Entrepreneurial Life: The Path From Startup to Market Leader
Entrepreneurial Life: The Path From Startup to Market Leader

Author: Robert L. Luddy

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2018-03-06

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0989498921

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Entrepreneurial Life tells the fascinating history of CaptiveAire, the largest commercial kitchen ventilation company in North America. From the beginning, CaptiveAireÕs story is not a typical one. Forged by Bob Luddy during a growing recession, with little capital, and as a newcomer to the regionÑhis startup should not have survived, much less taken the trajectory it has had. In these pages, Luddy shares some of the values he learned as one of eight children in a Òhard-scrabble, can-doÓ family and details his take on the type of leadership, innovation, financial management, and marketing strategy that has spurred his manufacturing company to grow at a remarkable pace over the course of forty-plus years at the helm. Entrepreneurial Life reveals LuddyÕs philosophy on all things entrepreneurship, character, and the skills necessary for achieving your fullest potential, no matter what your calling.

Why Startups Fail
Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0593137035

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If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

The Startup Way
The Startup Way

Author: Eric Ries

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2017-10-17

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 110190321X

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Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all kinds, ranging from established companies to early-stage startups, to grow revenues, drive innovation, and transform themselves into truly modern organizations, poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the twenty-first century. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Drawing on his experiences over the past five years working with these organizations, as well as nonprofits, NGOs, and governments, Ries lays out a system of entrepreneurial management that leads organizations of all sizes and from every industry to sustainable growth and long-term impact. Filled with in-the-field stories, insights, and tools, The Startup Way is an essential road map for any organization navigating the uncertain waters of the century ahead.

Startup Leadership
Startup Leadership

Author: Derek Lidow

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-03-03

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1118697057

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Anyone can start a business. But only leaders can succeed. Most entrepreneurs know the long odds: only a fraction of them will lead their enterprises through the rocky stages of growth to launch self-sustaining companies. Very few know how to outflank the failures that await them at every turn, including the most painful—being abandoned by key members of their team or getting pushed out by their board just as their business starts to generate real value. Derek Lidow is on a mission to improve these odds and change these outcomes. Throughout his long career—as CEO, innovator, and entrepreneur—he has tested virtually every aspect of launching a business. Lidow now argues that success is far less dependent upon a firm’s idea or any grand strategy than it is upon something more personal: leadership. Emerging companies have specific leadership requirements, stage by fast-moving stage. Few founders have been able to leverage the tremendous power of this underrecognized reality—until now. Startup Leadership demonstrates how founders can adopt the skills that are required at each stage of their journey. Whether you are at the idea stage or managing a more mature enterprise, you can start to recognize the fundamental conflict: how to balance your selfish drives with the more selfless leadership required by the organization at any given time. The book shows you how to achieve this balance by: Assessing your unique motivations, traits, and skills Creating a personal leadership strategy that leverages your strengths and mitigates your weaknesses Mastering how to lead teams, including boards Understanding the five prerequisites for driving change Taking control of your inevitable crises, thereby strengthening your team and your leadership With Lidow’s help, you will learn how to become the startup leader your business needs, and you’ll move forward with your plans with greater confidence and success.

Business Doing Good
Business Doing Good

Author: Shannon Deer

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-08-15

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 153815238X

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Outlines six principles and best practices for hiring and retaining women with challenging backgrounds Recently, business leaders have shifted their focus from a profit-only mindset to considering the impact of their businesses on all stakeholders. At the same time, the United Nations set aggressive Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) to improve our world by 2030. These SDGs address all major needs facing our world today, such as: eradication of poverty and hunger, access to clean water, gender equality, and decent work and economic growth. These are significant problems facing the world that have in the past largely been left to nonprofit organizations and governments to solve. Investors and customers have higher expectations for companies to make a positive social and environmental impact. They want to know business can do good. Following suit, today’s business leaders are starting to recognize we will never fill the gap between where we are and where we want to be if businesses do not also do their part to contribute sustainable solutions to these enormous social problems. This book provides a guide for businesses to make a significant positive impact while also benefiting their businesses. Business Doing Good outlines six principles business leaders can implement to effectively hire women who have experienced incarceration, poverty, addiction, and/or engagement in the sex trade. While making a difference to both these women and communities, businesses benefit from the women’s resourcefulness, resilience, ability to motivate, and other unique skills and perspectives only available to someone who has overcome difficulties. Investments in women, in general, are exponential as they are more likely to return that investment to future generations. The impact is endless. If we are going to end poverty and create economic development, women who have overcome challenging pasts cannot be excluded.

Life Entrepreneurs
Life Entrepreneurs

Author: Christopher Gergen

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-01-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1118047427

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"An inspirational and practical guide for anyone who wants to incorporate the dynamic skills of entrepreneurs into their own lives and work. A new generation of "life entrepreneurs" is emerging: people who apply their vision, talents, creativity, and energy not only to their work but to their entire lives, changing the world for themselves and those around them. In this book, successful entrepreneurs Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek draw on numerous interviews with fifty-five leading entrepreneurs worldwide as well as the wisdom of multiple thought leaders to provide vivid examples, moving vignettes, concrete frameworks, and practical strategies for revving up our work and play through entrepreneurial leadership. This book starts by providing strategies for integrating life, work, and purpose and ends by capturing the implications of the current entrepreneurial boom for our workplaces, learning institutions, communities, and families. Christopher Gergen (Washington, D.C.) is a founding partner of New Mountain Ventures, co-founder and chairman of SMARTHINKING, Adjunct Professor and Director of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative at Duke University, and a life-long entrepreneur, Gregg Vanourek (Thornton, CO) is a founding partner of New Mountain Ventures, former CEO of Vanourek Consulting Solutions, and former Senior Vice President of School Development for K12 Inc."

The Lean Startup
The Lean Startup

Author: Eric Ries

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0307887898

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Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Entrepreneurial Leap
Entrepreneurial Leap

Author: Gino Wickman

Publisher: BenBella Books

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 194883684X

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You've thought about starting your own business . . . but how can you decide if you should really take the leap? There's a lot on the line, and you have to ask yourself difficult questions: Do I have what it takes? Is it worth it? And how the hell do I do it? You need answers, not bullshit. This book has them. Entrepreneurial Leap: Do You Have What it Takes to Become an Entrepreneur? is an easy-to-use guide that will help you decide, once and for all, if entrepreneurship is right for you—because success as an entrepreneur depends on far more than just a great idea and a generous helping of luck. In this three-part book, Gino Wickman, bestselling author of Traction, reveals the six essential traits that every entrepreneur needs in order to succeed, based on real-world startups that have reached incredible heights. If these traits ring true for you, you'll get a glimpse of what your life would look like as an entrepreneur. What's more, Wickman will help you determine what type of business best suits your unique skill set and provide a detailed roadmap, with tools, tips, and exercises, that will accelerate your path to startup success. Packed with real-life stories and practical advice, Entrepreneurial Leap is a simple how-to manual for BIG results. Should you take the leap toward entrepreneurship? Find out today and let tomorrow be the first step in your new journey, whatever shape it may take.

Lifeness
Lifeness

Author: Tom Rubens

Publisher: Tom Rubens

Published: 2017-04-04

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9780998452609

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Tom Rubens is a business coach and expert in corporate culture and strategy

Disciplined Entrepreneurship
Disciplined Entrepreneurship

Author: Bill Aulet

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-08-12

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1118692284

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24 Steps to Success! Disciplined Entrepreneurship will change the way you think about starting a company. Many believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but great entrepreneurs aren’t born with something special – they simply make great products. This book will show you how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehensive, and proven 24-step framework that any industrious person can learn and apply. You will learn: Why the “F” word – focus – is crucial to a startup’s success Common obstacles that entrepreneurs face – and how to overcome them How to use innovation to stand out in the crowd – it’s not just about technology Whether you’re a first-time or repeat entrepreneur, Disciplined Entrepreneurship gives you the tools you need to improve your odds of making a product people want. Author Bill Aulet is the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship as well as a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. For more please visit http://disciplinedentrepreneurship.com/