Introduction to Entrepreneurs

December 2011

What you will learn today

Typical Entrepreneur Persona

Entrepreneur Marketplace

What Do Entrepreneurs Care About?

Working with Startups

Entrepreneurs are critical

Who is an entrepreneur?

• An entrepreneur is someone that has a vision of what the customer and the market need.

• The entrepreneur doesn't take a NO as an option. The entrepreneur isn't just a dreamer.

• The entrepreneur implements this dream in his/her enterprise sooner or later, no matter where and how. Technology may be enabler or facilitator to implement the vision.

The 5 types of entrepreneurs

1. Home-run Sluggers: want to change the world in a big and obvious way. Sluggers would rather make a single business their life’s work.

2. On-base Hitter: entrepreneurs are content to achieve success in bite-sized bits on a regular basis, rather than all in one flourish. Each has been a success, though none has been a bulls eye.

3. Fact Finders: entrepreneurs who seek details before making decisions. Each answer to a fact finder’s question triggers a new set of questions.

4. Follow-Through: entrepreneurs love systems think in a linear fashion, where Step 1 leads to Step 2 and so on. Their companies tend to operate by methodology.

5. Implementers: live in the physical world and enjoy building and fixing things. They are innovative by nature, and always looking to build the proverbial better mousetrap.

5 successful entrepreneur traits from Steven Bertoni 5 successful entrepreneur traits from Steven Bertoni

• Live in your Passion -- To achieve your goal, you need something that will drive you forward every day.

• Feel your Guts -- There isn’t always time to conduct market research. As Steve Jobs said, “People couldn't know what they would like when they had never seen it before.“

• Sleep Less than your team-- As an entrepreneur, be prepared to handle anything, anytime, anywhere.

• Keep your Connections -- In the world of start-ups and entrepreneurship, connections are everything. Keep all the doors open, no matter what.

• Understand Tenacity -- Most entrepreneurs fail multiple times before they become successful. Accepting failure is one of the smartest decisions you can make as an entrepreneur.  

True or False game time True or False game time

True or False: The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

True or False: More than 70 percent of entrepreneurs have a desire to build wealth as an important motivation in becoming an entrepreneur and building a company.

True or False: The majority of entrepreneurs never complete a college education.

14 quick and fun facts

1. The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

2. 95% of respondents themselves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47% had more advanced degrees.

3. Less than 1% came from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds.

4. 15.2% of founders had a sibling that previously started a business.

14 quick and fun facts

5. 70% of respondents indicated they were married when they launched their first business. An additional 5.2% were divorced, separated, or widowed.

6. 59.7% of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5% had two or more children.

7. The majority of the entrepreneurs in the sample were serial entrepreneurs. The average number of businesses launched by respondents was approximately 2.3.

8. 74.8% indicated desire to build wealth as an important motivation in becoming an entrepreneur.

14 quick and fun facts

9. Only 4.5% said the inability to find traditional employment was an important factor in starting a business.

10.  Only 11% of the first-time entrepreneurs received venture capital, and 9% received private/angel financing. Of the overall sample, 68% considered availability of financing/capital as important. Of the entrepreneurs who had raised venture capital for their most recent businesses, 96% considered financing important.

11. Entrepreneurship doesn’t always run in the family. More than half (51.9%) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business.

14 quick and fun facts

12. The majority of respondents (75.4%) had worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own companies.

13. 86% of Ivy-League graduates ranked university education as important, as compared with 70% of the overall sample.

14. 98% of respondents named lack of willingness or ability to take risks as the biggest barrier to entrepreneurial success.

Entrepreneur lifecycle

Start another business

Sell business

Become profitable

Get more funding

Expand operations

Get more funding

Build product / launch product

Start a company / bootstrap or angel funded

Create a brilliant idea

Go to college / skip college to develop business

Start a childhood business / learn skill early

What’s the end game?

IPO?

Purchase?

Private?

Representing startups: what’s good to know

• One person does 2-3 or more jobs or “wears different hats”

• Speed is crucial – you have to work fast

• Stay focused on the goals, even if the target is moving

• Things change on a dime

• Things are done on the fly – planning and executing go hand in hand

• Timing is in bursts and not steady betty

• PR value must extend across the organization

How Metis works with our entrepreneurs

1. We understand the risks and rewards that our entrepreneurs are working with day to day, and know the big picture.

2. We are willing to be more liberal with assigned duties and scheduling, as tasks are never carved in stone with startups.

3. We assert our opinions and insights.

4. We know more about our entrepreneurs and their companies than just the standard PR aspects, we are an extended arm on their marketing teams.

5. We appreciate having the in and out aspects of our entrepreneur’s business.

Entrepreneur resources

Quora – http://www.quora.com

LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com

Startup Nation – http://www.startupnation.com

Entrepreneur.com - http://econnect.entrepreneur.com/

Partner Up - http://www.partnerup.com/default.aspx

CoFoundr – http://cofoundr.com/

Young Entrepreneur - http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/

Entrepreneur resources

Startup Genome - http://blog.startupcompass.co/

Local entrepreneur resources

Greenhorn Connect - http://www.greenhornconnect.com/

Don Dodge summary - http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2008/04/boston-startup.html

http://massinnovationnights.com/