In 2013, when Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures first coined the “unicorns” term describing startups valued at $1 billion or more, she named 39 companies in the U.S fitting the definition.
I recently attended an Angel investors group in Vancouver. It’s fascinating to hang out with a bunch of zillionaires for the day and listen to startup pitchers trying to wrestle money from them. The Keuretsu Forum is based in Seattle and with over 2500 accredited investors is the largest investor network in the world. The great thing about Keuretsu investors is that they regularly come to Vancouver to meet with startup entrepreneurs at the Vancouver chapter. They are well known for sharing opportunities with three or more chapters in different cities in order to close a deal.
We encourage you to tap into the wealth of information around starting your first business and the people willing to help guide you along the way. Gary Bizzo is one of those people and here are a few key insights from Gary that he wished someone would have given him.
Fun fact! Reddit grew their website using FAKE users. They did that to populate the sites and make it seem as though it was popular.
I’m not saying these are the right ways to think about gathering more resources, but it makes sense to some people to have a cushion.
Ken and his company, SiteSell, have been working with solopreneurs longer than anyone else online today. This is their 20th year in business. That’s a century in Internet years!
Countries that put their artists and protesters in jail will never succeed in building a successful culture of entrepreneurship. They will be relegated to creating better mousetraps or cloning other countries’ business models.
I keep being asked what I mean by a ‘startup’ business. My first book, “How to Start a Successful Business – the First Time” was about the sole proprietor who had a great idea, had always dreamed of being a business owner and quit a good job to risk everything to go on his own. He’s determined to be independent and like 78% of all the businesses in the US (according to Census.gov), it will start out as a sole proprietorship that will eventually grow into a microbusiness.
Some men see things as they are and ask why.
Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
-George Bernard Shaw
Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development, Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it.