What do you do when an important decision is looming? Signing a key vendor. Offering equity to an important employee. A significant hire. Adding or deleting a product or service. Or even bigger ones like selling the company or shutting down. Do you dwell on...
For decades the focus of those who invest in growing companies is whether the potential portfolio company is the right fit for the investor's size, industry, stage of development and the like. As I noted in my recent book, more and more entrepreneurs these days...
In my latest book, The Entrepreneur's Growth Startup Handbook (John Wiley & Sons/Bloomberg Press), I note nine key personality traits I believe make it more likely you will succeed as an entrepreneur. One key attribute to help you build something substantial: being a macromanager. What is...
The first chapter of my latest book, The Entrepreneur's Growth Startup Handbook (John Wiley & Sons/Bloomberg Press 2013) asks the question above. In my over 25 years as a lawyer and entrepreneur myself, working with hundreds of business owners and watching them make the same mistakes that...
Your business has gotten started. Maybe even gotten through a few years. Or more than a few. Then it happens. The next great idea hits you. You know it's a winner. But you have this business going. How do you find time to pursue the...
Yes, hard-charging entrepreneurs face a real risk of getting bored with building the business. When does this happen? When success hits, bureaucracy builds, and meetings and committees start interfering with a founder's focus on vision, strategy and risk-taking. Or it can happen when a smart...
The New York Times today, reporting from the Consumer Electronics Show, talks about the newest exciting addition to technology: "smart" televisions. Having just shopped for a few new TVs, this is clearly all the rage. Connecting your TV to your computer or to the Internet...
Hiring employees for a new entrepreneurial venture is different than for a large company or small retail store. Why is this? Because at the beginning stages of a growing business things are frenzied! You can be successful and frenzied or struggling and frenzied – but...
Many entrepreneurs I know lament that their employees are not loyal to or respectful of them as boss. It is one thing to insist that workers firmly believe in the mission statement of the company to be motivated. It is another to demand loyalty, which I...
Even after you have found the right partner to start your company with – whether it is a spouse or significant other, a family member, or a relative stranger with whom you share business aspirations – it is still important to get everything in writing...