April 11, 2016
Most entrepreneurs fail after having successfully launched their companies. I recently had the opportunity to speak at South by Southwest Interactive with my former students Annie Cardinal and Guillaume Delepine. We discussed why so many entrepreneurs fail and how to…
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March 31, 2016
In Startup Leadership, I interviewed Wendy Kopp about her experiences founding and growing Teach for America (TFA), a non-profit which trains and places the nation’s brightest college graduates in public school teaching positions in underprivileged communities to help expand students’…
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March 16, 2016
For a very special session at SXSW 2016, Derek Lidow interviews 2 legendary founders–Teach for America’s Wendy Kopp and AppNexus’s Brian O’Kelley–who address work/life balance.
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January 14, 2016
The ability to lead teams effectively pays off in almost any endeavor, but it’s particularly critical for innovation and change. From a big picture point of view, think of a team not as a roster of individuals, but as a…
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January 19, 2014
I am back, with a new website and a new book, Startup Leadership. I had to write the book because there are some big misconceptions about how leadership applies to startups, and entrepreneurship in general (that’s the little ‘e’ entrepreneurship as described in an earlier post). In my book I talk about how leadership is the critical ingredient to entrepreneurial success, defined as the ability to take an idea and turn it into a self-sustaining enterprise (e.g. a new company or a new department inside an existing corporation).
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December 16, 2012
At the end of Phase One entrepreneurs feel pretty good. They have found real customers for their prototype product or service. In Phase Two entrepreneurs must figure out how to: 1) deliver their product or service, and 2) satisfy customers while finding new customers, and 3) run the enterprise. It does not make sense to invest any time into doing any of these things before you actually know what you’ll be selling and what sort of customers will be buying. Most entrepreneurs never make it out of Phase Two because it requires a great deal of extra effort beyond just delivering products or service one at a time and finding customers one at a time.
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December 4, 2012
At the end of Phase One entrepreneurs feel pretty good. They have found real customers for their prototype product or service. In Phase Two entrepreneurs must figure out how to: 1) deliver their product or service, and 2) satisfy customers while finding new customers, and 3) run the enterprise. It does not make sense to invest any time into doing any of these things before you actually know what you’ll be selling and what sort of customers will be buying. Most entrepreneurs never make it out of Phase Two because it requires a great deal of extra effort beyond just delivering products or service one at a time and finding customers one at a time.
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November 8, 2012
I get a steady stream of visitors coming to ask me for advice on entrepreneurship. I am constantly meeting with Princeton students, local entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs from around the world that happen to be visiting the area. I get all sorts of questions but most of them fall into the general category of, “what should I do next?” This is a tough question to which to give a specific answer because every situation is so different. But understanding a bit about how enterprises mature narrows down what sort of questions I need to ask in order to give decent enough advice that entrepreneurs keep coming back to ask for more.
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October 26, 2012
This website makes a big point that entrepreneurs and leaders have almost diametrically opposed personal ambitions. Entrepreneurs have selfish motives for their actions in wanting to make the world change to accommodate and accept their idea and what they want to do. A leader, on the other hand, need to make the people around them feel that he is selflessly committed to making them successful. Entrepreneurial Leadership (EL) requires a person walk the sharp razor’s edge that divide’s the two territories.
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October 19, 2012
If you want to lead an enterprise or company you will do a better job if you understand how they work. Most people think that you need a business degree of some sort to understand how a company works, but most successful Entrepreneurial Leaders (ELs) never went to business school.
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