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 […]
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 […]
Judging the Judges
In the startup world, there are many occasions in which startups are judged and few (if any) occasions when the judges themselves are judged. I want to quote my friend and startup advisor Kevin Dewalt, who in a blog post wrote “We don’t need to be judges – the customers are the only judge that […]
Startup Sacrilege for the Underdog Entrepreneur
The book is now available here. What do you think of the cover art? Chapter outline Context: Fools Rush In; Why Read This; A Glance At the Seedy Underbelly. Sacrilege: Your Invisible Tribe; The Irrational Goal; Is There Enough Diversity In Tech?; Little Heroes; Investor Change; What You Can Control and Never Control; The Never Ending Accelerator Glut; Pitch Event Controversies; Idea Thieves. Action: Test Prep; Next-Gen Accelerators; […]