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Tag: #LinkedIn

Think Small

Think Small

Companies are easy to start, right? People do it all the time. Seeing it through to it becoming a thriving business and/or having a successful exit, well, that’s quite a different story. Stated another way, we had a professor in a fiction writing class in college who started the semester with: “I met a fellow at a party and asked, ‘So, what do you do?’ To which he replied, ‘I write the beginnings of novels.’”

Which, for the record, doesn’t make you a novelist. You’ve got to see it through to that last page. And publish!

Igor Jablokov, who is a founder rather than investor, spoke at one of our investor breakfasts a while back, and it’s amazing what you can learn from someone who has been there, done that – and who has had a successful exit. Igor had a company, and as he was building, he would go to various conferences and expos to network, and to see what he might learn. At one conference, he spoke to a group who had had a very successful exit and he asked how it had happened. Read More...

Online Dating and the Missed Opportunity

Online Dating and the Missed Opportunity

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

App dating is a crap shoot, to be sure. We have friends who have been using the dating apps for years, to no avail, despite the number of apps available and the number of people using them. As of 2017, Tinder alone had over 100M downloads  and 57 million monthly active users (both free and paid).

So where’s the disconnect, literally?

In our opinion, expectations and preconceptions could be part of it. Too much surface information and not enough commonality might be part of it, too. Our friends who use the apps and potentially initially ‘meet’ someone immediately hit LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram et al to cross reference. Read More...

Anyone Can Start a Company – Not Everyone Can Build a Business

Anyone Can Start a Company – Not Everyone Can Build a Business

 

It’s not easy building a business – and do notice that we say ‘building a business’, ’rather than ‘starting a company.’ Anyone can start a company. Not everyone can build a business. To help you to get to the latter, we thought we’d offer some handy do’s and don’ts. They’re obvious enough. One would hope, although we are admittedly the consummate optimist.

There are two popular misconceptions of which founders need to be disabused (ok, there are many, but we’ll break it down as we go): Read More...

Advice to Founders with Short Memories: The Heads Up Edition

Advice to Founders with Short Memories: The Heads Up Edition

As every investor knows, founders tend to exaggerate. We suppose that falls under the ‘marketing’ rubric, at least in the minds of founders which, truth be told, can be a dangerous and scary place, so every now and then, we like to send out a reminder of subtleties you might have missed, which may help to explain why you’re not getting the results you had hoped for. In no particular order:

  Read More...