Archive for September, 2009
The “Too Old to be an Entrepreneur Myth”
With the current buzz around high tech startups founded by techno whiz kids is American business lore. A new study from the Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City think tank that studies entrepreneurship debunks this myth.
For “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur,” the foundation surveyed 549 company founders. Instead of a dorm-room genius (although there are a [...]How the ‘Failure to Success Model’ Should Work
There are three components to the ‘Failure to Success Model’: Fail Frequently, Fail Fast, and Fail Frugally.
Fail Frequently. If you are not failing you are not taking enough risk. Complacency is the nectar of permanent and unrecoverable failure. Venture capitalists plan for failure. In order to identify big ideas VCs invest in unproven ideas [...]
The ‘Failure to Success’ Model
The ‘Failure to Success Model’ is not complicated but it is difficult to implement because there is so much emotional capital invested in failures. It is not uncommon for an entrepreneur to internalize failure and take it personally. When this happens it is difficult to separate failure as a process from failure being a personal [...]
When ‘Ugly Wins’ Become ‘Ugly Losses’
Losing or failing is a part of becoming successful. It is not if you are going to fail when starting or operating a business, but when. Every entrepreneur fails at something. The question is, “Are your failures going to be pretty or ugly?” In determining if your failures are going to be beneficial or not, [...]
Winning Ugly
When I played small town sports in high school the menu of sporting options was more or less limited to basketball, football and track. Our coach also taught biology, math and PE and had a part time business on the side. This is nothing like high school sporting programs today.
In my day many games [...]