Social Entrepreneurship

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Starting a Business In The 21st Century

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Starting a Business In The 21st Century

We live in a golden age of entrepreneurship. Now, more than ever before, it's easier to start a business, and easier than ever to scale that business to stratospheric heights.

Witness Uber. The darling of Silicon Valley (if not the media or the taxi industry) is just 6 years old yet has managed to achieve a market capitalization (the total value of its stock) of over $50 billion. That's 50 billion dollars in just over 6 years. That's higher than the market capitalization of GM, which was founded in 1908.

Another comparison? It took GM 30 years to reach a market cap of 1 billion. Uber? Just over 3.

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The #1 Reason Why Businesses Fail

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The #1 Reason Why Businesses Fail

Often, as entrepreneurs, when things are going poorly, we tend to think the problem is with our marketing, or with our sales process. Latch on to the right marketing plan, goes the thinking, or improve our sales funnel, and customers will start pouring in. 

If you've had success (i.e. growing revenue and profitability) in the past, this may indeed be the case, and you may just need some improvements to your marketing or sales funnel.

However, for most struggling businesses, problems with profitability and finding customers usually stem from a poorly thought out business model (for a fantastic, in-depth read on business models, check out this article from Harvard Business Review).

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Breaking Through Fear

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Breaking Through Fear

The past two weeks have been interesting to say the least.

Earlier this year, I made a promise to myself that I would work on overcoming some of my self-limiting fears. I wasn't exactly feeling stuck - I have a lot of great things going on - and I've never been one to shy away from risk, but I felt like there were some things that I wasn't pursuing because of fear.

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Are you an Entrepreneur?

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Are you an Entrepreneur?

I love being an entrepreneur. I love the freedom of being able to do what I want, when I want, to set my own schedule and set my own course in life. I couldn't imagine myself following any other path (the rare times in life when I did, it usually didn't turn out particularly well.)

Being an entrepreneur is also incredibly hard.

Entrepreneurship often comes with a heavy emotional toll. It's all consuming and takes over your life in ways you can't imagine.

It's a jealous lover that doesn't like to share. 

Here's some straight talk on entrepreneurship, from someone who's been doing it for 19 years.