William Sahlman, professor of entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School
The U.S. economy is in a tough state, with mile-high deficits and slow growth in jobs. There are other countries that are pulling ahead, but some cling to the hope that startups and the spirit of entrepreneurship embodied in Silicon Valley could save the country. That’s one of the conclusions reached by a team of Harvard Business School professors who toured the valley this fall.
It has always been undisputed that Silicon Valley has been the start-up capital of the world because it is overflowing with investors, mentors, and start-ups in every stage of development. But an affordable and laid-back alternative to Silicon Valley, the Mile-High City is building a vibrant start-up community.
Taiwanese entrepreneurs have begun to seek market opportunities outside the U.S. in the phenomenon called the reverse brain drain.
Many foreign entrepreneurs clamor at America’s gates to get a piece of the innovation incubator of Silicon Valley. But Jerry Chang, a serial entrepreneur and Taiwanese immigrant, has done what most hopeful incomers would consider the unthinkable and taken his business offshore. In 2009, he established mobile payment company Mobile Radius. Rather than found the company in the U.S., let alone his native Taiwan, Chang decided to take his business to China. To many, his decision is a surprising one. Chang does not face the typical obstacles most immigrant entrepreneurs encounter. He acquired U.S. citizenship over two decades ago and has significant experience in the tech field. His first company, Clarent Corp., had boasted a client list of big-named companies like AT&T Worldnet, China Telecom, and Telstra.
The process of getting a visa is slow, expensive, time-consuming, and often unsuccessful.
It seemed like all of the stars were aligning for Jay Meattle in early 2010. He had raised several hundred thousand dollars from investors in Boston for his start-up, Shareaholic. And the company, which enables people to easily share online content they find interesting, had just passed the milestone of 1 million users.
If you start a business, odds are that your company will fail.
It may look easy from the outside. An entrepreneur with a hot technology and venture-capital funding becomes a billionaire in his 20s. But now there is evidence that venture-backed start-ups fail at far higher numbers than the rate the industry usually cites.
Poyan Rajamand faced a choice when he completed his degree from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2008. Would he look for work in the United States or relocate abroad? Rajamand explained in a report written by the Partnership for a New America Economy and the Partnership for New York City, that he and his fiancé arrived at their decision easil. They would move to Singapore, where obtaining a visa was simpler for high-skilled immigrants than here in the United States. In his new home, Rajamand has founded a startup called Barghest Partners that invests in new businesses.
Canada has been known to regularly bleed startups and entrepreneurs, who flock south to seek superior funding opportunities south of the border in hotspots like Silicon Valley and New York.
Many do not have the entrepreneurial mindset when we start a business.
Most people are born with entrepreneurial traits when they start their business. Those traits are acquired along the way. The biggest hurdle to overcome in your business usually is fear. Despite wanted to succeed in life this fear holds us back to do what we want to do. Here are five steps to overcome fear in business.
Inner-city Minneapolis teens who screen-print shirts.
Just ten years ago the term “inner city” meant “dead city” and people would picture a city of destruction, dereliction and despair. But, today inner cities are now a hip hotbed of convenient culture, commerce and connection. Scholars such as Richard Florida and Edward Glaeser, among others, are showing that although increasing problems accompany increasing density, urban access to the good things of life increases even faster. The centripetal force of today’s cities is pulling the ambitious and educated back in, and increasing cities’ innovative capacity, without sacrificing (at least some would argue) their inclusiveness.
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, thinks the key to career success is understanding the dynamics of networks and how to leverage them to your benefit.
Credit cards are the most common form of financing for small business startups.
There are eight solutions to financing your startup with debt. When you are talking about debt options, think of loans and lines of credit that you pay back to a lender. We are not looking at any equity solutions such as angel investors, venture capital, etc. But nothing is easy these days and if you have damaged credit or you’re looking for several hundred thousand dollars it’s much less likely to happen purely with debt.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor shows entrepreneurial activity revived in 2011 after years of decline
Early-stage entrepreneurial activity rates surged around the world in 2011, jumping nearly 60 percent in the U.S., according to a survey released this week by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. More than 12 percent of U.S. adults reported starting a business or running new businesses last year, up from just below 8 percent in 2010.
