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…
Read MoreIn 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’…
Read MoreFor 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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Hundreds, maybe thousands, of aspiring entrepreneurs will show up this month at the SXSW festival in search of funding for their startups. Some will succeed and go on to create fast-growing, promising companies.
LinkThe 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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Understanding your motivations for starting your business is essential for weathering the storms of entrepreneurship. Read my post on Entrepreneur, 5 Questions to Help You Find Out Why You Really Want to Be an Entrepreneur to learn how to define your motivations and use that knowledge to be a better leader.
LinkThe key to startup success is not a good idea, but skilled entrepreneurial leadership that gives a good idea the legs it needs to get off the ground.
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"For entrepreneurs, it’s hard to know when to call what you’ve started a success; after all, the danger lies in the many definitions of success. Those who adopt a misleading definition are at risk of working very hard to win the wrong race."
LinkTry this bit of free association: Say what comes immediately to mind when you hear the word “entrepreneur?” I’m willing to wager that it’s something along the lines of the Silicon Valley model: the brilliant, innovative, aggressive, independent, and technically savvy young male disrupting an entire industry and building a multi-billion dollar enterprise overnight.
Read MoreFirst it was The Social Network, the frenetic film about birth of Facebook. Then The Internship, a cinematic valentine to Google with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Then a biopic of Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher, then the sitcom Betas from Amazon. Lately, it’s HBO’s Silicon Valley, a very funnysend-up of the Bay Area start-up world from the creator of Beavis and Butt-head.
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