Entrepreneurship is about finding the pain in the marketplace, and then finding an aspirin to cure that pain. Take a look at this article from Reuters today by Deborah Cohen about an entrepreneur who took something he saw in a different country, and applied that notion to a problem here in the USA. From the article:
(Michael) Dwork found himself marveling at the sight of the makeshift plates local peasant women were hand-crafting from fallen palm leaves, which they pressed in crude ovens along the side of the road.
"They looked absolutely horrible, covered in mold," recalled Dwork. "I totally fell in love with them. There was no design, there was no sanitary production, there were no 50 other things, but at the end of the day, the concept was really cool."
The natural process gave Dwork the idea to start VerTerra Dinnerware, an eco-friendly maker of compostable plates, bowls and serving dishes. Fast-forward to today and VerTerra (www.verterra.com) is a growing, Brooklyn, New York-based startup that produces a million pieces of disposable dinnerware in its India factory every month. The company supplies these products to wholesale customers, such as hotels and caterers, as well as food service operators, including those serving meals in the box seats at Cowboys Stadium and the U.S. food tent at the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the past year, retail customers have joined the mix. Half of Whole Foods' U.S. stores now carry the plates, which retail at 50-75 cents per piece, and VerTerra has been promised distribution throughout the organic grocery chain's full system by early next year.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Start-Up Nation Israel
When you hear about something once, you take note of it. When you hear about it a few days later while in a different city, you start thinking about it. And when you read about it the following week in the Wall Street Journal, you decide that you better seriously pay attention.
Two weeks ago, one of our Whitman School of Management professors walked into my office and told me about a new book called, Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Then a week later, when Mike and I were visiting the Small Business Administration in Washington DC, Bill Ellmore mentioned the book. And then today, in the Wall Street Journal there is a very favorable review. What caught everyone’s attention was the author’s comments about the startup culture in Israel and its relationship with their military. The authors contend that Israel has a very unique entrepreneurial culture that leads to entrepreneurial success. Where does that culture come from? Read from the review:
Mainly, the Israeli military."You have minimal guidance from the top," Messrs. Senor and Singer write, "and are expected to improvise, even if this means breaking some rules. If you're a junior officer, you call your higher-ups by their first names, and if you see them doing something wrong, you say so." High-school stand-outs are recruited into elite military units and trained intensively, with an emphasis on technology. When they're done, everything required to launch a start-up "will be a phone call away. . . . Almost everyone can find some connection to whomever he or she needs to contact to get started." Israel is a country, it seems, where everyone knows everyone.
It is also a country with mandatory military service before college. For nations that want to emulate Israel's start-up success, Messrs. Senor and Singer advocate similar mandatory service, military or otherwise, to get "something like the leadership, teamwork, and mission-oriented skills and experience Israelis receive." The trick is to combine what's learned in the Israeli Defense Forces (or its non-defense equivalent elsewhere) with an almost abrasive individualism and the kind of self-reliance that occurs in a country that has to go it alone to survive.”
Here is the link to the entire review by James Glassman: Where Tech Keeps Booming.
Two weeks ago, one of our Whitman School of Management professors walked into my office and told me about a new book called, Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. Then a week later, when Mike and I were visiting the Small Business Administration in Washington DC, Bill Ellmore mentioned the book. And then today, in the Wall Street Journal there is a very favorable review. What caught everyone’s attention was the author’s comments about the startup culture in Israel and its relationship with their military. The authors contend that Israel has a very unique entrepreneurial culture that leads to entrepreneurial success. Where does that culture come from? Read from the review:
Mainly, the Israeli military."You have minimal guidance from the top," Messrs. Senor and Singer write, "and are expected to improvise, even if this means breaking some rules. If you're a junior officer, you call your higher-ups by their first names, and if you see them doing something wrong, you say so." High-school stand-outs are recruited into elite military units and trained intensively, with an emphasis on technology. When they're done, everything required to launch a start-up "will be a phone call away. . . . Almost everyone can find some connection to whomever he or she needs to contact to get started." Israel is a country, it seems, where everyone knows everyone.
It is also a country with mandatory military service before college. For nations that want to emulate Israel's start-up success, Messrs. Senor and Singer advocate similar mandatory service, military or otherwise, to get "something like the leadership, teamwork, and mission-oriented skills and experience Israelis receive." The trick is to combine what's learned in the Israeli Defense Forces (or its non-defense equivalent elsewhere) with an almost abrasive individualism and the kind of self-reliance that occurs in a country that has to go it alone to survive.”
Here is the link to the entire review by James Glassman: Where Tech Keeps Booming.
The Art of the Exit
We always talk to our students about the importance of knowing the exit strategy for your company. It’s critical if you’re looking for angel or VC money to know what type of company might be your exit, but it’s also important even if you’re not looking for outside money because there might be a time that you or your partner(should you have one), decide that you'd like to try a new challenge. Here is an interesting article on what the author is calling the Art of the Exit.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Setbacks
Visiting today with local entrepreneur Bruce Dew, and we were talking about the setbacks that we sometimes run into when we’re launching and growing our businesses. I told him that one of my friends likes to say he has “started 10 companies…three that were successful and seven that I don’t talk about.” Bruce gave me an equally wonderful phrase about dealing with those times when things don’t work out. As he put it: “ A set-back is a set-up for the come-back.”
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Elephant in Your Room
Interesting posts coming from the blog, Both Sides of the Room by Mark Suster, entrepreneur turned VC. I particularly liked his recent post on Dealing with the Elephant in the Room.
There’s an old saying that if I’m talking with you and I start the conversation by saying, “whatever you do, DO NOT think about Elephants” then you can’t help but thinking about elephants while we’re speaking. There’s a lot of truth in this adage. It’s sometimes called “The Elephant in the Room” because even when you don’t mention not to think about an Elephant there are certain issues that you just can’t stop thinking about whether they are brought up or not.
Many businesses that pitch to me have Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital. Elephant issues are those things that the VC would automatically be thinking about when you’re speaking but he/she may not immediately ask you about either for legal reasons or out of courtesy.
But the VC is thinking about the issue whether you address it or not. I’d like to separate these from skeletons in your closet which are issues that the VC would have no idea about when you’re meeting but might discover later during due diligence.
You might want to include Mark’s blog as part of your must-reading list.
There’s an old saying that if I’m talking with you and I start the conversation by saying, “whatever you do, DO NOT think about Elephants” then you can’t help but thinking about elephants while we’re speaking. There’s a lot of truth in this adage. It’s sometimes called “The Elephant in the Room” because even when you don’t mention not to think about an Elephant there are certain issues that you just can’t stop thinking about whether they are brought up or not.
Many businesses that pitch to me have Elephant issues and I’d like to tell you how to deal with these when you’re raising venture capital. Elephant issues are those things that the VC would automatically be thinking about when you’re speaking but he/she may not immediately ask you about either for legal reasons or out of courtesy.
But the VC is thinking about the issue whether you address it or not. I’d like to separate these from skeletons in your closet which are issues that the VC would have no idea about when you’re meeting but might discover later during due diligence.
You might want to include Mark’s blog as part of your must-reading list.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Entrepreneurs and the Economy
If you haven’t seen the article in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal today written by Carl Schramm, Robert Litan and Dane Stangler of the Kauffman Foundation, you should. The article, titled New Business, Not Small Business, Is What Creates Jobs, is a wonderful piece reminding all (especially those in Washington) of the importance that entrepreneurs play in our economy. It also has some interesting suggestions that all, even those in academia, should consider.
Facebook and the Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur from LA sent over this article by Dan Fost from the Los Angeles Times on using Facebook for your small business. From the article, which is titled Facebook Becoming Big Friend to Small Businesses:
Businesses need to go where their customers are, and increasingly these days, that's on Facebook and other social media sites, analysts say. More than 300 million people have signed up for Facebook, and half of them visit the site every day.
"Over the past two years, we've seen this increasing uptick in businesses realizing that their customers are on Facebook," said Tim Kendall, Facebook's director of monetization product marketing. "If they can create a presence in Facebook that allows customers to connect with them, it can be a way to strengthen that connection and also to find new customers.
"Plenty of other sites are also wooing small local businesses. The review site Yelp, Citysearch and a host of Yellow Pages sites are all making a push.And typically, businesses don't stick to one site such as Facebook. Instead, they spread their presence across the social media landscape, including MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn. Increasingly, these sites connect with one another so that a status update on Facebook becomes a tweet on Twitter, or a blog post could be pushed out to several sites.
Businesses need to go where their customers are, and increasingly these days, that's on Facebook and other social media sites, analysts say. More than 300 million people have signed up for Facebook, and half of them visit the site every day.
"Over the past two years, we've seen this increasing uptick in businesses realizing that their customers are on Facebook," said Tim Kendall, Facebook's director of monetization product marketing. "If they can create a presence in Facebook that allows customers to connect with them, it can be a way to strengthen that connection and also to find new customers.
"Plenty of other sites are also wooing small local businesses. The review site Yelp, Citysearch and a host of Yellow Pages sites are all making a push.And typically, businesses don't stick to one site such as Facebook. Instead, they spread their presence across the social media landscape, including MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn. Increasingly, these sites connect with one another so that a status update on Facebook becomes a tweet on Twitter, or a blog post could be pushed out to several sites.
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