Strategy

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What Lessons can Entrepreneurs Learn from Gold Rushes, Pickaxes, and the Titanic Effect?

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What Lessons can Entrepreneurs Learn from Gold Rushes, Pickaxes, and the Titanic Effect?

So what do gold rushes have to do with the Titanic? To start, gold rushes—both literal and figurative—have the potential to create significant wealth for a few lucky/opportunistic ones who jump on board. Windows of opportunity, whether to exploit a specific limited natural resource or to leverage a disruptive technology, create ample potential for significant wealth--but also a plethora of sunken ventures. The Titanic was a vehicle for many aspiring immigrants to achieve their own dream in the new land of the United States, a gold rush of sorts.

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What Does Academic Research Tell Startups about Advertising?

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What Does Academic Research Tell Startups about Advertising?

Since we are business school professors, one of the things we do is read and review academic research on business topics. Specifically, Kim is an associate editor for the Journal of Advertising Research. Of course, this journal focuses on what makes advertising effective. And the bulk of academic research is on TV advertising which might be beyond the reach of most startups. Kim also gets to vote on the “best” article of the year. So we thought we might review the best articles from 2019 and give you the highlights that are relevant to startup advertising. Here are top four facts about advertising we learned last year:

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The 10 Steps to Physically Starting a Business

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The 10 Steps to Physically Starting a Business

Someone who read our startup book, The Titanic Effect, reached out to us to say, “I think I understand the decisions I need to make. Now, I am ready to start my business. What are my first steps?” While our last blogpost shared how to develop a process for making complex decisions, this one is for those of you who are ready to actually start your business. So, here are your first 10 steps. In case that number intimidates you, they are interrelated and can be done concurrently. You are already working on another step while completing an earlier one. And we assume you already have the business idea. These are the steps to physically start that business. 

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Decisions, Decisions: How Startups Need to Approach Decision Making

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Decisions, Decisions: How Startups Need to Approach Decision Making

We recently started reading Steven Johnson’s book Farsighted: How We Make The Decisions That Matter The Most. The essence of the book is that complex decisions require a thoughtful and intentional process to increase the odds of having a favorable outcome… Here are three key elements to good decision making in the startup context:

 

The logic is very similar to our framework in The Titanic Effect. Making important decisions under conditions of uncertainty can have unanticipated consequences—what we call debtbergs in our framework—in a variety of areas including people, markets, technology/product, and strategy. Understanding the tradeoffs and implications of these decisions is important for complex strategic choices like those that startups make on a regular basis. We map out many of the common mistakes founding teams make that can subsequently sink their startups.

 

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Is the Startup Life a Sprint? A Marathon? Nope, it’s an Ironman

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Is the Startup Life a Sprint? A Marathon? Nope, it’s an Ironman

“It’s not a sprint—it’s a marathon!” We hear entrepreneurs with some experience use this phrase to caution new founders about going too fast too soon and burning out. We absolutely agree with part of this expression—starting a company is certainly not a sprint. But as endurance athletes ourselves, we would put a twist on this. Getting a startup going is a lot more like a multisport endurance event such as an Ironman than it is like a marathon. Why? Because it takes several different skillsets to launch a successful venture, not just one. Like a triathlon, there are at least three major categories of uncertainties founders must navigate—working with people, understanding the market, both competition and customers, and developing the product. We call these the human, marketing, and technical oceans.

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Startup Sales: Up and To the Right?

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Startup Sales: Up and To the Right?

Every startup pitch has a slide that shows a future revenue or sales forecast. Can you guess what the overall shape of that revenue growth looks like? If you thought “hockey stick,” then ding, ding, ding – you are right! For those that don’t know what a hockey stick sales growth chart looks like, check out the figure below. But, is that shape of the sales growth curve realistic for startups? It could be.

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A Principle and Two Numbers for Startups

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A Principle and Two Numbers for Startups

In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday, we saved this blogpost until Monday…

In the “little known facts” category about the Titanic, we thought we would share some seemingly random factoids that had an interactive effect to help sink the Titanic. It involves a principle and two numbers—I know, it sounds like an episode of the high school musical show “Glee” (but that would be PrinciPAL…).

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Startups Need to Master the NOW and the NEXT

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Startups Need to Master the NOW and the NEXT

We’ve recorded a number of podcasts lately. Somewhere in the conversation we get asked this question, “What do you say to the entrepreneur who feels overwhelmed and can’t figure out where to start?” We tend to see two different approaches. First, there are those entrepreneurs who just start doing things. Sometimes doing creates momentum and that’s a good thing. But, their activity is kind of scattered because they don’t really have a plan. On the other hand, we also see entrepreneurs who plan, plan, plan but never really take any action. So, we thought we would share the NOW and the NEXT as a way to help you figure out what to do tomorrow.

 

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Focused—or Closed-Minded? There is a Difference

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Focused—or Closed-Minded? There is a Difference

We are big believers in focus. As one serial entrepreneur we know is fond of saying, you can’t get anywhere by trying to “boil the ocean.” That is, if you try to do too much too fast you will fail. At the same time, one of our recent blogs explored the notion of luck. It highlights that a combination of mindfulness and directed energy can increase some types of luck to put your startup in a better position for success. Exploration is a key element of this part of the journey. So when do you explore and consider many alternative directions? When do you zero in on something and doggedly pursue it? How can you stay focused, without being too closed-minded to miss opportunities? This is a very delicate balance, and we thought a blog on the topic might be helpful.

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It’s Smarter to be Lucky than it’s Lucky to be Smart

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It’s Smarter to be Lucky than it’s Lucky to be Smart

Many of us are familiar with some version of this phrase that we’ve quoted from Pippin, The Musical. The idea is that if one is born lucky, they can acquire “smartness” through effort, over time. If one is born smart, that’s great—but you may never acquire luck. Of course, if you were born NFL Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, arguably you have the best of both worlds. 

There is some bit of luck in avoiding hidden debts. Missing icebergs (or “debtbergs”) is not justabout navigation. Luck, fortune, and icebergs are inextricably linked. We thought we would devote this blog to a richer exploration of luck in the entrepreneurial world.