A friend introduced me to a noteworthy line of thinking recently.  It went something like this: “There are two types of entrepreneurs in this world: alpha entrepreneurs and beta entrepreneurs.  Alpha entrepreneurs are the guys that are naturally risk tolerant, even irrational dreamers; they’re charismatic and marshal folks around them […]

Somehow the concept of transparency made its way into both my lunch and dinner conversations yesterday. It’s a worn topic, really, usually focused on privacy concerns and reputation (for the individual) or business opportunity, competitive pressure, or again, reputation (for the enterprise).  
At dinner, though, with a good friend, we briefly […]

In the vein of napkin-drawn business plans, enjoy this index card argument for exercising your inner child, courtesy of Jessica Hagy:

An analysis: Heaps of imagination at a startup yields heaps of money. Or is it heaps of imagination and heaps of money yield a startup?
Presumably the latter, under the assumption […]

There’s an old college admissions question that goes something like this: “Is it better for my kid to get a B in the advanced math class or an A in the standard track?” Well, it’s better to get an A in the advanced math class, the admissions officer will tell […]

At DrJays, I remember feeling surprised when mainstream publications printed material that demonstrated blatant misunderstanding of the industry. More seasoned folks in the room shrugged. We were relatively “under the radar” anyway, and quietly benefiting from some decent market trends. (Lesson: misunderstanding breeds opportunity.)
So when, in the unfortunately named pop […]

In recent weeks, I’ve been chatting a bunch with peers that are looking to raise money for their businesses. It’s been an instructive experience in many ways, but first and foremost it’s driven home the need for talking points. We’d all like to think that we can walk into a […]

Understandably, my entrepreneur friends have been abuzz over the rumored founders buyout at Automattic, the company which runs the popular open source blogging platform Wordpress.com. After supposedly turning down a $200 million acquisition, the company is rumored to have accepted a large new follow-on investment led by existing investor Polaris […]

I’m happy to announce a startup-focused group that launched last night under the name Forge Louisville.
It’s my hope that this effort becomes a unifying body that brings the best entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers from the area under one roof on a regular basis. But I’ll be disappointed if that’s all […]

Quick follow up to an earlier post on the electric car movement: it turns out that the battery lease model has a second (intended) entrant.  As reminder of the first:
“Interestingly, …upstart Think, out of Norway, aims to manufacture electric cars with a sales model geared to sell the car itself, […]

Today’s VentureWire includes an important piece by Russell Garland summarizing insights from the Dow Jones Venture Capital Deal Terms Report, a survey of startup financing terms from the July 2006 through June 2007 year.  Interestingly, I noted in a September post that a certain number of bootstrapping entrepreneurs receive liquidity […]