BETA MN Resource Page for Founders
This page is a resource for the members of the BETA MN community. This page includes articles on topics from how to validate your idea, hiring team members, raising capital, and selling your business or having an IPO. The authors are founders of famous companies like Best Buy, Zoom, and Fetch Rewards and some of the world’s most well-known researchers on startups like Steve Blank.
How to Validate Your Idea
Turn Your Idea Into an Innovation: Northeastern University Professor Tucker Marion, co-author of the book "The Innovation Navigator," shares his thoughts on how anyone -- from a sole proprietor to an employee within a large established company -- can innovate and launch a business.
Design Thinking Makes Great Ideas Viable: Design Thinking (often referred to as “Human-Centered Design”) is a design/development process that helps you understand your potential customers' real wants and needs – at a deep, often emotional level.
Learn From Leaders: Developing an Idea: Our interview subjects include Dick Schulze, founder and former CEO of Best Buy; Linda Hall, former CEO of MinuteClinic; Eddie Hartman, founder of LegalZoom; Scott Nash, founder of Mom's Organic Market; Seth Goldman, founder of Honest Tea; Jeff Freeland-Nelson, founder of Yoxo Toys; and Ann Winblad, founding partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
This first video focuses on how ideas develop -- and you will see that the process is not always neat or linear.
Talk With Real Customers Before the Launch: As online crowdsourcing has shown, people will support a proposed business or cause that moves them. For entrepreneurs, the ability to test a proposed product or service's uniqueness and appeal has never been better. EIX panelists Heidi Neck of Babson College, Kim Eddleston of Northeastern University and Dan Holland of Utah State University discuss how entrepreneurs can test the waters before they roll out their business ideas.
How to Acquire Your First Customer
Building a Company Step By Step Ch. 3: An Introduction to Customer Discovery: EIX is featuring interviews that explore the principles outlined in Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's book, "The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company." This interview with Taralinda Willis, co-CEO of Curate, focuses on Chapter 3, An Introduction to Customer Discovery.
Building a Company Step By Step, Ch. 4: Your Customer Hypothesis: EIX is featuring interviews that explore the principles outlined in Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's book, "The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company." This interview with serial entrepreneur Brian Wiegand focuses on Chapter 4, State Your Business Model Hypothesis.
Building a Company Step By Step, Chapter 5: Get Out of the Building: EIX is featuring interviews that explore the principles outlined in Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's book, "The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company." This interview with Rachel Carpenter, founder of the financial data company Intrinio, focuses on Chapter 5, Get Out of the Building to Test the Problem: Do People Care?
Building a Company Step by Step, Ch 6: Testing and Pivoting: EIX is featuring interviews that explore the principles outlined in Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's book, "The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company." This video interview and podcast with Alex Yampolsky, co-founder and chief operating officer of Vytal Health, focuses on Chapter 6 of the book, which discusses the importance of testing your proposed product or service and knowing when to pivot.
Building a Company Step by Step, Ch. 8: Introduction to Customer Validation: EIX is featuring interviews that explore the principles outlined in Steve Blank and Bob Dorf's book, "The Startup Owners Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company." This interview with Dan Reich explores Chapter 8: Introduction to Customer Validation.
How to Get Your Startup Funded
Learn from Leaders #2: Getting the Financing Your Venture Needs to Survive: This is the second video in our exclusive series called "Learn from Leaders," featuring advice for early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators from founders and CEOs of groundbreaking companies. Each of our Learn from Leaders videos focuses on an important step in launching a company. In this one, leaders talk about the harrowing process of finding financing and investors for their new ventures, which went on to become wildly successful.
The Harrowing Journey of Finding Investors: In obtaining Series A financing for MinuteClinic, I had more than 100 meetings with potential investors over a 6-month time frame in multiple geographies. It took 90 “no’s” (and turning down two “name” firms) before we finally won over a syndicate of eight superb investors, which included several venture funds and family offices.
Your Voice Can Influence Your Crowdfunding Success: People react to several aspects of crowdfunding pitch content: the logic of the research and reasoning behind it, the urgency of the problem it addresses, and facts indicating the product or service has a strong market and will be successful. But beyond pitch content, how a pitch is delivered may also have an effect, albeit subconsciously. When we hear someone speak, our brain’s subconscious perception of whether the speaker is passionate or prepared is influenced by two dimensions of expression, which scholars who study emotions call “valence” and “arousal.”
How to Get Money to Start a Business: To fund her second-act business coaching new writers through the self-publishing process — Nowata Press & Consulting — Dana Ellington, 54, of Kennesaw, Ga., pulled $30,000 from a retirement account to cover its initial costs. She started the company as a side gig while working full-time as an office manager.
Is Asking Friends and Family Members for Money the Right Move for Your Business?: We talked to Robin Rosenberg, CEO of Live In Their World (a virtual reality artificial intelligence sensitivity training company); Gopal Swamy, CEO of Conductiv (a data aggregator and assessment platform for the financial industry); and Richard Russo, CEO of Endomedix (a bio-technology company) about their experiences with raising money and their advice on how to ask those closest to you to support your business.
How to Manage Your Finances
The Perils of Seeking Financing at the Wrong Time: A common thought process when fundraising is the best time to raise money is when you can.[1] The early-stage investment decision is more art than science as market changes, economic shifts or other more exciting opportunities can lead an investor to lose interest in the current deal in favor of more "exciting" ones. And as this past decade has shown, the startup environment has experienced quickly changing economic and market conditions that radically affect both the ability to raise money and the valuations and terms of received when offered.
How Long Can Your Company Go Without Revenue?: The Cash Burn Rate for early-stage companies measures their financial heartbeat. Startups can go months and even years without revenues (much less profits) so measuring and managing cash burn is a major chore for the management team of such firms. For most larger organizations that have generated revenues and profits for years, this concept of reporting “Zero Revenue Solvency Rate” would have been incomprehensible only a few months ago.
A More User-Friendly Way to Track Liquidity: “Return on Equity” provides a general indicator of the level of earnings and operational cash flow a firm generates in relation to the cost of long term capital invested in the enterprise. As many entrepreneurs realize, “cash flow is king and queen” in a company’s financial management practices. But most traditional liquidity measures have inherent weaknesses, especially at privately held firms headed by entrepreneurs with little or no financial background. An alternative cash flow metric, the Net Balance Position (NBP) provides a simpler yet more effective way to measure the liquid situation of these firms. This article explains why, and shares some strategies that can increase cash flow of the enterprise.
These 10 Common Accounting Mistakes Can Doom Early-Stage Enterprises: This article will identify a variety of common finance and accounting pitfalls experienced by early-stage enterprises, why they matter, and how they might be corrected. My advice here is mostly targeted to companies that are already selling products and have hired employees. But even solo entrepreneurs in the pre-revenue phase will benefit from “thinking forward” through the issues discussed below so they can prepare for choices they may later face.
How a Distillery Founder and His Investor Went Off the Rails: But the acclaim hid a big problem: Balcones was running out of money. It couldn’t keep up with demand. It needed an investor to expand capacity, and quickly. Tate found one, but their relationship would soon fall apart. The unraveling, detailed in extensive litigation, in-depth interviews with the founder and the investor, and diverse media reports, provides numerous lessons for founders and investors looking for happier endings.
How to Build and Manage Your Team
Your Startup Team: Why Both Shared and Diverse Experiences Matter: Which kinds of startup teams will be more successful: people who've worked together in the past and share many experiences, or groups of individuals with different work histories and experiences? My research has shown that a cadre of founders with shared experiences and histories has a better shot at survival than teams with disparate experiences, but teams really performed when they include some of both.
Learn from Leaders #4: Building a Team: This is the fourth video in our exclusive series called "Learn from Leaders," featuring advice for early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators from founders and CEOs of groundbreaking companies. Each of our Learn from Leaders videos focuses on an important step in launching a company. This one focuses on how to attract and incentivize your startup team, and how those teams can evolve as the company matures.
After the Big Idea: Entrepreneurial Success Through High Performance Start-Up Teams: In this article, we introduce the notion of the High Performance Team (HPT) – the “Holy Grail” of effective teams – and discuss the valuable and significant outcomes they generate. Based on empirical findings from research conducted on dozens of product and service development teams, we describe those essential elements that typify an HPT; discuss whether the elements are relevant to entrepreneurial start-up teams; and, if so, how to incorporate and nurture them.
How to Grow Your Business
How to Grow Your Firm the Right Way: This article will introduce a simple but powerful financial metric that provides a realistic idea of how much the company can grow based on its profitability, earnings retention, financial structure and "asset velocity." Once a business owner/manager has identified the current earnings power and liquidity position of the firm, he or she can then ascertain the company’s sales growth based on current financial conditions.
From Startup to Midsized Company: Managing the Growing Pains: In this interview with EIX's Kimberly Eddleston, Sher, who is author of "Driving Midsized Growth" and two other business books, talks about how businesses can adjust strategies and leadership to the demands that growth brings. Topics include moving from one leader to a team of leaders focused on the future and aligned on what it will take to get there; investing just the right amount of revenue towards growth initiatives; avoiding burnout from growth that happens too quickly; and having a focused plan that concentrates only on the best ideas and weeds out the others.
To Grow, Serve Existing Customers Better or Find New Ones: There are only two ways to grow a company's revenue. One is gaining more customers. This occurs by either taking them away from competitors, which is generally difficult and expensive, or finding underserved customer segments and exploiting them, or expanding the products and services that you sell to existing customers. This generally occurs by finding new complementary goods or services to provide.
Learn from Leaders #5: Growing the Business: This is the final video in our exclusive series called "Learn from Leaders," featuring advice for early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators from founders and CEOs of groundbreaking companies. Each of our Learn from Leaders videos focuses on an important step in launching a company. This one focuses on how to take your business to the next level of growth, including the types of growth to avoid.
How to Build Multiple Sources of Revenue for Your Business: Have you ever heard that a millionaire becomes a millionaire by having seven streams of income? I believe the same to be true for small-business owners, even ones selling products out of their homes. But how do you get there?