Have a game-changing business idea but don't know where to begin? A Harvard professor, Techstars' CEO, and three of Forbes' Next1000 honorees share their best advice
ana Donofree endured many sleepless nights grappling with the terrifying decision to leave her 9-5 corporate merchandising job in Denver in favor of diving full-time into her startup.
“It’s conventional wisdom but it’s true,” starts Donofree who was originally inspired to launch her business as a cancer survivor who underwent a mastectomy, “being an entrepreneur takes resilience and a good amount of naivety to just jump in.” Study your customers and devise tests to validate your hypothesis with expending as little capital as possible. Talk to and interview potential clients, run focus groups or conduct surveys. “Many entrepreneurs think they can see around corners,” says Eisenmann. “They want to plunge into building and selling without doing the customer discovery. It takes real discipline to do this upfront work, but it ends up saving the entrepreneur from the more arduous task of fixing mistakes later on.
“Early on, hiring someone who ends up being a bad fit can really hurt,” says Donofree. “Take the appropriate amount of time to find the right people.” As Gavet puts it, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Early hires will have a big impact on defining company culture which can be incredibly hard to change.“You have to raise money,” Eisenmann puts plainly. “While there are some exceptions, most companies die because they couldn’t raise enough capital,” adds Gavet.
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