 |
|||||||||||||
7 Steps to a Successful Startup Thursday August 4 6pm, Hotel ZaZa, Dallas $10 Early Bird, $15 Online, $20 Door
Naeem shares the basic building blocks of startup life from how to be sure you’re an entrepreneur to concept validation, team building, fundraising, and understanding the life of a founder/CEO. Whether you have a great idea … are starting a small business … or are an entrepreneur yourself, you are sure to receive invaluable tips from Naeem’s insights and experience. Naeem Zafar has written six books on entrepreneurship, including the law, finance, and funding. He is currently working on his 7th startup in the area of enterprise mobility. |
|||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||
|
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
7 Steps to a Successful Startup Aug. 4 in Dallas
Published July 16, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Author, serial entrepreneur, and Haas School of Business at Berkeley professor Naeem Zafar visits from the Bay Area to present 7 Steps to a Successful Startup.
Remember when you were nine and that twerp during school recess called you a booger head. Your mom sympathized and your dad told you to suck it up and forget about it. Those days are back.
Protecting your reputation is a joke in the Internet age. Sure, employment, social, and dating services either don’t permit negative comments or give you control. Don’t be fooled.
You may think you date in anonymity. But … your bad behavior can and will be reported to the world at places like Don’t Date Him Girl, Never Date Her, PeepSheets, aLoveLinksPlus, Cheater News, Cheaters Expose, and Liars, Cheaters & Bastards
The Internet is so large, ubiquitous, and anonymous that you can’t even pretend that you have control.
Companies, at least the smart ones, gave up years ago. They provide a multiplicity of means (phone, chat, email, web, forum, Twitter, etc.) so you can contact them. They employ reputation management systems so they know when and where they’re smeared. When they can they respond courteously, professionally, and directly, regardless of the venom.
Do the same in your personal life. Michael Arrington has some good tips at Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions.
My advice – Go back to the playground and remember what your dad said.
This is a fight you can’t win. It IS nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than to take arms against that sea of troubles. Let your good work outshine a few nasty cuts. As Monty Python said, it’s just a flesh wound. Really.
You couldn’t avoid school and you can’t avoid the net with a literal web of job, business, and social droppings. You can’t control what people say about you. Not then. Not now.
If you’re an HR Manager researching a candidate, beware crossing professional-personal boundaries. You don’t waltz into her house checking out her choice of panties and adult entertainment accessories. You shouldn’t be surprised to find an embarrassing photo on Facebook.
If you’re reading your own personal or company bashing, consider the context. The truth is that they’re just not that into you (assuming a modicum of self-awareness). Such diatribes say far more about the writer than the subject. Response only breathes life into dying sparks. Let it die, to be swallowed by the relentless and growing maw of the Internet and its hundreds of billions of web pages.
Everyone has dirt. Life will go on. Time heals all (or at least most) wounds. [Insert your own aphorism here.]
Entrepreneur/academic Vivek Wadhwa writes Can Entrepreneurs Be Made? Based on his research, the answer is a clear Yes.
His focus is on the lemming-like fallibility of investors. But don’t let that cloud the real news. It’s the confirmation of the American dream … and the Indian dream … and indeed the Global dream. You CAN start your own high-growth startup.
You don’t have to come from a family of entrepreneurs or have a personal history of starting your own businesses. But you do need to have a scalable idea, commit yourself fully for a few years, and be or become an expert in your field and business.
That’s exactly what we’ve been committed to the past five years. We now have multiple to ways to help.
- Personal Consulting. Our staff provides direct coaching and consulting, from raising money to building your business. Contact us to learn more.
- Group consulting. The Tribe Blue Business Accelerator combines group facilitation, coaching, consulting, and accountability with a structured goals and commitment program.
- Networking. Meet other entrepreneurs MORE effectively … at LESS cost … in LESS time with Hardcore Networking.
- Roundtables and Seminars. Join DallasBlue Entrepreneurs.
Here are the first two paragraphs from the article.
Silicon Valley investors often have a picture in their heads of the type of person who is worthy of funding: young, brash, stubborn, and arrogant. They believe that successful entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families and that they start their entrepreneurial journey by selling lemonade while in grade school. Angel investor and entrepreneur, Jason Calacanis said as much in his recent talk
to Penn State students. And after meeting Wharton students, VC Fred Wilson expressed shock when a professor told him that you could teach people to be entrepreneurs. Wilson wrote, “I’ve been working with entrepreneurs for almost 25 years now and it is ingrained in my mind that someone is either born an entrepreneur or is not.”
Jason, Fred, and Silicon Valley VCs, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. Entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re made. And they aren’t anything like you think they are. My team surveyed 549 successful entrepreneurs. We found that the majority didn’t have entrepreneurial parents. They didn’t even have entrepreneurial aspirations while going to school. They simply got tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired. So they took the big leap.
Strategic cooperation as a superior business paradigm isn’t new. It’s been around for millennia. It’s a staple for management consultants. Coopetition was a big buzz word in the 90s. There is a resurgence every decade or two when an economic sector goes bust due to unfettered capitalism, a less-militaristic US Administration takes power, or both. It’s always amusing to see it rediscovered as if it’s a new and radical concept.
We’ve long promoted alliances at DallasBlue from our Entrepreneurs group, which advocates partnerships as a key strategic lever for startups, to Tribe Blue, which is founded on group support and empowerment.
I especially like the term “Free Association” from William Dunk Partners of Global Province. Much of today’s workforce are indeed free agents. They don’t just work for or with one company, but with many organizations. They freely choose their associations, from consulting work to founding or working for new ventures to volunteering.
William Dunk Partners is a savvy and prescient group that has long advocated a rational view of the world from politics to business. This week’s issue explores Free Assocation with examples from “no drama with Obama” to Sony’s amicable co-chairs to organizational interoperability to Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. Here is an excerpt with their definition of Free Association.
On the Global Province, we have claimed that the predominant catalyst for organizations that would seek to be global is not mergers and acquisitions, but alliances where companies, governments, and others cooperate freely even though they have no fiscal or legal bonds, but instead move in concert because they have the will to work together. We call this “Free Association.”
What we did not make clear there is that alliance-making requires a temperament and decorum that is very much counter to the age of celebrity. No entity, no matter its competitive advantages, that wishes to operate on a global scale has the resources or the implicit power to be effective on a go-it-alone basis. What’s required is a culture that celebrates gentle dialogue between those inside the walls of an organization and with those in other institutions 25,000 miles away. This requires people who are in control of their mouths and their egos.
Win a Free Ticket to DallasBlue Networking Party Tue Oct 27
Published October 23, 2009 Blue/DallasBlue , Contest , Uncategorized Leave a CommentWIN FREE TICKET!
- Follow Marc Freedman on Tweeter – http://twitter.com/LinkDaddy
- Be the 2nd person to tweet the following – RT @LinkDaddy Free Business Photo & Massages! #DallasBlue Networking Party Tue Oct 27 5-8pm in Dallas http://DallasTuesday.com
ABOUT THE PARTY
You only get one chance to make an impression. You are what people see – in business on your web site, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter – and socially on dating sites. Presidents have portraits. You can too. Do you have a current professional high quality business photo to make that great impression?
If not, it’s free and part of the goodies we have for you at the Oct 27 Fat Tuesday Networking and LinkedIn Party hosted by Visual Image Fine Art Publishing.
Sign up now! Early registration has been extended through Friday. It’s been reduced to only $5 for Tribe and Gold members and $10 for everyone else!
The party continues our Social Networking theme this month.
- The short presentation is on social media branding with “You Are What You Tweet.”
- Visual Image Fine Art Publishing will be taking high quality business photos in their studio for your networking and business profiles.
- Park Central Chiropractic will be back with free massages.
- Experience Power networking with Professional introductions, Electronic business cards, and Free promotion in Blue.`
- As always, enjoy food, drink, and door prizes, and making new business connections.
Register now at DallasTuesday.com.
Tuesday October 27, 5-8pm
Fat Tuesday Business Networking and LinkedIn Party
Hosted by Visual Image Fine Art Publishing, Dallas
14320 Midway Rd, Suite 300, Dallas
http://DallasTuesday.com
