Now, I understand this is advice you might have heard from your grandfather, or his father, or someone who endured the Great Depression of the 1930s. Thing is, it is still true. Thing is, we are in a similar state to that condition of the 1930s, and recovery will take some time (years) yet.
It is [...]

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My client had a difficult choice for his first venture round.   He had an offer from a boutique VC firm whose partners he really liked; he got an excellent counter-offer the next day from a Tier One VC firm.  I was in the midst of the due diligence on the boutique investors.  His three other [...]

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This statistic from the U.S. Census Bureau takes my breath away. In the midst of a terrible recession, with virtually no capital and no bank loans available, and yes, a bit of “necessity” due to unemployment – Americans stood up to the economy and kept working, likely with little revenue to the business or income [...]

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There was a repeated focus on capital control by entrepreneurs at Digital Hollywood’s Venture Capital panel in Los Angeles which I chaired a couple of weeks ago http://bit.ly/cpbI4w .
Trends still tight
Economic trends are still tight for entrepreneurs, and also for VCs looking to replenish their own Funds from their institutional investors. This is driving a [...]

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In the spirit of the new economy, you have started the company you’ve always dreamed of launching – or you simply found a great opportunity in an underserved market – and you are now the CEO of a fast growing start-up company. Investors have put money into your company, and you’re rolling toward meeting your [...]

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The burden of initial success in an early stage company sits on the shoulders of the CEO. Beyond your domain expertise, leadership and financial savvy, you must be able to pitch and close – that is, sell. You must sell your vision for your company and its future success, and you must sell your early [...]

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I was thinking about money and freedom when I heard an NPR interview with Merle Haggard, the country music legend, now 72, talking to NPR’s Steve Inskeep about hopping freight trains in his youth. http://n.pr/aedMlf
“I rode a freight from Oregon back to Bakersfield — that’s over a bunch of mountains,” Haggard says. “It was wintertime [...]

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We live in a capitalist society. We build businesses. For all the adjacent reasons to build a business – inventing the next new thing, changing the world, advancing humankind – a business must make money, create profit, and keep growing (or at least bettering) itself.
For this you must understand the numbers, even if you can’t [...]

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This past week I’ve been contemplating corruption. And capitalism. And where the line is drawn that divides the two.
I am a good capitalist, American style. Having lived all over the world, I returned to the U.S. to start my consulting practice many years ago, because the richness of opportunity here did not exist anywhere else [...]

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I am often approached by entrepreneurs who want me to consult with them on their large visions of change that their skills and (to be developed) technologies can create. This is the spirit of entrepreneuring in its most original, and often lovely, form.
Still, the bond of reality must come to bear at some point, and [...]

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