Family friend Andreas Hagenkamp came over to visit Google during his stay in Silicon Valley.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Andreas Hagenkamp & Tobi
Family friend Andreas Hagenkamp came over to visit Google during his stay in Silicon Valley.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The successful entrepreneur
All it takes to start a company is about 50 bucks and a visit at the local Office Depot to pick-up some generic incorporation forms. The challenging part is to create a successful (!) company. I'm jotting down a few components that haven statistically proven to stir up a much more successful company. In fact everything you are reading has been borrowed from my former professor Greg Fairchild at Darden who has studied the significance of certain aspects.
1. "Three or more": To be successful in the long-run one should have at least three founders in the company. Sure, you always want to have an uneven number of key people to avoid voting conflicts. More importantly you think about the business differently with three or more people. If you have only two persons you will talk back and forth and hear what you already know. This helps little to advance the company in the early days. With three members you will start a dynamic that can evolve into something new and better.
2. "Sales Guy": Do have an experienced sales person on your team. Why? Well, the greatest idea is worth nothing if you can't sell it. A sales person will know what it takes to sell and pitch an idea early on. He/She will help you steer into a direction that yields cash sooner than later. Please note that you should have an experienced sales person - not a person who wants to be experienced.
3. "Serial entrepreneurs": This sounds like a contradiction but the key to success is to fail and keep trying. I'm leaving out the percentages, that I don't have with me, but your chance of ending up in a profitable business is increasing dramatically with each business in which you have failed. What does that mean? First and foremost: don't give up once you fail. Second, have realistic expectations that the next or first start-up might not be it. It would be nice but it's more likely that you will succeed in the long-run. Again, don't give up.
One little chip of information at the end. So which business yields the most millionaires? Believe it or not, and without immediate backup, I remember from my MBA class that the "Dry-Cleaning-Business" brings out the most millionaires. A surprise? :-)
1. "Three or more": To be successful in the long-run one should have at least three founders in the company. Sure, you always want to have an uneven number of key people to avoid voting conflicts. More importantly you think about the business differently with three or more people. If you have only two persons you will talk back and forth and hear what you already know. This helps little to advance the company in the early days. With three members you will start a dynamic that can evolve into something new and better.
2. "Sales Guy": Do have an experienced sales person on your team. Why? Well, the greatest idea is worth nothing if you can't sell it. A sales person will know what it takes to sell and pitch an idea early on. He/She will help you steer into a direction that yields cash sooner than later. Please note that you should have an experienced sales person - not a person who wants to be experienced.
3. "Serial entrepreneurs": This sounds like a contradiction but the key to success is to fail and keep trying. I'm leaving out the percentages, that I don't have with me, but your chance of ending up in a profitable business is increasing dramatically with each business in which you have failed. What does that mean? First and foremost: don't give up once you fail. Second, have realistic expectations that the next or first start-up might not be it. It would be nice but it's more likely that you will succeed in the long-run. Again, don't give up.
One little chip of information at the end. So which business yields the most millionaires? Believe it or not, and without immediate backup, I remember from my MBA class that the "Dry-Cleaning-Business" brings out the most millionaires. A surprise? :-)
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