startup programs

Corporate Accelerator Model

This is a high-level, sanitized version of a plan I wrote for a company that wanted to start an accelerator. It’s partially from a corporate and hardware perspective. Parts have been redacted. I hope that it helps you in your own accelerator development. I’ve started and operated three startup accelerators so this is based on […]

Continue Reading »

Corporate entrepreneurship workshop

I’m running an experimental workshop on applying entrepreneurial startup principles in a corporate environment. Over the past 6 years I’ve led 3 startup accelerators around the world, advised hundreds of companies, and helped them test new products, improve customer retention, raise capital, and more. For the last 4 years I’ve also been a professor at […]

Continue Reading »

Video: Building Companies While Running Startup Accelerators on Three Continents

Video of a recent talk I gave on how building multiple startup accelerators changed the way I work with companies.

Continue Reading »

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 […]

Continue Reading »

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, […]

Continue Reading »

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 […]

Continue Reading »

USC Incubator Description

Working with early-stage founders has been my focus for the past three years. After running a startup in New York, I started holding a roundtable series that grew into a bootcamp and then a funded accelerator program in Hong Kong. I’ve advised or had as clients that are startups from early-stage revenue to millions of […]

Continue Reading »

Accelerators and their discontents

Breaking my own rule I wrote about a related issue a few weeks ago, but now find myself pulled back to this topic sooner than I thought. Yesterday, in a TechCrunch article called “The Startup Accelerator Trend Is Finally Slowing Down,” the author says that the overcrowded market for early-stage funding destines most accelerators to […]

Continue Reading »

Please stop trying to build another Y Combinator

There are lots of startup accelerators out there. I believe that most of them add value to the startups they work with, as measured against the equity and time they take. In spite of that, most accelerators will not last long-term and could be adding much more value. Here I want to support development of alternative […]

Continue Reading »

Eradicate the startup pitch event

I posted this recently on Medium. Reposting the link here to share the reasons why I think startup pitch events are awful. Hope you like it. Eradicate the startup pitch event.

Continue Reading »