In the mid-to-late 1990s, I was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Kauffman Foundation working with Jana Matthews on ‘learning programs for high growth entrepreneurs.’
As I’ve conducted my interviews with crowdsourcing entrepreneurs and experts, it’s constantly hit me that your ability to do something big and bold is really a function of the size and quality of your crowd.
The fastest way to get kicked out of a venture capitalist’s office is to say that you want to build a business that grows steadily, focuses on employees, and creates wealth over the long term. Entrepreneurs with such ambitions are considered pariahs.
Hopefully, I can advise entrepreneurs to avoid mistakes. But you can never be sure if you’re trying something new and unreasonable.
Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn’t create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we’re at our best when faced with enormous challenges.
I think, when I see entrepreneurs, they tend to talk about the market and the industry – which is obviously very important, but the most important thing is you’re product. What are you selling? And does it really have product-market fit?
When the market turns down, a lot of people lose jobs… and that’s the time people become entrepreneurs. Downturns end up being the best times to start companies.
My sorority was filled with amazing, different, accomplished women across all fields. We had athletes, entrepreneurs. We had women who were killing it in the nonprofit world.
The most successful entrepreneurs tell you they have a great team. Lots of small-business owners let ego get in the way. Many people helped me along the way. You’ve got to remember the people who were loyal to you, and don’t forget them when you become successful.
Some investors may grumble about entrepreneurs wanting ‘unicorn valuations.’ But let’s be honest: most investors want them, too, and are supporting the massive capitalization of these companies.
At the end of the day, if you want to create more IP and more invention, you need to connect between research and entrepreneurs. People who are going to take a risk.
Overcoming fear is the first step to success for entrepreneurs. The winners all exemplify that, and the hard work and commitment they have shown underlines what is needed to set up a business.
Location is the key to most businesses, and the entrepreneurs typically build their reputation at a particular spot.
Usually, what I recommend to entrepreneurs is to focus on telling the problem first, about the customer or the person who has that problem.
I do think there are more and more entrepreneurs all the time that think big. Those are the people we should be finding and funding. Most of them will fail, but the ones who succeed will change the world, and that is progress.
One of the most important tools we have at the Small Business Administration (SBA) to reach high growth entrepreneurs is the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program.
I like to tell small business owners and entrepreneurs, ‘I get it. I have your back on this. I understand about regulation. I understand how taxes are taxing. I understand what it is like not to be able to borrow money when you need it.’
It is blatantly apparent that true entrepreneurs will never be accepted in the public arena.
Diversifying our tech talent pool is an imperative for the tech sector. More diverse engineers and entrepreneurs will bring about a new type of innovation that Silicon Valley has yet to see.
Entrepreneurs are moving from a world of problem-solving to a world of problem-finding. The very best ones are able to uncover problems people didn’t realize that they had.
Good entrepreneurs can manage, but no one but an entrepreneur can entrepreneur, let alone help build and lead the world’s community of leading social entrepreneurs and their top business entrepreneur allies.
Young people are the entrepreneurs of the future, and we should be looking to them as one of our sources of innovation for the high streets of tomorrow.
Entrepreneurs are great at dealing with uncertainty and also very good at minimizing risk. That’s the classic great entrepreneur.
I don’t have just one role model – rather, pieces of inspiration from many different entrepreneurs. One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that it naturally enables you to build a village of advisors and role models.
Entrepreneurs cannot be happy people until they have seen their visions become the new reality across all of society.
There are so many opportunities to make a bad decision in building a robot company on top of all the normal ways that entrepreneurs screw up that it is incredibly difficult to truly create value because it is so cost-sensitive.
Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.
Entrepreneurs don’t believe the future is predictable – but they do believe that they can create the future themselves.
Sometimes entrepreneurs, successful people, need to put their blinders back on. They’re losing their day to distraction, to faulty obligations.
I’ve seen what power women have in unification, and I would love to create co-working spaces and networks for female entrepreneurs.
For me, I always admire anyone that’s entrepreneurs or inventors.
My best friend Jerry started a boat-washing business, and it was one of the most critical experiences of my life. I got to meet a lot of people who were entrepreneurs. My parents were schoolteachers, and I was now meeting people who owned companies. I realized that if this guy can do it, why can’t I?
I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that.
Entrepreneurs love to view risk as binary. The more you put on the line, the greater the potential for reward.
I go to class every day with the future Facebook and Twitter and Google employees, the future innovators and entrepreneurs who might have the next big thing. Knowing that and seeing their success and work ethic makes you want to be successful. It impresses me every day. It humbles me, too.
One misconception is that entrepreneurs love risk. Actually, we all want things to go as we expect. What you need is a blind optimism and a tolerance for uncertainty.
People look up to Techstars because they get funded by Techstars; they go through the accelerator. What we do impacts what they do. What we care about we hope has a meta impact on those entrepreneurs and how they think about the world.
Every new rule, mandate, and regulatory edict is one more obstacle that small business owners, entrepreneurs, and job creators have to swallow.
The more activity around Chicago-based companies, and the more success that entrepreneurs have in Chicago, the better we as venture capitalists in Chicago will do.
In the new economy, we all have to be entrepreneurs with our own lives – with all the rewards and risks and, yes, anxieties that entails.
For significant job creation to occur, prospective entrepreneurs and current business owners must not fear the future or be under assault from their own government in the present.
What America is thirsting for now is a battalion of strong, down-to-earth ‘doers’ – managers, frontline activists, business and social entrepreneurs engaged in tackling America’s manifold problems of unemployment, education, and competitive slouch.
The ‘SheTrades’ programme aims to connect one million women entrepreneurs to markets by 2020 with a campaign, a focussed networking app, and a range of international and national information resources.
So many of my followers who just graduated can’t get jobs; they’re hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and they don’t know what to do. My dream is to see a new generation of entrepreneurs who are creating and having more meaningful jobs than the day-to-day grind.
Commercial banks are very good for certain businesses, like loans and guarding other people’s money. They’re not great investors or entrepreneurs.
To stimulate the economy, we need to give entrepreneurs the means to create wealth.
The Internet has democratized content, and the gatekeepers are no longer in control. That democracy is wonderful for entrepreneurs.
I’m inspired every day by the great captains of industry and enlightened entrepreneurs like my great-great-grandfather and founder of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, who personally knew all his workers and gave so much to this country, or Adriano Olivetti, unique and innovative in every way.
I advise all of the entrepreneurs that I know to attend at least one entrepreneurship event every week. The worst thing an entrepreneur can do is to confine his or herself to a cubby hole.
Obviously, if you look at the history of rail in the U.S., it took courageous entrepreneurs to have that vision of connecting the whole nation from east to west.
I try to grow my management team as entrepreneurs, make the structure decentralized.
All good entrepreneurs have to start somewhere with a dedicated plan to finish in a great place.
Sleeping at night is not a specialty of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur who is sleeping soundly, something bad is happening to that person; they just don’t know it’s happening yet.
