Entrepreneurship

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How To De-Risk Your Startup

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How To De-Risk Your Startup

Aha, we got you! Actually, we want to talk about the whole notion that you can “de-risk” a startup. We frequently hear founders and investors make a statement like “This is a good investment because it’s already been de-risked.” Or advisors will say, “We can help you de-risk your startup.” This makes us want to remind people about the difference between uncertainty and risk. Risk is probabilistic and can be quantified. Uncertainty is about the unknown. It’s hard to put a probability on the success of a startup. So, moving startups forward requires reducing uncertainty rather than risk.

Let’s work through a more tangible example. On one of our favorite mountain bike trails, there is a set of four stumps.

Going Pro as an Entrepreneur

Going Pro as an Entrepreneur

In college, I was busy. As a pro, I am under pressure.

As an introduction, I am Arthur Root, a co-founder of Nostra. At Nostra, our goal is to make the online shopping experience as similar as possible to the in-person experience using psychometric information. My team and I hopped on the entrepreneurial bike in 2018 while we were juniors at Indiana University. We are now college graduates pursuing our company full time. To use a metaphor, we have taken the training wheels off our bicycle and are beginning to ride full steam ahead…

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How Much Will Your Startup Have To Pay For Insurance?

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How Much Will Your Startup Have To Pay For Insurance?

Launching a startup is a wonderful and proud moment. However, most entrepreneurs won’t have much time to enjoy the moment before it’s time to get down to serious business.

When you start creating a list of everything you’ll need to put in order before your business is fully functional, you’ll realize that simply getting started is just the tip of the iceberg. And rest assured - there will be plenty of challenges along your entrepreneurial road. Once you reach the end of your checklist, you should go ahead and write down another essential matter that you might have forgotten along the way - business insurance.

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Are Startup Innovators Born…Or Made?

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Are Startup Innovators Born…Or Made?

Todd recently had an opportunity to write an article for The Conversation on innovators. The article explored what if anything makes entrepreneurs and innovators different from other people. Madam C.J. Walker is featured as an exemplar of some of the important attributes and behaviors of innovators. Based on decades of research, the basic thesis is that there are no specific personality traits or DNA that entrepreneurs are born with; however, there are some abilities and behaviors that can be learned and practiced.

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Startup Founders Need to Be Both Passionate and Savvy About the Solution They are Creating

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Startup Founders Need to Be Both Passionate and Savvy About the Solution They are Creating

In The Titanic Effect, we talk about the PEP model for startup founders – Passion, Experience and Persistence. We’ve shared some ideas about Persistence and how to have it. But we’ve been doing research about the importance of passion for the last 5 years or so. So we thought it was time to share what research has shown.

The whole reason that researchers have looked at passion is that they’ve been tracking what leads to startup funding. In the 1980s and 1990s, the primary focus was on understanding what criteria venture capitalists and then angel investors said they used to evaluate venture pitches. One key finding from this time, was that the founder and management team rose above all other criteria. So, researchers looked into why the founder and his team were so important. Investors recognize that creating a scalable startup takes a lot of work, overcoming many challenges. So they wanted to make sure they bet on the right people.

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“Self Made”—What Can Startups Learn From Madam C.J. Walker

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“Self Made”—What Can Startups Learn From Madam C.J. Walker

We recently watched the Netflix original limited series “Self Made,” inspired by the life of Madam C.J. Walker. We do understand that elements of the story were adapted for entertainment value, but it was nevertheless an inspiring and educational story about a truly self-made millionaire. In fact, Madam Walker not only was the first self-made woman American millionaire, she also happens to have been the first self-made Black millionaire. We found it interesting to note that she moved her company to Indianapolis in 1910 while the Titanic was being built. There are several key takeaways we wanted to share from the series that we believe are important for entrepreneurs and startups everywhere. Oh and if you haven’t watched Self Made, we highly recommend it: 4 episodes of 45 minutes each are well-worth the time. It’s a good story, good character development, and very well acted.

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Let’s Talk About How to Persevere Through the Startup Grind

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Let’s admit that starting a company is really hard. It takes a lot of grinding. For those you who aren’t sure what the startup grind is, it is the epitome of the definition of grind: Dull, hard work; A crushing or grating sound or motion; or To wear down, polish or sharpen through friction. You see, creating a company from nothing takes hard work. It’s the kind of hard work that on the one hand is dull, but on the other hand is exciting because you know you are creating something from nothing. But it also encounters a lot of friction and it can be soul crushing. Doing the thousands of small, annoying tasks that move a company forward is just plain hard and painful. But, the best startups founders have to persevere through these struggles to move the ball forward. If they don’t, the ball just sits there. And of course, we all want to work smarter rather than harder. But, it takes PEP – Passion, Experience and Persistence. But, how do founders persist in the face of these challenges?

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How Can Startups Get Others to Help Them?

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How Can Startups Get Others to Help Them?

Yes, startups need dollars to move forward. But they also need help, lots of help. This help comes from getting introductions to potential customers, employees, and investors; finding beta customers to test their products; and even having advisors to help them work through tough decisions. They need others to advocate for them. But how do they get this help?

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Six Startup Secrets We’ve Shared on Podcasts

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Six Startup Secrets We’ve Shared on Podcasts

Since The Titanic Effect: Successfully Navigating the Uncertainties that Sink Most Startups came out in June 2019, we’ve been fortunate to be a guest on a number of podcasts. If you’re interested in listening to these conversations, all of the links are on the Podcast page of the website. One thing that each podcaster does is look for sound bites in the discussion. These sound bites can become hooks in social media posts. They are a hook because there is truth that rings out through them. They are also little secrets, that “those in the know” only share occasionally with others. So we thought we’d share a few of these secrets with all of you.

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Launch a Startup During a Pandemic? It’s Not as Crazy as it Sounds

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Launch a Startup During a Pandemic? It’s Not as Crazy as it Sounds

These are hard times for all of us. The pandemic is taking a global toll on our health and our economy. It is a time of tremendous uncertainty. Why would you possibly start a company during such challenging times?

First, there is a history of great companies being started in hard times. Going back more than a century, GE and IBM, Fortune 100 companies today, were founded during the 1890s, a time of great upheaval and tough times with a major banking crisis. In fact, the original J.P. Morgan of banking fame, Director of the White Star Line who built and operated the Titanic, was instrumental in steering the U.S .economy from the brink of collapse in the late 1890s. Read more about J.P. Morgan and how he affected the Titanic’s demise in our book, The Titanic Effect.