Notable startups that failed in 2011

The year 2011 was momentous for several startup companies that raised huge sums by going public, such as Zynga, LinkedIn, and Groupon. But many other notable startups -- some of them well-funded -- had a much worse year and closed down...

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Read here full story by By Tom Musbach | Yahoo!

The Filter Bubble

Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs

Do not care about business plan, care about business model

[ By Steve Blank Woodstock for Entrepreneurs – the Startup Lessons Learned Conference ]

Why accountants don’t run startups

If you wanted to know what I’ve been thinking about after Customer Development, you can see and hear it in the talk I gave at the conference. Watch the expanded version of “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups below.
- The first story, Shifts in Entrepreneurship starts at 4:20
- Not All Startups Are Equal starts at 7:30
- What VC’s Don’t Tell You starts at 12:00
- Business Plans Versus Business Models at 14:08
- Startups Search Companies Execute at 17:05
- Leadership Versus Management at 24:50
- Durant Versus Sloan at 30:13
- E-School Versus B-School at 33:41

View more presentations from Steve Blank.

What is the right age to found venture ...?

[by Vivek Wadhwa - TechCrunch ]

Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. We also learned that these founders are likely to be married and have two or more kids. They typically have six to ten years of work experience and real-world ideas. They simply got tired of working for others and wanted to rise above their middle-class heritage...

Read here full story - When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule

Tips For Landing That Startup Dream Job

[By Dharmesh Shah - onstartups.com]

The single most important attribute that many startups look for in recruits is that they get stuff done. You can be the most brilliant engineer/marketer/whatever on the planet, but if you don’t have a tendency to get a lot of stuff done, you’re not an attractive recruit.

The reason is obvious and simple — but I’ll tell you anyways. Startups are a grand exercise in resource-deprivation. There’s always too much work and not enough people.

If the startup team hires you, they want to know that you’re going to put a dent in their workload — not just come up with great ideas for other people to work on ...

Excellent article, highly recommended... >>> Tips For Landing That Startup Dream Job

... startup is like a rock and roll band ...

Surfing and reading today about Startups I have found very good comment, I've liked very much and offer to yours attention:

Choosing the people on your core founding team (first four or so) is an important factor in success. They need to be smart, energetic and committed. It helps if they can fill multiple roles at the same time (sell, write software, deliver services and invoice).

I like to say that a startup is like a rock and roll band. You can fail if you don't have the talent, don't produce the right product, egos get out of control or people lose direction.

Get the right people with the right attitude, and you'll have a much better shot.

More, here in excellent post 10 Things Most MBA Schools Won’t Teach You About Startups by onstartups.com

Venture Capital Under Attack

The journey to find these ideas has taken me from inventors’ basements, to obscure research labs, to, in one case, a smoky Milwaukee bowling alley renowned for its fried Twinkies. With a lot of hard work and a little luck that journey ends on the floor of a stock exchange, witnessing a company you helped build go public. It’s a helluva ride.

Great article by Adam Grosser with interesting statistics about the value of VCs to economic prosperity. The challenge is - what can be learned from the current financial crisis that will improve the VC industry.

CREATE is a key theme!

Job creation, innovation and new technologies will help lead global economy back to a growing and successful economy. Venture Capital plays an incredibly important role in the global economy, and thanks to VCs (in both time and money), entrepreneurs and start-ups management have indeed been able to grow seedling ideas employing many and driving worldwide competitiveness.

There is a lot to be said for a creative and transformative approach to take the best of what the VC’s do and creatively use it as one of the solutions to rebuild the economy through creation.

Why things goes wrong?

Start-up, or any other business beginning – is a hard under pressure work, very limited in time frame, so only highly professionally crew have chances to success. Therefore looking back to my personal experience, - I think it is safer to go into business with a work colleague than with a friend. Even you know what you're getting in to - starting a business with a mate may sound like a good idea, but some-time better is just stay friends and save yourself a lot of heartbreak.

I like to share with you excellent article with a lot of useful information packed in - Starting up with a friend (What could possibly go wrong?) by Daniel Tenner.

* Make your agreements explicit so that you don’t break implicit promises
* Detail your agreements so that your promises are clear
* Don’t be afraid of discussing negative scenarios, so that you don’t add the stress of misunderstanding to already bad situations
* Write things down so you’ll remember
* Don’t make things work at all costs, so that you don’t spend the next years living with a deal that’s not acceptable to you
* Don’t assume things will get better with time, so you’re not surprised when they don’t

Making resume, I like to point - whether you going to start new venture or just some web-project/service, - make sure you have a mutually agreed upon, objectively measurable set of criteria for success. And most important point is to write everything down. Regularly measure yours, individual performance and the corporate performance against those criteria to avoid unexpected situations and surprises.

Any business idea, relation between friends, colleagues, clients etc, should be written down also to avoid misunderstanding in the future.

If only I'd read this article before I started my first business, I could have avoided many problems and a lot of stress. I hope someone else does find it useful in their own endeavors.

Prediction from Bill Gates

The financial crisis in the US will not lead to the end of capitalism or a depression, Bill Gates told CNN in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

"It's a very interesting crisis," said the founder of Microsoft, adding that the effect of the collapse of the subprime market needs "requires "some type of correction… but fundamentally ... companies' willingness to invest, right now we haven't seen a huge disruption in that."

So, do not expect depression...

And what do you think? Do you believe to prediction of America’s richest man from top of the Forbes magazine's list point view?

Startup entrepreneurship or What did you do last weekend?

How intimately it is - startup entrepreneurship, if at all?
It is about “marriage bonds” or “marriage of convenience”?

How about slogan:

100 people. Three days. One new company.

The participants ranged from students and corporate employees who wanted to learn the skills involved in creating a start-up to entrepreneurial veterans who wanted to get back in the game. It included men and women from all over the region, and integrated programmers, designers, marketing executives, financial planners and management personnel.

(From article "While You Were Mowing Your Lawn, We Created an Internet Startup" by Dan O'Keeffe)

Is “lifeSpoke.com” competitive enough price for three days workshop participating?


May it be realized in our small country? Taking in account specific character of local "market", looks like a formula have to be changed to: "50 people. Three days. One new startup". Are we ready join three days workshop having an own pet idea and finally to choose one another (better or best) of someone else? What will be your decision - to bury own “baby” (for while/forever) or to continue cherish it till right moment will come or right people will be found?

I invite to discussion all of you: first-time start-uppers and veterans, entrepreneurs, IT experts, angels, VC fund board members, managers, creative and art directors, anyone who may be interesting in such kind of initial event.

Looking forward, I allow for wrong vision or some “local market rules” misunderstanding. Not all models that work there, in USA succeed here in Israel. I see also languid situation on local web-sites and forums related to startups.

But I also know, that each month we read in news about more and more new Israeli startups. Angels still hunting for seed stage companies, that means – potential is huge. So, in my humble opinion, we have to change in our minds relationship rules to enrich our self by many more opportunities.

Look around you, what happens on the network – it is actually social revolution. People shares almost everything, - from being society of encapsulated association (sorry for pun), we came to “whole sharing” society. So, why it takes to long time to understand that “sharing is power” and why it takes so long time to evaluate how this power may be used?