With the tightening of markets comes an inevitable tightening of financing and the Startup market is not immune.
Hence the rise and rise of the Lean Startup Movement which just at the moment I do not seem to be able to get away from.
Last week I went to a fascinating lunch and met Francine Hardaway and Ed Nussbaum from Stealthmode Partners, an Arizona based mentor and incubator of young technology companies. Their window on what is going on in Silcon Valley was largely counter intuitive and absolutely fascinating, but that will all have to keep for another day.
One thing was clear and that was venture financing is getting more difficult to raise and, what is more, if you can avoid early and heavily dilutive rounds of financing early on, you the founder are more likely to end up with a meaningful equity interest in your company.
This brings me to a book that I think is a must read – I am half way through it – Eric Ries is the author – The Lean Startup – How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses. (Affiliate Link to Amazon) Eric focuses on finding out early what customers really want and encourages constant trial an innovation to continually refine the business to meet that need. In this process he advocates a capital “lite” approach which cuts down waste and speeds up time to market with a minimally viable product. Waste less money by not making things people do not want. This book shelf should be every business persons bookshelf or iPad. You can learn more about Eric at his website dedicated to all thing Lean! (not an affiliate link)
I have included an Amazon (affiliate) link below. Of course, feel free to just go directly to Amazon if you prefer not to use the link.
I am meeting up with Ed Nussbaum again next week and hope to be able to share some of his and Francine’s thoughts with you in future posts.
Please do leave some comments or if you have topics relating to this or anything else to do with the Corporate LifeCycle, please drop me an email – jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com.
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