly. It stresses focusing first on customers and traction over technology.
Above The Code: Early Stage PR for Palestinian StartupsAlan Weinkrantz
The document provides tips for early stage startups on using public relations (PR) strategies to build their brand narrative and connect with potential customers, partners, investors and media. It emphasizes using storytelling over pitches, treating the startup like a media company that creates and shares content, and developing a body of work to demonstrate expertise to media. The speaker believes narrative is a defensible business strategy and that following some basic PR principles can help startups get media coverage and succeed.
This document discusses the author's experiences with startups. It defines what a startup is and lists four types of risks they face: demand, technology, execution, and financing. It then outlines the author's background and lessons learned over their career in startups. These lessons include the importance of sales, flexibility, customer focus, and smart people. The document evaluates three of the author's startup ideas - TownCommons, Mobile Green, and SMC - based on various risks and issues. It emphasizes that a business should solve a problem and lists influential books and people in the startup space.
Slides from a webinar run by Robert Craven from The Directors Centre for HR professionals. Helping HR to be more business focussed and strategically relevant. Learning from entrepreneurs
This document outlines the key components of a startup ecosystem and provides suggestions on how to develop each component. It identifies 10 core elements: entrepreneurs and leaders, community, talent, terroir, corporate patrons, mentors, services and support, access to capital, spaces and places, and communication platforms. For each element, it provides a brief definition and lists strategies for cultivating and strengthening that aspect of the startup ecosystem. The overall aim is to provide thoughts on how to build a robust local startup community and environment.
Moneyball: A Quantitative Approach to Angel Investing (DC - Sept 2012)Paul Singh
The document discusses an approach to early stage startup investing called "Moneyball startups". It advocates for a quantitative portfolio approach using data analysis, diversification across many deals, and smaller initial investments to allow for experimentation and fast failure. This approach aims to provide controlled risk and outsized returns through high deal volume, early exits, and follow-on funding for top performers. The document provides advice on deal terms, avoiding board seats, and being an active investor focused on information asymmetry.
This document provides advice on incremental innovation and making existing things better through small iterative improvements. It suggests copying and improving upon existing innovations 99% of the time and coming up with your own innovative ideas 1% of the time. Specific examples are given of industries like food ordering that could be improved by reducing overhead costs and improving the customer experience through technology. The document advocates for finding businesses that have potential but "suck" and making them better through these kinds of incremental innovations.
Thoughts by an Italian Tech entrepreneur abroad - Lessons Learned - Vincenzo ...Vincenzo Belpiede
Thoughts by an Italian Tech entrepreneur abroad - Lessons Learned - Vincenzo Belpiede - Startup - Silicon Valley - San Francisco - Italy - Technology - Development - Investors - Fundraising
The document discusses the root causes of the global economic meltdown as being greed, stupidity, self-interest, arrogance, and short-sightedness. It argues that too many "artificial jobs" were created in finance that did not contribute real value. It encourages focusing on meaningful contributions rather than superficial or short-term work and advocating for positive change in areas like sustainable business models, new credit systems, efficiency, and problem solving.
Learning from the Book - Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake MastersRajnish Shirsat
The document summarizes key concepts from the book "Zero to One" about creating new companies and products. It discusses the importance of vertical progress through creating new technologies rather than just scaling existing businesses horizontally. It emphasizes focusing on a strong mission and attracting talented employees who are inspired by an important problem being solved. Superior sales and distribution alone can create monopolies even without product differentiation. Technology can empower professionals like lawyers and doctors to do more.
Presentation to the Old Dominion University (ODU) MBA Association, 3/20/13Marty Kaszubowski
The document discusses several key points about entrepreneurship and new venture formation:
1) Entrepreneurship and new ventures are the primary drivers of economic growth, not small or large existing companies. High-growth startups create the most jobs.
2) Starting a new venture can be a rewarding career path that allows one to create something from nothing, take control of their career, and potentially make a big impact.
3) Successful new ventures focus on proving their business model and solutions before attempting large-scale growth ("Nail it, then scale it"). Having the right founding team and understanding customers are also important success factors.
4) While starting a venture involves significant risks and effort
Intro to the Austin Startup Scene - Damon ClinkscalesDamon Clinkscales
Get the lowdown of what's going on in the Austin startup scene. These slides are from the Intro to the Austin Startup Scene meetup at Capital Factory http://bit.ly/welcome2austin .
Josh Baer's version of this presentation can be seen at this link http://bit.ly/intro2austin.
delivered presentation again (and updated the slides) on July 29, 2014.
The document provides advice on how to improve things and businesses that currently "suck" by copying and incrementally innovating on existing ideas and technologies. It argues that most things that currently suck can be easily improved through the use of technology and by following a few innovators. It suggests identifying inefficient existing business models, reducing overhead costs by going online, improving marketing efficiency with digital tools, and incrementally innovating 1% each month to outcompete incumbents.
The document summarizes key lessons learned from the Hustle Con conference in 2015 for non-technical startup founders. It discusses that many presenters had degrees in business, finance or economics and that independent wealth and connections can help with startup success. It provides tips for founders such as getting a technical co-founder, focusing on product identity, building a strong team, pitching to get funding, talking to users, and getting press through SEO. It emphasizes validating concepts with users, making bold choices, and hustling to continue pursuing opportunities.
Rapid Growth, Disruptive Innovation & ExecutionMichael Tan
Eight uncommonly applied common sense building blocks of innovation and execution that successful, disruptive organizations apply that traditional companies do not.
What it takes to be an entrepreneur? Milena Milicevic at Strasbourg Meetings ...Milena Milicevic
This content was presented at the Youth Forum Strasbourg Meetings: Focus Russia. Milena Milićević was one of the lecturers at the conference. You can find more information about the event:
The document describes the process of designing a magazine cover in Photoshop and InDesign. Key steps include:
1. Editing a cover photo in Photoshop to enhance contrast, brightness, and skin tone.
2. Placing the edited photo and masthead font onto an InDesign document, adjusting sizes using tools.
3. Adding additional design elements like issue details, article titles and descriptions, pricing, and logos.
4. Iteratively adjusting layout and design until the final magazine cover is achieved.
This document summarizes a study on the effect of freshwater inflow on mobile epifauna in Rincon Bayou, Texas. Reduced freshwater inflow altered the salinity and water quality of Rincon Bayou and Nueces Bay. Field and lab work was conducted to collect and analyze samples every two weeks from 2010 to 2015. Analysis using principle component analysis showed an inverse relationship between temperature and dissolved oxygen, and identified seasonality as a strong indicator of prevalent species. The study concluded that higher species abundance correlates with lower water temperatures and higher dissolved oxygen, and that seasonality affects freshwater inflow and the types of organisms present.
Political parties play an important role in a democratic country by competing in elections to win power and form the government. They function by preparing candidate lists, publishing manifestos, advertising their policies, and organizing support from the people to express the public will and link the government to citizens. The winning party in elections then rules the state.
Este documento presenta una guía para estudiantes sobre estrategias de mejoramiento de vida. Incluye una discusión sobre la importancia de tener objetivos y metas a corto, mediano y largo plazo. También presenta un ejercicio llamado "la rueda de la vida" para que los estudiantes evalúen diferentes áreas de su vida como lo mental, social, financiero, físico y profesional. El estudiante luego completa preguntas sobre cada área y registra sus puntajes para analizar qué área necesita más mejora.
Este documento presenta las unidades de estudio de una lección sobre cerezas sin hueso. La lección cubre temas de lectura, vocabulario, gramática, ortografía, escritura y literatura. El vocabulario se centra en los prefijos. La gramática explica los sustantivos, adjetivos y determinantes. La ortografía describe las sílabas tónicas y las categorías de palabras agudas, llanas y esdrújulas. La escritura cubre el uso de conectores. La literatura introduce el concepto de literatura.
This document summarizes a report by Evolution Insights on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the food and grocery industry. It finds that 51% of shoppers would pay more for Fairtrade bananas and that community initiatives like Asda's flood relief donation had the biggest positive impact on brand image. The report uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods like surveys of over 1,000 shoppers to evaluate awareness and perceptions of various CSR programs.
http://www.suva.ch/BEsPm9q – Le module «Casque de cycliste» vous permet d'inciter vos collaborateurs à porter le casque. Les entreprises assurées auprès de la Suva obtiennent un rabais de 20 francs pas casque acheté.
This document discusses the differences between CABG (coronary artery bypass grafting) and PCI (percutaneous coronary intervention) for treating multivessel coronary artery disease. It notes that both procedures are established treatments, but that factors like mortality benefit, quality of life improvements, costs, and long-term effects need to be considered. The concept of "functional angioplasty" and using FFR (fractional flow reserve) to accurately evaluate clinical ischemia in the catheterization lab are introduced as ways to optimize outcomes from PCI. Several studies comparing outcomes of FFR-guided versus angiography-guided PCI are summarized. The document also discusses unfavorable aspects of CABG like invasiveness and long-term graft failure
What Local Governments Can Actually Do to Help Small Businesses July 2014Della Rucker, AICP, CEcD
This slide deck comes from a presentation that I gave on behalf of Lorman Education in July 2014. The session focused on helping government and nonprofit professionals understand some of the issues that create barriers to communication between businesses and administrators, and it examined some concrete ways in which governments and community nonprofits can directly improve their local small business environment.
To learn more about the Wise Economy approach to economic revitalization and local economy growth, check out wiseeconomy.com. The webinar is still available for purchase through Lorman; check out http://www.lorman.com/archive/392921 for options.
Driving Continuous Innovation Every YearJon Mailer
Innovation is not an option in business today. To thrive in an ever-changing world, it must be a philosophy of your company. Learn how you can introduce and drive a culture of innovation in your trade business...every day!
Continuous Innovation to Drive a Better Business Year After YearPROTRADE United
As a business owner, do not underestimate the importance of being creative and injecting innovation into your business. This can come from a new product/service, tweaking something that already exists in your business or looking at internal processes and asking the question “How do we do it better?” During this presentation, Jon will show you how innovative strategies can ensure your business has reliable, steady growth each year.
P3 Ventures is a Latin American company that supports entrepreneurship through initiatives like reviewing over 10,000 startups, supporting 1,000 business ideas which have led to over 500 new companies. They have helped the 25 biggest startups generate over $100 million in sales and attract $20 million in funding. P3 Ventures provides workshops on developing an entrepreneurial mindset and covers topics like effectuation, networks, innovation skills and design thinking.
Building as you go – digital product design for smaller charitiesCharityComms
The document discusses agile product development for smaller charities. It covers defining problems, developing minimum viable products (MVPs), scaling solutions iteratively, and common mistakes like failing to plan for contingencies. The overall message is that agile development allows charities to start small, test solutions, and build upon what works in a flexible manner.
The document provides an introduction to entrepreneurship, including definitions, differences between entrepreneurs and small businesses, characteristics of entrepreneurs, examples of entrepreneurial ideas and businesses, classifications of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial process, and barriers to entrepreneurship. It also shares lessons learned from failed entrepreneurs.
The document discusses reasons why startups fail and provides guidance on building a sustainable business. It outlines two major factors that contribute to startup failure: mindset and process. For mindset, it identifies attitudes like seeking money before value and lack of focus. For process, it emphasizes the importance of clearly defining the business purpose, vision, values and brand identity. It also stresses having the right people, developing a unique and useful product, and establishing a strong business model with a clear target customer and revenue strategy. Finally, it discusses funding options and highlights the "7Cs of credit" banks consider when evaluating loans.
This document provides advice for economic development organizations on how to effectively market and promote their regions to attract new businesses. It recommends focusing on speed, certainty, and simplicity in business attraction efforts. Specifically, it suggests being transparent about hurdles, eliminating delays, bringing stakeholders together quickly, and not isolating real estate professionals to demonstrate speed. To provide certainty, organizations should utilize community influencers to share success stories and minimize political risk. Finally, the document stresses the importance of having a clear onboarding process, consolidated information sources, and marketing sites based on target industries to promote simplicity.
Overview of what it takes to conceive and execute a startup idea; where entrepreneurial ideas come from; dispelling some myths about entrepreneurship; short case studies and examples of different types of startup success.
Slides from a presentation I gave at VC CEO portfolio summit on Unlearning as we scale enterprise software startups focusing on how to think about the "next-level people" and "dance with who brung ya" adages along with thoughts on generalizing the former adage, hiring next-level people, and unlearning in general, specifically with infering false causality for success.
This document provides guidance on raising money from investors. It explains that investors want to see a clear path to a profitable exit within 3-5 years by disrupting an existing market. Early money can come from friends and family, while angel investors may invest $25,000-$50,000 if provided with clear key performance indicators (KPIs) and traction in the form of real users and customers. Professional investors like venture capitalists will invest larger sums but require strong KPIs, contracts, and quarterly results. The document advises starting small with proofs of concept before seeking funding and presents a 10-slide template for pitching to investors focused on company purpose, problem, solution, market opportunity, competition, product, business
The document discusses social enterprises, which aim to generate income through selling goods and services while also having a social mission to reinvest profits. Social enterprises exist on a spectrum between traditional charities and businesses, being more commercial than charities but also having a social purpose beyond profit. Examples are given of well-known social enterprises like The Big Issue and Divine Chocolate. Key steps in starting a social enterprise are identified as defining the problem, outlining a solution, determining revenue streams and resources needed, and assigning tasks to a team. Funding sources for small startups are also listed.
The document discusses experimenting with new forms of journalism using technology and collaboration. It emphasizes that those in the media industry are really in the information business and should embrace innovation. It advocates trying new ideas through a process of failing early and often to learn quickly. Collaboration between different organizations is presented as key if new forms of journalism are to succeed on new platforms.
This document provides 10 things for founders to remember when starting a business. It emphasizes that most startups fail, even for successful entrepreneurs, and stresses the importance of execution. Key points include prototyping ideas quickly, understanding the business model and how the company makes money, leveraging available technologies, having the right team, developing an effective marketing strategy, establishing a solid operations plan, focusing on sales, and creating a thorough financial plan. Overall, the document advises entrepreneurs to test ideas quickly and adapt based on feedback in order to successfully launch a new venture.
This document discusses entrepreneurship and provides guidance for women considering starting their own business. It notes that women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men and often solve workplace issues. Successful entrepreneurs tend to be problem-solvers, independent, and persistence in facing obstacles. However, women face barriers like lack of networks, funding, and childcare. The document provides tips for overcoming barriers, creating a one-page business plan, projecting revenues, and working the business plan. Resources from Ladies Who Launch and other organizations are recommended for support.
Ecommerce opportunities exist for more types of businesses and organizations than traditionally thought. While large retailers like Amazon may come to mind for ecommerce, the document argues that local businesses, nonprofits, manufacturers, restaurants and others can also benefit from ecommerce. For local businesses, ecommerce allows them to reach a global customer base while still serving local customers. Nonprofits can use ecommerce to make donations easier through online forms and payment options. The document provides examples and guidance on how different types of organizations can create and sell digital or physical products online.
Great tips, resources, best practices and strategies for entrepreneurs, start-ups, professionals and small business owners.to plan launch and grow successful businesses.
The document discusses navigating change in the mutual insurance industry. It outlines challenges like a competitive environment colliding with collaborative identity. It suggests stopping to consider issues like what values remain key and how to focus on innovation and talent. It emphasizes the need for an inner shift to embrace change. Finally, it argues leaders must have a clear understanding of challenges, renewed values/vision, an engaged team, and industry support to lead change.
This document provides information on building a successful real estate business, including identifying goals and systems.
It discusses setting a goal to sell 130 homes in the first 6 months to account for a 30% buffer. Front-loading activities in the early months is recommended to write contracts on 85 homes by April. Having systems in place for lead generation, appointments, and negotiations will allow leverage of time and increase quality of life while running a large business.
Knowing your numbers and value proposition is also key. Presenting yourself as different but not better can help obtain the desired 6% commission level. Continuous learning, accountability, and discovery are emphasized for professional and personal growth.
This document is a guide for conducting public meetings that improve the community by crowdsourcing wisdom from attendees. The guide offers tips for public meetings that attendees will find valuable rather than regret attending. It aims to help meetings tap into the collective intelligence of the community through participation and discussion.
This is one of the versions of the talk/workshop about building small business ecosystems in communities that I have done in Spring 2015. The talk focuses on methods for helping small businesses learn and grow and connect to each other to increase the overall health and resilience of a local economy.
These are the slides from my keynote session at RevitalizeWA, held in lovely Bellingham, Washington on May 7, 2015. We talked about economic revitalization, small businesses and why the emerging economy needs old places. You can find the audio of the presentation at soundcloud.com/wiseeconomy.
This presentation was a keynote/training given to the Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority in 2011. It outlines the fundamental paradigm shift that underlies the Wise Economy Approach. And it's gotten more concise since then, thankfully. Phew.
This presentation was given as part of OEDA's Basic Economic Development Training in March, 2014. The text underneath the slide should give you an explanation of what I said on each slide. Note that the text underneath tries to differentiate between what I thought students needed to be aware of in order to succeed on the professional exam for the CEcD certification, and what I thought needed to happen in real life. So it's a little schitzophrenic. Sorry. To learn more about how I actually think this stuff should be done, check out wiseeconomy.com
These slides were part of an Ignite session (6 minutes) that I gave at the International Economic Development Association (IEDC) conference in Irvine, California in February 2014. It was a riff off of a chapter in The Local Economy Revolution: What's Changed and How You Can Help. For more information, including video of this presentation, go to wiseeconomy.com. Learn more about the book at LocalEconomyRevolutionBook.com.
Slides from a keynote given at the Michigan Economic Development Association Conference, August 2014. Uses small objects to demonstrate the "sea change" - type changes outlined in the book, The Local Economy Revolution: What's changed and How You Can Help. Check out wiseeconomy.com and LocalEconomyRevolutionBook.com for more information. Video of speech will be posted eventually
Presentation on issues to examine when trying to select an online public participation platform for a community project. Overviews characteristics of different platforms. For more information check out wiseeconomy.com and onlinepublicengagementemporium.com. Given to NCDD.org
Selecting online public participation tools 08 26 14
SB ecosystem spring 2015
1. Lead or Feed:
What We Can Actually Do To
Help Grow Small Businesses
in Our Community
Della G. Rucker, AICP CEcD
Principal, Wise Economy Workshop
Wiseeconomy.com
LocalEconomyRevolutionbook.com
www.wiseeonomy.com
2. Your Presenter
• All those letters?
• Economic
Revitalization/Public
Engagement
• Building: Communities
that work long term–
– Strong economy
– Resilient economy
– Invested people
www.wiseeonomy.com Barrygott.com
4. We have a problem.
How places work economically has
changed on us.
How we try to help places work better
economically… hasn’t.
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5. We got a couple more problems
The tools we have gotten used to using we designed
for working with a few big businesses.
Now our local economies mostly consist of smaller
businesses.
They ain’t the same.
We need some new tools
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6. How we try to fix local economies
(and often fail)
“We just need a better streetscape!!”
7. How we try to fix local economies
(and often fail)
“We gotta get rid of those vacant buildings!!
(Let’s give them money!)”
8. How we try to fix local economies
(and often fail)
We just gotta sell it better!!
9. Does it look like a nail?
When you try to solve complex local economic
issues with a small set of tools….
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10. The Practical Matters
• More small businesses + less staff and budget = … a
big problem for local governments.
• More demand for transparency (read: everyone can
be their own investigative reporter) = higher risk in
“confidential” plans and deals.
• More economic dependence on small businesses =
more dependence on businesses that are
overextended, not always seeing the whole picture,
and often flying by the seat of their pants.
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11. Therefore, we need to change:
• Small number of intensive interactions to large
number of less intensive “touches”
• Build self-reinforcing connections – networks
• Enable, within reason
• Open up.
• Partner.
• Focus on what we uniquely bring to the table
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12. So What the Heck Do the Really Need?
(Especially if it’s not what we thought they
needed?)
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A Brief Guide to
Understanding an
Entrepreneur’s Brain and
why they aren’t thinking
what you might think.
13. Not all small businesses are the same
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14. The World of a Small Business
• Independence
• Over-capacity
• Speed
• Myopia
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25. What does that sound like?
“Why do I need to follow that regulation/get that
permit/live by your rules?”
“Just get out of my way and let me run my
business.”
“You’re taking too long!”
“That’s what the regulation says.”
“You can’t have an exception.”
“This is the process.”
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26. How does a business community
actually work?
• Brad Feld, Startup
Communities
– Startups need
“Ecosystems”
• We <3 Tech!!
• Boulder is da bomb
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29. More from Feld
– “Government should
always be Feeder, not
Leader.”
– [Government and
community types can’t do
entrepreneurship right –
only entrepreneurs can]
– [Economic development
is a waste]
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30. Hm.
• Della sez:
– Ecosystems aren’t just for tech dudes
– Community has a unique role, unique perspective,
unique assets. Needs to be part of the equation.
– Feeding does not equal useless. Everything needs
to eat.
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31. The Big Secret
• Most of the time we can make a better impact
on our local economy and community if we
take a Feeder Role, rather than a leader.
– Feeder =/= passive or unimportant.
– Feeder = adding necessary energy to system.
• But in some situations, we need to be a
Leader. More on that shortly.
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32. The Care and Feeding of Small
Businesses
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33. Leaders |Feeders
• Recruitment
• Sales
• Star Chamber
• Confidential
• Small # Big Projects
• Large Money to
Small #
• Connection
• Share information
• Everyone we can get
• Transparent
• Large # Small Projects
• Small money to large
#
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34. So what do government and community
groups “uniquely bring to the table?”
• Convening power
• Connector
• Attention-Getter
• Space owner
• Fair Rules Administrator
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35. So what can we do? Connect
• Convene/Connecting events:
– Not just “Networking”
– Useful information
– Shared group exploration
• Your Role
– Host
– Structure
– Memory
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38. Give ‘em a little Space (and/or a little
money
• Types of space
– Work space
– Selling space
– Meeting space
• Your role:
– Space finder
– Space promoter
– Space manager
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40. Fair Rules Administrator
• Communicate permit/license/zoning/etc.
processes
– Communicate clearly – the how and the why
– They want to know what to expect
– Make it predictable
• Your role:
– Make it clear
– Make it consistent
– Make it fair
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42. Other things you can do that they
might not
Pitch stories or collections to media
Lead development of meaningful brand/story for
district
Help arrange job/equipment/services shares
Show them stories of Good Ideas
Coordinate peer activities
Convene (and manage) discussion on how to
address a big issue
Put on community events
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43. How do you know if you have to Lead?
• Your community needs entrepreneurs and
small businesses but they’re not thriving.
• Your small businesses seem dispirited, tired,
burned out or just worn out.
• No one else in the community is stepping up
to the plate
• Example: Kalamazoo, MI
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44. Tips for Leading
• Don’t do it alone
• Pull in everyone you can get
• Share problem identification and
strategy development
• Share jobs
• Maintain long term horizon
• Test programs before big
investments
• Be ready to shift to Feeder
• Don’t worry if small business
people don’t show up right away
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45. NOW: Your turn
• Get with 3 or 4 people (preferably not your
buddies/colleagues/coworkers)
• Choose someone to be the Recorder
• Choose someone to be the Questioner
• Choose someone to be the Reporter
• Make sure the Recorder has paper and pen
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46. What’s Next?
• I’m going to give you a scenario that has a small
business/entrepreneurship problem.
• Your job: figure out how you can address that
scenario by Feeding. Identify
– Three things you could do
– Three potential good outcomes
– Three potential pitfalls
– Is there a conventional economic development way to
deal with it?
– What would you do?
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47. Scenario 1:
We have several strip malls along the road
coming into town, and the storefronts are
emptying out. Many of our older businesses
have closed, and nothing is taking their place.
– How can you Feed
• Existing businesses?
• New businesses?
• Property owners?
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48. Scenario 2:
We have a graffiti problem. Someone keeps
spray painting things on the buildings along the
commercial corridor. It looks bad, and the
businesses claim it’s scaring away customers,
but we don’t have the city budget or staff to stay
on top of it.
• How do you Feed:
– Business operators
– Building owners?
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49. Scenario 3
Many of our small businesses don’t seem to be
run well. We see dirty store windows,
businesses that are closed on Saturdays (when
folks around here actually go downtown), and
inventory that doesn’t seem to move.
• How do you Feed:
– Businesses?
– Potential customers?
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50. Scenario 4:
We have a number of small wood product
manufacturers and a few saw mills, but a lot of
them don’t seem to be doing very well. We’re
seeing building deterioration, a lot less hiring
than we used to and we’re hearing rumblings
that a few are planning to lay off employees.
• How do you Feed:
– The businesses
– The employees
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51. Scenario 5:
We’ve identified that our town has potential for
adventure tourism, but we have two problems:
One, we don’t have any businesses that actually
cater to adventure tourists. Second, we don’t have
any money to buy magazine ads or television spots.
• How do you Feed:
– Tourism Demand
– Entrepreneuship around this opportunity?
– Existing businesses around this opportunity?
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52. Is this a different skill set?
• Connecting
• Listening
• Building trust
• Managing logistics
• Communicating
• Persistence
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53. What’s the downside?
• No one-shot answers
• Few Big Wins
• Slow and Steady
• Risk of being invisible
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54. What’s the upside?
• Low costs
• Few big risks
• Opportunity to build broad
community support
• Lack of dependence on a few
businesses or sectors
• Building long-term health/capacity of
community.
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55. Thank you!
For more information:
www.wiseeconomy.com
www.localeconomyrevolutionbook.com
Twitter: @dellarucker
Also on LinkedIn, Facebook, SoundCloud,
YouTube, etc.
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