cyberlaxamana

by Jennifer Hepworth I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the notion of control. I’m generally a person who feels most comfortable in the driving seat, having decided on a destination, figured out the best way to get there and chosen the sound track. This attitude has gotten me a lot of places, and I think a strong sense of personal responsibility for outcomes is an important quality and a Good Thing. However. There’s a line. On one side of the line is being in control and on the other is being a control freak. I’m not saying I’ve been there and made large and messy mistakes and learned the hard way that control-freakery must be avoided, but I’m fortunate enough to have met some very smart people with relevant things to say on the topic which will hopefully prevent me from heading down that path. 1. Great entrepreneurs know what they’re bad at, and hire awesome people to do it for them (Mike Cassidy). In some ways, Steve Jobs was the consummate control freak (just check out A...

by Om L. Lala In a recent HBS class, a firm called “KNP,” specializing in “speaker training and executive communication,” shared their advice on presentation skills. After seeing thousands of VC pitches and interviewing hundreds of VC principals, KNP noted that despite the quantitative nature of the evaluation process, the characteristic that often ends up making the difference between getting funded and not is “passion.” Similarly, entrepreneurs often describe how their “passion” for an idea is what motivates them. But in the journey of most startups, passion can be both an asset and a liability. Hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship is the best approach a startup can employ to make sure their business model is viable. But this process is an inherently unbiased analysis that should not be influenced by an entrepreneur’s personal attachment to his idea. As such, there can be an inherent conflict between the dispassion required for hypothesis-testing and the entrepreneur’s passion for his ...

by Jeff Buening I’ve spent the better part of 2 years now at HBS developing a sense for what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. Whether through attending speaker series, joining tech/start-up clubs, pursuing start-up ideas of my own, or extensive coursework I’ve taken (The Entrepreneurial Manager, Social Entrepreneurship in the Biz Sector, Entrepreneurship and Global Capitalism, Entrepreneurial Finance, Launching Tech Ventures, Digital Marketing Strategy, etc.), I’ve covered countless data points and case studies on startups that have both succeeded and failed. And I’ve been fortunate enough to listen firsthand in class to many of these entrepreneurs discuss and diagnose the reasons for their successes and failures. One topic that consistently pops up unprompted is how and why the entrepreneur decided to start her particular business and, in some cases, leave that startup to pursue the next one – effectively, it’s the decision criteria an entrepreneur applies to start (and stay in...

by Tom Eisenmann I recently wrote some former students from the HBS MBA classes of 1999 and 2000, asking what advice they'd give to current students considering an entrepreneurial path. In a prior post , I shared their responses to the question, "Do you have any regrets about founding a firm upon graduation?" Below, I present their advice to current students. In 2000, Rod Harl co-founded GiftwareExchange, an online B2B marketplace that connected gift stores with product suppliers. The business never gained traction, and after several career twists and turns, Rod is now President of Alene Candles , a business he and a partner purchased in 2008 that manufactures custom candles. Rod shared this advice: Ample low-cost funding can compensate for founders’ weaknesses. In such periods I might endorse aggressively pursuing new businesses regardless of your experience or the quality of your idea. Playing musical chairs, you can make a lot of money. But outside those periods, entr...

by Rick Hansen This post is influenced by some news of the past week as well as a few of the case studies of LTV.  LTV teaches important concepts and principles for implementation, but perhaps lost in all the cases is the amazing variety of personalities whom we’ve covered.  Having worked with a few types of entrepreneurs in the tech space in the past (and having my attention piqued by events of the past week, when the start-up I was supposed to write an HBS case for was abruptly acquired), I think it is also appropriate to spend some time figuring out the different types of start-ups that fit our career vision.  The Sell-out I know, the name sounds bad.  But the negative connotation isn’t really fair.  In the end, start-ups hope to create value through new and innovative ideas.  At some point, there are economies of scale to be had which are usually best exploited by larger, more established firms.  As an MBA, you better know whether you are working...

by Albert Chung In the HBS MBA elective Founders’ Dilemmas we often talk about the rich vs. king tradeoff where founders often start out wanting to be “Rich and Regal” but quickly find themselves having to make choices that require a tradeoff between getting rich and maintaining control (see Prof. Noam Wasserman’s blog post about the Rich vs. King tradeoff ). Personally, I have a difficult time with the tradeoff as giving up control does not necessarily ensure getting rich, whereas retaining control does guarantee that you will be King and the only variable is how large (or small) your kingdom will be. Perhaps this is why Mark Pincus advises entrepreneurs : “All that matters is that you have control of the company. Don’t give up control.  If you’re going to give up control, go home.” In fact, when I look at the startups that have truly made a large impact on our generation , almost all are situations where the founding CEO remained “King” well beyond finding product market fit. Be...