Facade Over Foundation
Why Do We Want More Startups? I’ve never gotten a good answer to that question. Is it because people believe startups drive innovation? Is it because the successful ones create jobs? Is it because people are happier working at them? Most of the time it seems that we (meaning cities, regions, countries, universities, communities…) want […]
Side Effects. Mean Business.
or Why I Recreate Before Every Startup Program I Run and Company I Advise It’s easy to spend money when it’s not your own. When business people plan and spend a budget (not their own money) I rarely see evaluations of the efficacy of the activities the budget will support. In new product development, innovation management, startup programs, […]
Maxed Out Mentor
There are a handful of startup world terms that I can’t stand. Sometimes that’s because the terms are confusing. Other times because they’re downright unhelpful. Other times it’s just because I’m preternaturally cantankerous. I’m not sure into which one of those my experience with the word “mentor” falls. To rethink these old issues, start with […]
What I Learned Running Startup Programs on Three Continents over Five Years
Five years, multiple program formats, 100+ companies, tens of millions in funding, lots of customers, exits, all across three continents… This past July (2017) marked five years I’ve “formally” led various startup programs with hundreds of startups. Here’s a synopsis of those five years and an intro to what I learned along the way. Read more […]
Should Startups Work on Global Problems? Is the Pope Catholic?
Pope Francis drives an old Ford Focus. He wears cheap orthopedic shoes. He took the bulletproof glass off the famous popemobile, saying it was better to be close to the people and take his chances. He never moved into the official Papal quarters in the Vatican and instead lives in a small apartment. The pontiff, […]
Five Skills for Feasibility
I taught the Feasibility Analysis class at USC for a few years. Afterward, a colleague asked me to speak to his graduate class on the topic of feasibility analysis. This gave me the opportunity to do something that I never did over the past semesters – to think about how to express the essentials of […]
A college level class in growth hacking?
In a few days I’m teaching the first class in Growth Hacking at USC. I created this class because no matter what you feel about the “Growth Hacker” term, I find the role to be sought after by graduating students and the skill set to be appreciated by businesses. As far as I know, this is the […]
The Disposable Startup
I wrote this post a while ago, but am posting it here for the first time. The Disposable Startup.
Hey Hong Kong Startups — You Know That List? It Doesn’t Matter
Two years ago today I said goodbye to friends and colleagues, got on a plane and left Hong Kong. I had spent just a year in Hong Kong focused on working with the growing number of startups there by running AcceleratorHK and an earlier program called Startup Bootcamp. When I gave a farewell talk at […]
Investment Thesis for a University Incubator
Recently I was hired by USC, specifically USC’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Marshall School of Business, to build a USC Incubator program, open to any USC student or alum. As I started to survey needs of potential participants, I wrote an investment thesis. You might ask why have an investment thesis for a university program […]
