Entrepreneurship - SocialTimes

Entrepreneurs Must Dream Big But Act Lean

Haig Kayserian — Tue, 31 May 2011 11:00:59 +0000

When asked in a recent interview with YoungEntrepreneur.com for a piece of advice for young entrepreneurs, I answered “dream big but act lean”. This is critical advice.

Wikipedia defines an entrepreneur as “a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and is accountable for the inherent risks and the outcome”. An entrepreneur is someone who is better served without the shackles that come with a traditional job, without a boss, without top-down imposed key performance indicators, etcetera.

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NYC Job Fair Email Gaffe Triggers Rejected Startups To Start New Job Fair

Ellie Cachette — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:15:03 +0000

Competition for start-ups is getting stiff. Requirements for funding and expectations of traction increasing, even incubators are flooded with hundreds of applicants. Rejecting business plans and startups is hard work and surely a tough task, here’s a very small lesson: don’t email over 60 entrepreneurs and forget to BCC them.

Yesterday NYC Startup Job Fair sent one rejection email to over 60 start-ups explaining how there were only 40 slots open and within 2 minutes everyone who was on the email thread began discussing starting their own job fair. By the end of the night a landing page was setup and twitter account created (@startupjobsny). Rumor has it that Fred Wilson and David Tisch are already behind the initiative, so far it looks like the group’s name is Silicon Alley Job Fair.

Is there a start-up bubble? Is it “sexy” to be a startup? Too much volume?

Despite whatever is going on in the community change happens fast and the community is very quick to rally itself together. Hang on.

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Entrepreneurs Corner: Why We Deleted our Angellist Account

Ellie Cachette — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:45:31 +0000

Last year a website community called Angellist launched, helping match start-ups with interested angel investors and the site has gotten more popular as start-ups are closing anywhere from $50k to $3MM in funding. The bar is set high for getting an Angellist recommendation which helps investors feel comfortable if they are reviewing a start-up that has been “vetted” by the guys running the site.

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The Startup VISA Isn't Stealing Talent… It's Allowing Founders to Follow Their Customers

Ellie Cachette — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:10:11 +0000

Immigration is a touchy subject. Economic positioning aside there are social benefits and ramifications to migrating to another country. While many entrepreneurs are dying to enter the U.S its not because of our overwhelming public benefits, universal healthcare, or promise of retirement stipends – as a fellow entrepreneur recently told me, “Coming from Germany, I’d be much worse off claiming welfare in the US,” yet foreigners still do; they give up everything they know to come here and build their dream.

Why foreign entrepreneurship is suddenly a hot topic is because the Startup Visa Act of 2011 appears to be going through. Recent changes were made allowing for more flexibility and less initial funding required for sponsorship, which also sparked a debate that “India is worried” by Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher for Harvard Law School and scholar for UC Berkeley. On the other hand, some Indian entrepreneurs are pleased with the change, because as it stands “being eligible for a visa is not the same as actually getting a visa.”

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Entrepreneurs Corner: I'm Not The Only One Who Thinks The Valley is Dead

Ellie Cachette — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:30:15 +0000

When I accidentally moved to NYC earlier this year, I was a renegade, a soldier running back to enemy lines for a cup of water – a suicidal start-up founder. For the last two years I have been asking myself where the real sustenance was in the mystical Silicon Valley. Tech event after tech event, same faces, same VCs, same ideas getting funded over and over. Where does the pitching stop and the real business start?

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Entrepreneurs Corner: Relationships Matter, Not PitchDecks

Ellie Cachette — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:30:30 +0000

Pitchdecks are important because they help you learn and understand about yourself; its the same as when you have to teach someone something you already know. Can you describe what is in your head? What is the most important thing you are working on? Small pitch events can enable to start-up to really polish their message and not surprisingly when you are forced to explain yourself in three to five minutes things become simplified, quick. On the west coast there is a huge emphasis on pitchdecks but despite slaving for hours on making great visuals and bullet points the reality is that pitchdecks don’t write checks, people do.

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Entrepreneurs Corner: 5 Ways A "Lean" Start-Up Can Fail

Ellie Cachette — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:50:22 +0000

(This article is part of a series by our resident SocialTimes entrepreneur, Ellie Cachette. Cachette is the founder of ConsumerBell and also writes on topics covering Consumer Web. For more articles by Ellie, click here.)

Lean Start-up philosophies are all the rage for the last few years, its almost seen as a sense of pride of how cheaply your team can build features and products and pivot when necessary but here’s the problem: lean start-up teaches instant gratification not long term value. Encouraging a start-up to run on a little budget is almost redundant, by nature a start-up has very little capital and especially when pre-revenue, founders often work very hard to bring in every dollar either by donation or investment so money inherently isn’t going to be wasted. Teaching a team to live off little and go for quick wins can often be distracting and even keep the product from making a drastic and costly pivot that could make a bigger impact with exponential value. Disruption is often the biggest blessing of a business, if current successful multi-billion dollar corporations followed the Lean Startup methodologies then HP would still be making various versions of lightbulbs and FedEx would not exist. (see this video on Tenacity vs. Intellect)

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Entrepreneurs Corner: Skip Silicon Valley, Start-up Where it Matters

Ellie Cachette — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:30:30 +0000

Being from the Palo Alto area I grew up around engineers and start-ups. I remember playing under conference room tables where my parents alongside employees hacked away on laptops to fix features. The energy in Silicon Valley is definitely contagious, there are shuttles figuratively and literally running up and down 280 getting people to SF from Sunnyvale and vice versa, but its also incestious. One bad interaction with someone might be a career pitfall, likewise, one solid handshake can open several doors to success. This article isn’t a dis to Silicon Valley, on the contrary its for all the wide-eyed entrepreneurs out there who think they have to move to San Francisco to make dreams happen, in fact it can be a good idea to start-up outside Silicon Valley. Things to consider where to start your company up.

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Viral Product Launch Pages Jump The Shark

Nick O'Neill — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:31:53 +0000

In the days following the launch of usehipster.com, over 10,000 people registered without a product even being released. It was the result of a clever landing page which has now been duplicated by internet entrepreneurs worldwide and it’s in the process of already jumping the shark.
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Entrepreneurs Corner: 10 Things You Learn From Deals That Don't Go Through

Ellie Cachette — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:15:15 +0000

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Entrepreneurs Corner: 8 Great Resources or Apps for Running a Start-up

Ellie Cachette — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:00:24 +0000

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Entrepreneurs Corner: 5 Overlooked Risks for Small Businesses

Ellie Cachette — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:00:29 +0000

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Why Any Serious Internet Entrepreneur Is On Quora

Nick O'Neill — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:30:19 +0000

In the world of entrepreneurship one of the most important forms of currency is information. If you aren’t on Quora, you probably don’t have that currency.
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Entrepreneurs Corner: 10 Questions VCs Will Ask and What They Mean

Ellie Cachette — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:01:37 +0000

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Entrepreneurs Corner: 10 Health Issues of Founders

Ellie Cachette — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:30:03 +0000

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