January 23, 2018
It’s time we told the truth about entrepreneurship. A lot depends on it. Over $530 billion, yes billion, is spent on launching startups every year. Most of that money comes directly out of the entrepreneurs’ pockets, or from the equity in their houses, or from debt. Much of it also comes from gifts, loans, or investments from friends and family. Only 10 to 20% of this money, depending upon the year and the state of frenzy in venture investing, comes from complete strangers and professional investors. Most of this money is wasted by ill-prepared entrepreneurs who have virtually no chance of success. And it will continue to be wasted, along with the time and effort that many hard working people put into these doomed enterprises, unless we can introduce them early on to the truth about what it takes to create and sustain a new business.
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January 22, 2018
If you’re the chief executive of a young company, you will at some point almost certainly face an existential crisis that threatens to take your business under. I know I did during my time as the CEO of iSuppli, an electronics market information company I founded in 1999. Over the ensuing four years, a series of crises brought the company to the brink of extinction—crises that typify the threats young companies often face. How our company weathered those storms provide some useful lessons in company preservation, including these three.
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January 20, 2018
Despite what we read in the media and the stories we hear about Silicon Valley, money is last the thing an entrepreneur needs. Rather, money is the fill in—money is what you need after you have already pulled together all…
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January 14, 2018
The key to building a successful business isn’t luck, but risk. The greatest entrepreneurs know how to reduce risk and gain better insights into running their businesses. In this video, I explore how you can minimize the luck you need…
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January 14, 2018
Should startup companies and entrepreneurs prioritize growth or profit? In this video, I put an end to this age-old question once and for all, and provide alternative strategies for creating profitable companies through the bedrock mindset. For more on…
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January 12, 2018
If you want to become an entrepreneur you should be prepared to make mistakes and know how to learn from them. In this video, I reveal what I learned from the biggest mistakes of my career—and explain how the knowledge…
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January 2, 2018
Every new entrepreneur needs help. But building a team and getting people to buy in to your ideas isn’t easy, especially if your startup is not yet making money. In this video, I offer advice on how to build your…
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August 16, 2017
Three days of panel discussions, presentations and conversations at Princeton University’s recent ethnography and entrepreneurship conference produced a rich stew of questions with no great consensus — just the way Derek Lidow wanted it.
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August 14, 2017
The Princeton Kauffman Conference 2017, created by Derek Lidow, recently concluded. This event brought together anthropologists, sociologists, and entrepreneurship researchers with funding agencies to discuss how best to stimulate and support new research to collect and analyze detailed observations and information on how start-up teams react to and implement new firms in real time.
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April 28, 2017
Derek Lidow is an accomplished CEO and innovator. He sold his last startup for $100 million. His novel approaches to research and analysis have improved companies as diverse as Samsung, Goldman Sachs, and IBM.
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