Jay Samit
For a startup to overcome obstacles and succeed, it must foster limitless thinking. By hiring students into their first career job, you get to set their framework for how a company functions and instill them with your values for your company's culture.
You need to begin to network with angels and VCs while you are still ideating. It is easier to ask someone you know for funding than a stranger. Build your financial network by attending as many industry functions and reaching out for advice from experts online.
You will always need more capital than you think, because it will always take you longer to reach profitability than you can imagine.
Too many startups get in the habit of continually raising more and more money, which has the deleterious effect of both pushing out profitability and limiting your exit options. The less rounds of capital you need to raise, the more of your company you get to own.
For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice.
In my experience, there are only two valid reasons to take a company public: access to growth capital and investor fatigue.
Whether you stay private or go public, after all is said and done, a CEO's job is to create lasting shareholder value.
Social media and personalization are providing both brand advertisers and end-users with hyper-targeted choices and opportunities for double-digit growth.
Cable and satellite businesses are competing against fixed-line telephone companies and wireless companies.
As every entrepreneur and investor sifts through year-end data to predict the next trend or opportunity for financial success, there is a much easier way to accurately predict the future: hang out with those who are creating it.
With less and less television being watched live, consumers are enjoying the freedom to record at home or in the cloud, watch locally or on the go, and binge watch entire series that they never had the time to enjoy.
As good and as smart as you may be, no one knows everything. I truly wish I was as smart as I thought I was when I started my first company.
So many of the major decisions that affect the entire future of your enterprise happen during its first year in business. In fact, most don't make it because they don't know how to get the resources they need to survive.
A successful entrepreneur is one who recognizes her blind spots. You may be the world's best engineer, but you probably have never run a 10-person sales force. You may be a brilliant marketer, but how do you structure a cap table?
Betting all your funds on the belief that you know what consumers want and are willing to pay for is like jumping into a river to test its depth - you'll need a lot of luck to stay afloat. To have a truly successful product launch, the conversations with your customers must start long before you write your first line of code.
When Thomas and John Knoll launched Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, the software couldn't even handle color images. But their offerings got the startup noticed by Apple and Adobe, both of whom became key to the fledgling company's later success.
Use your development time to brief analysts and industry press. Use these influencers as your eyes and ears to let you know what else is being developed by competitors so that you can be the first to market, and don't make the mistake of launching an also-ran product.
To truly launch a great product, you need partners. Channel and marketing partners share in your success and share in the costs of reaching your target audience.
No matter how much we tweet, blog and post, nothing in business is as powerful as actual face time with prospective business partners and customers.
Some of the most lasting contacts and friendships that I have developed began by just grabbing a drink or breaking bread with a stranger at an industry event.
There is no better feeling than doing well while you are doing good. If you really want to meet the nicest, most caring people in your field, get involved with charity work. The thankless hours that go into planning charity dinners, running a carnival, and gathering donations for silent auctions are noticed and appreciated.
Networking is all about connecting with people. But then again, isn't that what life is about? The more time you can find to get out of the office and build true friendships, the farther your startup will go. Entrepreneurs need to remember to spend as much time working on their business as they do in their business.
Big ideas developed in a vacuum are doomed from the start. Feedback is the essential tool for building and growing a successful company.
From the very first inkling of a concept, founders need to gather a target group of five to ten potential users to begin the feedback loop. We all think we know how the market will react to new ideas, but actual users live with the pros and cons of the existing market conditions every day. They are the market experts.
The answers to all a startup's challenges are out there. By setting up the right mechanisms for gathering feedback, the road to success can be a less bumpy ride.
Venture-backed startups with billion dollar market caps are called 'unicorns' because they are supposed to be rare mythical creatures that few entrepreneurs will ever ride.
What most entrepreneurs don't understand is that it isn't the economy that bursts a bubble, but investor psychology.
Too many investors overvalue companies in the near term while undervaluing them in the long term.
Companies with significant revenue (more than $100 million) have, by definition, significant traction. They have proven out their thesis and can scale up or down as investment capital becomes available.
Founding a successful startup is no different than forming a rock band.
Creating something that builds lasting value and changes the lives of millions of people requires forging a team that will work hard to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, stand up to the pressures of fame and fortune, and stay true to the original vision long after others stop believing.
Pick a co-founder that communicates in the same fashion that you do. If you are a screamer, then the only way you will ever listen to a conflicting point of view is to find someone who is passionate enough to yell back at you.
Founders need sizable egos to believe that what they are creating is good enough to change the world. What makes for great co-founders is having those egos focused on complementary, not competing, skills.
Silicon Valley's long-running track record of creating globally disruptive startups is the envy of the world.
New ideas for innovation grow out of the minds of each new generation. Having an institution of higher learning that can help young people put those ideas into action is critical.
State funds, private equity, venture capital, and institutional lending all have their role in the lifecycle of a high tech startup, but angel capital is crucial for first-time entrepreneurs. Angel investors provide more than just cash; they bring years of expertise as both founders of businesses and as seasoned investors.
The greatest challenge to most innovation centers around the world is many nations' punitive attitudes towards failure. In most of the world, if your first business fails, no one will work with you again. But, trial and error is the genesis of innovation.
Numerous studies, and my own experience as a serial entrepreneur, have proven that companies with a diverse management team provide greater financial returns to investors.
For those that fear being taken advantage of by people working from home or on flexible schedules, I can say my experience is quite the opposite. Employees are so appreciative of these accommodations that they outperform their coworkers and are less likely to be poached by the competition.
Instagram, Swiffer, and Nest had to compete with consumer habits and perceptions. Breakout products face competition from the formidable inertia powering the status quo.
As great as you believe your new product or company is, the world got along just fine without you. The greatest competition every startup faces is convincing consumers that there is a better solution to the problems that vex them.
Get your product into users' hands as quickly as possible and incorporate the crowd's feedback to iterate. Your customers will provide the data you need to chart the best course for your company and bury any competitor that goes it alone.
The strength of brand loyalty begins with how your product makes people feel.
Digital products are, for the most part, services that empower consumers to achieve something that they couldn't do before. Every screen must reflect your value proposition.
You'll never know how close you are to victory if you give up.Collection: Giving Up
Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.Collection: Benefits
Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.Collection: Self
Pivoting is not the end of the disruption process, but the beginning of the next leg of your journey.Collection: Journey
Disruptors don't have to discover something new; they just have to discover a practical use for new discoveries.Collection: Discovery