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The Resource Center has all the info you'll need From content to user feedback, the resource center has the information you need for every level of the entrepreneurial process.
In the depths of the credit crunch, community lenders become a popular financing source for Main Street. But small-business owners may need to work harder to get support from local banks these days.
After realizing he needed a more rigorous hiring process in his fast-growing company, the entrepreneur author details his step-by-step interview process based on Topgrading hiring principles. This process enabled the author to recruit the best people possible for his company's top positions.
The entrepreneur recounts how his firm went from being one of 50 tactical suppliers for a large firm to joining its exclusive club of strategic partners. The key: first understand these large firms' challenges and deliver solutions that would transform their businesses.
Perhaps no other country celebrates innovation the way America does.
This passion for inventions started early in our history. Did you know that George Washington signed the First U.S. Patent Grant on July 31, 1790, and the patent examiner was none other than Thomas Jefferson? (Thank you, Google (GOOG)!) In America, we're reminded of the life-changing power of inventiveness every day. Some of the greatest inventors of yesterday spawned the greatest brands of today. What do the names Chrysler, Coleman, Goodyear (GT), Campbell (CPB), Colt, and Edison mean to you? Cars, tents, tires, soup, guns, and the electric lightbulb, of course.
Adaptation to change is a top priority for the founder of a fast-growing company that provides information-management solutions for home-care agencies. Leadership sets the standards for performance. But the bottom line is the bottom line, especially in tighter capital markets. The best way to foster endurance is to build value by satisfying your paying customers.
Don’t get Randal Charlton wrong. The executive director at the TechTown business incubator in Detroit is thankful for a recent announcement of $5 million coming his way to help graduates of his FastTrac business training program launch their companies. But, he says, look at it this way: The money, granted by the New Economy Initiative, a Detroit-area philanthropic partnership, is not being thrown at comfortable entrepreneurs. This is, essentially, aid to the unemployed. And, as such, $5 million barely scratches the surface.
Many of the entrepreneurs to be helped by the First Step Fund, the entity created by NEI’s $5 million investment, are not launching startups because it seems like a promising thing to do. They have nowhere else to go, Charlton says. Their former jobs in the auto industry are gone, never to return. Their choices are to leave the state or try to create their own jobs in Michigan.
Tactics for selling services are offered by an entrepreneur whose consulting firm places temporary senior-level talent in finance, law, and other disciplines in early-stage and growth companies.
Valuation negotiations between entrepreneurs and investors are often contentious. Such valuations rarely stray from the $1 million to $3 million range for seed/startup companies that angels expect to grow to $50 million to $100 million over five to eight years. Angels are most concerned about the management team's ability to rapidly grow the company and about helping the entrepreneur achieve these growth objectives.
Entrepreneurs must identify ways to exit a business at the onset, which enables efforts to be directed to a goal, writes the builder of two companies. The author, now a venture capitalist, outlines four steps for doing so.
Entrepreneurs seeking venture capital - a major source of funding for growth - need to approach these investors as both sellers of their company's future and buyers of financing services, writes a venture capitalist and former entrepreneur, who provides a targeted plan for addressing each.
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