One of the really fun things about being involved in the early-stage scene here in Atlanta is that I get to network and meet with a lot of people who share the common vision of fostering a better startup ecosystem for our community. Included in this are representatives from various chambers of commerce, academic institutions, …
I spent the day today down at Georgia Tech serving as a judge in the semi-final round of their annual business plan competition. It was a ton of fun, and I thought I’d drop a post here with a wrap-up, along with some more random thoughts on business plans, business plan competitions, etc. First, I …
Ok, I will confess that I am a process improvement fanatic. I suppose it has something to do with my experiences early in my career working in a TQM environment at TSYS, and working with a key customer (AT&T Universal Card Services) to win the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. In reality, though, it probably has …
I learned to play the game of chess as a kid, although I’m certainly no Gary Kasparov. I have always been intrigued by its simultaneous complexity and simple elegance. After running several startups, and going through the exit process more than once, I have come to the conclusion that running a company is very akin …
Okay, I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve been listening (and watching) to Prince since the late 1970s – long before Purple Rain. Obviously, he has come a long way in his career since those early days. Sure, there was the wacky time where he changed his name to a symbol in a public protest …
I came across this great story on the Kenneth Cole website. There is definitely a lesson here for early-stage entrepreneurs on resourcefulness, and doing what it takes to get the job done. As a side-note, Kenneth Cole is now doing revenues of over $500M each year. Cheers.
I have been contemplating writing this post for about 2 years, and have been jotting down various notes for it for at least a year. There are lots of ways to unethically nudge your fledgling company along. For example, you can artificially inflate your numbers. “You’ll love our site! Millions of other people are already …
One of the things that we’ve implemented for the upcoming StartupLounge.com Capital Connections event is that we require all attendees to provide us their “one-line” elevator pitch as part of the application process. We limit them to 125 characters. How important is it? Extremely. You have 125 characters to convince our steering committee that your …
Sooner or later, every startup struggles with the issue of how best to offer healthcare benefits to their employees. In a recent StartupLounge.com podcast, we were joined by Angus Mcrae, a guy who does a ton of consulting and brokering for healthcare benefits for Atlanta-area high-tech startups (for companies like N2 Broadband/Tandberg, ViTrue, etc.) As …
For a great sneak peek at Vendormate, check out the latest installment of the StartupLounge.com podcast. Vendormate’s CEO Andy Monin stopped by and shared a great overview of the company, as well as his thoughts on creating high-performance teams in a startup. We also had some great emails (including a particularly good question on raising …