Hitching Your Wagon to a Star

I presented this Prezi at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences held at the Grand Wailea, Maui in January 2013. Click on through it, if you're interested...and let me know what you think of it.

In this presentation, I highlight three IT-based entrepreneurial startups and discuss how each have hitched their wagon to a tech star.  The founders of the exemplar startup, TweetPhoto (turned Plixi, acquired by Lockerz), made key moves early in their launch that enabled the firm to grow quickly and overcome the first-mover advantages of their quicker-to-market competitors.  In the final two startups, I encourage the reader to discover how two Instagram-linked startups, Instacanvas and Instapparel, are currently hitching their wagon to Instagram's star.

As you might imagine, the case presentation is better heard than clicked through, so if you'd like to learn more about the teaching case and how I use it in my teaching and research, please contact me via LinkedIn, Twitter, or email.

Blended Startups: Combining IT with Social, Mobile, Instant Communities on Prezi

On Choosing Your New Venture "Team"

In preparation for my upcoming interview with Barbara Corcoran--"Queen of Real Estate" and one of the "sharks" on ABC's Shark Tank--I'm reading her book Shark Tales. The book reads quickly and with sufficient detail to provide relevance and currency for any entrepreneurially-minded person.

Although I haven't finished the book, she makes some excellent points about the importance of character, passion, and purpose to the entrepreneur and the new venture creation process. I read this on p. 288 today and thought I'd share it with you:

"If you're going to build a big business, sooner or later you have to hire the right people to help you run it, and when you do, you'd better pick them carefully...The best people have the essential qualities of character, energy, and thankfulness. If someone lacks integrity, you'll find he won't be there for you when the going gets tough. If someone is apathetic, he won't make it to the finish line. And if someone is not appreciative at the onset, you can count on the fact that he'll stab you in the back when there's real money on the table."

So, what do you think? Do you agree that what matters is character, energy, and thankfulness? Just yesterday in class, we had a solid discussion on the importance of trust to the enterpreneurial process. When you are a nobody, your concept is unproven, and your business is unknown, your trustworthiness is one way to establish yourself as a legitimate option in the marketplace. This trustworthiness is a factor of others' perceptions of your ABI; your ability to do what you're claiming to do, your benevolence in making decisions that are to the benefit of others rather than only to yourself, and your integrity fueled by reliable behavior that matches your words.

Be on the lookout for my writeup of the upcoming interview. Should be a good one...

A new "Y" incubator

"Y"s are all the rage these days in business incubator naming. Since the launch of Y Combinator in 2005, and the resulting success of many of its incubated creations, Y Combinator has caught the attention of the new venture creatorati [yes, this is a word that I just created]. Some of Y Combinator's most notable successes have included scribd, justin.tv, weebly, Dropbox, and reddit.

Let me be the first to tell you about the latest Y incubator: Y-Enterprise. This time, the Y is there on purpose...Y stands for Yonkers, the city in New York that is offering a boatload of benefits to attract new ventures to find their home in the Y, up the Hudson from the big M [aka Manhattan, ever heard of it?].

Here are some of the carrots Mayor Amicone is dangling in front of new venture creators to entice them to the 8,000 square foot facility in his town:

• private office space at reduced rental rates
• communal meeting space to cross-pollinate ideas
• internet and phone service
• sundry office equipment (copiers, fax, scanner)
• reception and administrative staff
• access to professional business development, legal and accounting support

Cities around the country are considering business incubators as an additional device in the economic development game. Have you taken advantage of a business incubator near you?