“You can quote me on that!”
You know that a major part of the Democratic pitch on health insurance reform is how the package will benefit small businesses and startups? Well, it seems a small entrepreneur has taken them up on that. Hours after Vice President Joe Biden dropped the f-bomb in listening range of an [...]
“It may look like a movie, but I see dollars, dollars, dollars.”
Let’s start with a bit of word association. When I say the word “Miramax,” what immediately comes to mind? You might say, “great movies,” or “Cinema Paradiso,” “Shakespeare in Love,” or “Harvey Weinstein.” All of these are fine, but for someone on the business [...]
Social Strata thinks it can pass the unlimited paid leave test.
The Seattle-based business, Social Strata, has been around for 13 years as a social media company (one of the ancients, in other words), and they’ve decided they’re ready for it. Just yesterday, on the Live Cloud blog (which they produced), Social Strata announced that it [...]
More entrepreneurs are thinking that Sarbanes-Oxley is, in fact, for dummies.
All that glitters, it seems, is not golden. In a trend not totally related to recessionary pressures, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are increasingly turning their back on the traditional brass ring of business startups, the initial public offering. Although we’ve all been saturated with stories [...]
Malcom Gladwell explains the puzzling failure of Bill Gates and his promising startup company.
Malcom Gladwell has in the last few years become one of the favorite “elevator” intellectuals in the world of business and entrepreneurship. If you’ve ever been involved in a start-up, you’re intimately familiar with the “elevator speech,” the 30 second “kernel idea” [...]
We wish you the greatest success and happiness for 2010.
Depending on how mathphilic or mathphobic you are, we have either entered the last decade of the naughties or the first decade of the twenty-teens. Either way, it seems we all have big plans to close out the decade (or start the new one) with [...]
. . . have you ever wondered what a marathon is like?
Come on, you know you’ve heard the expression a thousand times. “Running a business” or “starting a business” “is a marathon, not a sprint.” And you nod your head in agreement as if somebody has actually said something sensible. But outside of the fact [...]
Buy this album and they’ll include a song written just for you.
Ezra Furman, leader of the band Harpoons, is offering to “personalize” each and every copy they sell of their third album, Moon Face: Bootlegs and Road Recordings 2006-2009. And I don’t mean that Ezra and his folk-rock meistersingers will sign each CD with some [...]
The Series
Introduction
1.) Internal Rate of Return
1a.) Modified Internal Rate of Return
2.) Net present value
3.) Payback
4.) Average
5.) Standard deviation
Bonus!) Excel Solver
Since we are tightly focusing on the needs of entrepreneurs rather than standard small business owners, of necessity our epic series on spreadsheet formulas has been ushered in by the most relevant math for determining the [...]
In celebration of Omar Harmoui’s day in the sun — Google just acquired his three-year old company, AdMob, for $750 million in Google stock (total venture capital investment: $50 million) — we dedicate this chew-on-this moment to my favorite Omar Harmoui quote:
If you are a person with a laptop and an idea, don’t worry about [...]
He’s the genius behind the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index.
Professor Mark Cannice, the director of the University of San Francisco’s Entrepreneurship program, is probably well-known to you as the founder and primary researcher behind the quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index (if, that is, you read rags like the Wall Street Journal or [...]
Steve has spent a lifetime as an entrepreneur, so check out his interview!
No, it’s not a dating site for lonely startup companies who would otherwise be hopelessly trolling around CraigsList. SingleStartups.com profiles young, energetic entrepreneurs who just so happen to be single, and publishes articles and interviews on what motivates them, what lifestyle they’ve chosen, [...]
As a middle-aged guy with the flexibility of a drafting desk and as a native Minnesotan who considers 40 degrees Fahrenheit to be t-shirt and shorts time and the flexibility of a drafting desk, Bikram Yoga, or “hot,” as in 105 degrees hot, yoga, is not a cup of tea I’ve fancied with any great [...]
Startup success comes from many things, but NEVER from wasting time watching garbage on TV.
I’m not a businessperson in real life, but I play one on TV!
Kevin O’Leary stars on ABC’s new business reality show Shark Tank as one of five executives who vet business ideas pitched by would-be entrepreneurs. O’Leary often delivers the harshest [...]
Shoestring Venture aims to be helpful to anyone and everyone starting a business, from solopreneurs operating a venture from their kitchen table to bricks-and-mortar small business owners to your standard, Sand Hill Road entrepreneur looking to score some big start-up money and create the next Twitter. Going the venture capital route is not for everyone [...]
One more great reason to buy an iPhone . . . Shoestring Venture blog!
Woo-hoo! We have now made the Shoestring Venture blog available on iPhone! We’ve just installed, tested (on Steve’s iPhone), and deployed the WordPress plug-in here at the Shoestring Venture blog and we’re happy to say it’s a winner. Now, it’s not like [...]
I never really understood paying some two bucks per shot on film that faded in two months. But there are millions who love the concept.
Polaroid’s loss is one entrepreneur’s gain. Taking notes?
When the Polaroid film factory in the Dutch town of Enschede shut down in June 2008, it seemed to signal the end for one [...]
Your local bank will happily lend you a few cents. That’s why they’re called small business loans.
Now we’re talking recovery.
The Obama administration is developing an initiative to take money from the $700 billion rescue program for the banking system and make it available to millions of small businesses, which officials say are essential to any [...]
However briefly, our book is now a bestseller. It’s Miller time!
Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible has officially broken into the bestseller category, especially on Amazon where we are now the number one book in Home-Based Business (or number two or three or four depending on the whims and fancies of the Amazon rankings system). This [...]
There’s a new VC in town and he’s taking down names . . .
Marc Andreessen and business partner Ben Horowitz launched a boutique VC fund Monday with an initial capitalization of $300 million that the pair intends to invest in “anything that involves chips and computers” at a clip of $50,000 to $50 million [...]
