WHAT’S NEXT? HOW DO I GET ORGANIZED? WHAT SYSTEMS DO I NEED?
Gregg Fairbrothers: What’s next? It depends. There’s no one answer to a question like this. What you need to do next is affected by where you are, and especially, what are the next risks to your business that you need to eliminate. These are the strategy- and execution-related next steps, things like how to get … Continue reading
WHERE DO I GO TO FIND LEGAL ADVICE AND MAKE GOOD LEGAL DECISIONS?
Gregg Fairbrothers: Lawyers are the place to find legal advice, but using them can’t substitute for your own judgment and decisions. It’s your job to manage your lawyers, not be so ignorant or unconcerned that they end up managing you. If you are starting a company you have to be versant enough in all the … Continue reading
MOST IMPORTANT LESSON LEARNED?
Chris Weiss (Co-Founder, President, and CEO, Dynamic Clinical Systems): I recently heard serial entrepreneur Jonathan Kaplan interviewed on NPR. Among other things, he advised that an entrepreneur who is “… willing to hear ‘no’ so many times that it sounds like ‘yes,’ [will] probably be successful. Why do I think this is important advice? It’s … Continue reading
BIGGEST CHALLENGE?
Bob Mighell (Founder, Tilting Motor Works): One of my biggest challenges has been the management of employees. They really don’t teach you how to hire excellent employees and keep them motivated in business school. When starting a company, you have the opportunity to create a workplace environment where you really want to go to every … Continue reading
BIGGEST REGRET?
Andy Palmer (CEO and Co-Founder, Vertica Systems, Inc.): My biggest regret over the course of my career is not moving to Silicon Valley back in 1988 after graduating from Bowdoin. I went to New Zealand and Australia to play rugby after graduation – and should have just staying in CA rather than coming back to … Continue reading
WHY DID I BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR?
Kate Ryan Reiling (Founder and Inventor, Morphology Games): I didn’t know I was an entrepreneur until I went to business school. Like many eager MBAs, what I wrote my application essay on and what I ended up doing were not very related. After arriving at Tuck, the people I liked the best were those interested … Continue reading
HOW DO I BRING MY PRODUCT TO MARKET?
Gregg Fairbrothers: Not to overstate the obvious, but the way to bring your product to market is to go out and sell it. You should try some selling yourself, because selling means touching customers, and there is nothing more valuable than being in touch with your customers. But products seldom sell themselves. Marketing—product, price, place, … Continue reading
WHAT I KNOW NOW THAT I WISH I KNEW THEN
Stephen Bloch, MD (General Partner, Canaan Partners): As a first time entrepreneur in 1994, I was founding CEO of Radiology Management Sciences (RMS) a pioneering company managing the cost and quality of medical imaging for HMOs. Today radiology benefit management is a billion dollar industry. Subsequently I founded or invested in four other early stage … Continue reading
Put together a realistic budget
Start by putting your management team in a room and do a SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats – look critically at your business for a one year and five year time frame. Decide what goals and initiatives the numbers will need to support. How will you generate a top line and a gross … Continue reading
Setting up basic processing
Get a basic accounting package like Intuit’s Quickbooks (http://quickbooks.intuit.com/pro/). Determine what information you will need to get out of your system and this will drive what your chart of accounts looks like. Think forward, look at peers, ask your outside accountant. Think about the level of detail you will need for management and board reporting. … Continue reading
Startup Toolkit 