The Entrepreneur S Roadmap

Entrepreneurship is not intuitive. In fact, far more businesses fail than succeed. It doesn't need to be this way. There are many avoidable mistakes. Each time you go through the journey of starting and growing a business, you learn more. Imagine having many of those lessons at your fingertips now - at the beginning of your journey. This book will help you answer the important questions about yourself and your business that you will need to know. The questions you most need to answer for your own sanity, for your investors, your customers, your employees - even those closest to you. Contained are tools and activities to help you.

This book offers students a comprehensive, accessible guide to launching and managing a new venture. Beginning with the planning process and continuing to marketing, financing, and growth, it gives students the insights and practical skills they need to be successful entrepreneurs. This edition’s structure aligns more logically with the venture’s lifecycle, so the reader is equipped to develop a strong business model. The authors combine updated planning exercises, end-of-chapter consultation questions, and a sample business plan with new material, including: a new chapter on ideation, the Business Model Canvas, and lean start-up that covers the latest methodology in idea generation and opportunity recognition to provide a tool for developing a business concept; a new chapter on the various pathways for creating a new venture, including setting up an online venture as well as managing the day-to-day aspects of running a business; a revised chapter on start-up capital and crowdfunding that helps students raise capital through social media; a revised chapter on managing growth through HR planning, helping students to navigate growth on a global level successfully and ethically. Students in entrepreneurship and new venture management classes will find New Venture Management a valuable resource. A companion website features an instructor’s manual, test bank, PowerPoint slides, and further resources to aid instructors and students in applying their knowledge.

Welcome to the first strategic guide for entrepreneurs since the "tech wreck." Straightforward and detailed, it sweeps aside outdated concepts and provides you with a thoroughly contemporary toolkit for sustainable growth. It is based on two hypotheses: that entrepreneurs must learn to finance and operate their ventures in a highly unpredictable environment; and that there is always a bull market for innovative, well-executed ideas.

• Covers the entire new venture management process, from ideas to finance to HRM • Now includes international cases in all chapters • Offers a complete and contemporary business plan for students to follow • Includes material on the latest issues in entrepreneurship, such as equity crowdfunding and ‘blitzscaling’

Entrepreneur's guide for starting and growing a business to a public listing

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 expertise required to build and achieve scalable and transferable business success is a skill possessed by few individuals. This book provides candidly honest opinions and insightful questions to consider while weighing if the challenging path of an entrepreneur is the right direction to take for the reader. Todd Kinart President/CEO, SII Investments Inc. Anyone who is considering going into business for themselves should not only read this book, but live it. The way it takes the reader from 'square one' thru inception, implementation and execution will provide the reader with guidance and a knowledge base that will help them to succeed. This book will be one the business owner will want to keep handy and read time and again. W. Shane Garrow Senior Vice President The Private Bank at Bank of Oklahoma An aspiring entrepreneur will fi nd this book of great value and comfort. It will suggest roads to travel and the pitfalls to avoid. It provides cautious encouragement of the rewards and sacrifi ces required of a successful business owner. It is a one-stop source to guide an entrepreneur down the path to success. Jeff Rhodes, Attorney Riseling & Rhodes

We hear every day about the flashy twenty-five-year-old wunderkinds who have hit it big in the tech world and celebrated CEOs who have flourished in public companies. But we rarely hear about the majority of successful men and women who, at the average age of forty-one, start their own company. The author was forty when he founded Homax Corporation in 1981. He is an eclectic award-winning entrepreneur who would like to share what he learned in business and life with others. He sold his company in 1996 which was thoughtfully structured to be sustainable for talented management who continued growing the company. It was purchased by PPG July 2, 2014. A ROADMAP FOR BOOTSTRAPPING ENTREPRENEURS, The Power To Control Your Future: is a book that echoes the words of St. Francis of Assisi, “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” This story shows young entrepreneurs how to plot their course to succeed in business and life by building cultures with good character while simultaneously growing themselves. It also speaks to the middle-aged start-up entrepreneur about how to assess risk and how to focus their courage to begin. All proceeds from the book sales will be dedicated to a scholarship fund. Praise for A ROADMAP FOR BOOTSTRAPPING ENTREPRENEURS “Wow! What a book. The experiences, quotes, quick short chapters make this a must read for college business classes. This is truly spectacular. Now I know why it took so long to write. Just like your skiing, racing and business execution, everything is carefully thought out and reviewed. When you think of all the experiences woven into the book, you have to say it is one remarkable story.” James Galbreath, Managing Director NWQ investments “First of all I felt you wrote the book just for me. I learned a ton reading it. It felt like a love letter from someone who is like a dad figure. I found so many pages with valued lessons that should be incorporated in daily life and personal life as well as business life..” Ellen Rossi, BOD member Alta Ski Area “I am reading the book for the third time and continue to be amazed at what you put together in those pages. Each chapter has insights and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs that could only come from someone who has been there and done that. You have written a graduate level curriculum for entrepreneurship providing the framework for such a course at any business school. One thing that also came out was your devotion to treating people with honesty, integrity and fairness.” David Sanctuary, MBA, Continental Airlines, Director of the Boeing 757/767 flight standards and training. “Thank you for the opportunity and privilege of reviewing your book. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise. Many things in the book resonate with me, remind me of lessons learned and lessons observed.” Mark Neporent, COO, Senior Legal Officer Cerberus Capital