LSQHA Blog Reviews

Every now and then we hear the story of the entrepreneur who left his or her steady job at a large company to follow their dreams and create a startup, but we aren't all as daring and brave to quit steady work, especially in a time of economic uncertainty. If you have the entrepreneurial itch but aren't in a situation that would allow you to sacrifice your day job, there are still ways you can scratch said itch and bring innovation to a "startup" within a larger company. Sponsor This morning I talked with Eric Ries , the driving force behind the " lean startup " movement, which encourages high efficiency and meticulous metrics tracking within entrepreneurial ventures. Ries, who is often asked to speak on the subject, says he noticed a trend among some of the people attending his talks. Many managers from large companies were coming to his sessions to learn what they could, because, as Ries discovered, the principals of lean startups can exist within larger corporations that are attempting to innovate. "A startup is a human institution designed to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "There is nothing in there about the size of the company, or what industry you're in, or whether you're the manager of a division or if you're two guys in a garage, its just about the conditions in which you operate." As he points out, there are times in larger corporations when divisions are created to work on a new project, and similar rules and guidelines for managing that project which come from startups can be used here as well. Ries says that managers, like entrepreneurs, are taking risks on new ideas, and when they create a new division, they are essentially investing the company's time and money as a VC would invest funds in a startup. "The more I started to work with those managers I started to notice that they were having very familiar sounding arguments," Ries says. "The arguments between a venture-backed entrepreneur and a venture capitalist are almost exactly the same word for word as between these 'intrepreneurs' and their CFOs because the same issues come up." One of the ways larger corporations can implement entrepreneurial innovation into their businesses is to allow for what Ries calls "innovation inside the box," or a fenced off sandbox for experimentation with new products. By creating a place where employees with ideas can test a tweak to a feature, or where new ideas can be built within certain constraints, companies can greatly increase their potential for innovation. "The real value is [this] starts to catalyze change because by changing the way you work you start to accelerate that feedback loop and that can become the basis for making other changes," Ries says. Unfortunately, most larger corporations aren't allowing for this open sandbox of innovation within their companies, and choose to buy up technology and talent from startups. Ries agrees that many entrepreneurs get frustrated working inside a larger company, but he says the combination of these entrepreneurs with a walled off innovation playground could provide for some amazing innovations. Companies could also benefit from the addition of a sandbox by inspiring their existing employees to be innovative, instead of wrangling up entrepreneurs from a startup, which would save them money in the end. "They have this idea that a certain alchemy will happen that 'if I bring these special people into my organization, they will teach my regular people how to be special,' and that's just a formula for breeding resentment," Ries told ReadWriteWeb. "If the people doing the acquiring had more of a theory about how entrepreneurship is supposed to work they could start to think of better ways to plug an acquired company into the larger organization, taking advantage of what they're good at without destroying it." If you're a budding entrepreneur or a manager at a large company, there is an excellent chance to hear from Ries and others on these concepts and others this Friday at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in San Francisco. If you can't make it to the Bay Area, there are simulcasts occurring Friday in nearly 50 cities worldwide, many of which are free or very inexpensive, so RSVP and bask in the lean startup goodness. Photo by Flickr user longhorndave . Discuss

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Thinking Inside the Box: Eric Ries On Creating Startups Within Large Organizations

The elevator door opens. And there stands your ideal investor. It's the chance of a lifetime. But that chance only lasts as long as the elevator ride - you have less than a minute to make an impression. Hopefully, you've got a well-crafted elevator pitch ready to give. The elevator pitch is not the hurried presentation of a full-blown business plan. It's an introduction, an overview and a pitch - and a short one at that - meant to capture the attention of a potential investor. Of course, an elevator ride is a short one. Guides for elevator speeches that say you have one minute surely overestimate the amount of time it takes for an elevator to move from floor to floor. Of course, an elevator speech isn't restricted to elevators. Rather, it comes in handy for any occasion where a concise presentation is appropriate. Sponsor When crafting your pitch there are two key things to keep in mind: its content and its form. In other words, it's not just what you say but how you say it. Here are a 10 tips to keep in mind as you craft your elevator pitch. 1. Keep it short . Be succinct. According to Wikipedia , an adult's attention span is eight seconds, so be sure to give just enough information (and more importantly perhaps the right information) so that after only hearing a sentence or two, someone knows what you do - and if it's a pitch, what you need. 2. Have a hook. As Mel Pirchesky advises , "The objective of the first ten or fifteen seconds is to have your prospective investors want to listen to the next forty-five or fifty seconds differently, more intently than they would have otherwise." 3. Pitch yourself, not your ideas. As Chris Dixon writes , "The reality is ideas don't matter that much. First of all, in almost all startups, the idea changes - often dramatically - over time. Secondly, ideas are relatively abundant." Instead of talking about ideas, highlight what you've done - the concrete accomplishments or skills - rather than some intangible concept or a future goal. 4. Don't forget the pitch. It's easy to get so caught up in the details of who you are that you neglect to mention what you need. What amount of financing are you seeking, for example? 5. Don't overwhelm with technical or statistical terminology . While being able to tout one or two amazing and memorable phrases or figures can be useful, don't fill your elevator speech with numbers or jargon. 6. Practice . Rehearse your elevator pitch so that when the opportunity to give it comes, you can deliver it smoothly. 7. Use the same tactics for print. You can hone your elevator skills by practicing them in writing. Babak Nivi describes the email elevator pitch here . 8. Revise. As your startup moves through various stages, be sure to update and refresh your pitch. 9. Be involved in the startup community before you pitch. Business Insider suggests "Engaging in online discussions, writing insightful blog posts, and participating in the relatively small startup community can earn you a 'strong presence' that gets you noticed by potential investors." Building relationships with investors before pitching to them will help your success. 10. Listen. When seeking to build strong networks, remember it can be just as important to listen as it is to talk. Do you have any other suggestions on crafting an elevator pitch? Feel free to add your tips in the comments below. Discuss

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The Art of the Elevator Pitch: 10 Great Tips

There is a phenomenon among consumers that is evidenced by the rise in popularity of sites that allow users to share information about the products they buy or want to buy with friends and other shoppers like them. These sites exist because consumers inherently trust the opinions of their friends and their peers when it comes to purchasing and business related decisions, and they trust them a whole lot more than they trust most marketing campaigns. Author John Jantsch , who previously penned the book Duct Tape Marketing is a few weeks away from publishing his second book which focuses specifically on the power of referrals. Sponsor The book, titled The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself , hits bookshelves in mid-May, and could be an excellent resource for early-stage startups and entrepreneurs-to-be. Jantsch's first book did so well that it lead to the creation of the Duct Tape Marketing System and the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network, while additionally earning accolades for both Jantsch's blog and his podcast on small business marketing which continues to release episodes today . In his new book, Jantsch explores how companies can strategically market their products to take advantage of the referral and peer review phenomenon of consumer buying habits. As Jantsch points out in a video explaining his motives behind the book (embedded below), he discovered that most successful small business which are thriving off referrals didn't do so by including some special sauce into their recipe. Instead, he says that these companies are, by their very nature, "more referable" than others. Some of Jantsch's suggestions for being more referable include making and effort to communicate personally with customers via social media and other means, being sure your customers know who they should be referring to, and getting your sales team on board with referral strategies. Early anticipatory praise of the book is already coming in from the likes of author Chris Brogan, Silicon Valley investor Guy Kawasaki, and Zappos founder Tony Hsieh whose upcoming book we previewed a few weeks ago . A free download of the first chapter is also available on the book's homepage, and the full book, coming in around 250 pages, will be available on May 13 according to Amazon . Check back here next month after the book publishes for a more in-depth review, and in the meantime, keep an eye out for ways to boost your company's referral engine. Discuss

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Weekend Reading: The Referral Engine, by John Jantsch (Preview)

Back when I was in graduate school getting my masters in journalism and mass communication, I worked on various "lab projects" which were challenges faced by media organizations that they wanted to tackle but didn't have the means or the resources to do so. So basically, the students at my school were a think tank for the local media. One of the first issues we were tasked with investigating was finding a new way to allow comments for online news stories to be more efficient and less offensive. Sponsor The problem faced by most online news sites is that the anonymous nature of the Internet makes it very easy for vulgarity and off-putting comments to be posted, and for some sites, these types of comments pervade their site. Many of today's popular sites with comments have integrated systems to where readers can vote down bad comments while promoting good comments, which helps the bad stuff to be filtered out. Others have tried blocking fowl language with asterisks or by deleting the comment automatically, but this has only lead users to find unique ways of spelling their beloved curse words. Some startups, like Disqus , have made it much easier to manage comments, and identity tools like OpenID and Facebook Connect have helped to lower the amount of anonymous commenters on the web, but anonymity is a fundamental cornerstone of Internet culture. Or is it? In a recent New York Times article about how many news sites are starting to remove anonymous commenting, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post said she thinks that anonymity is losing its once exalted position atop the foundation of the Web. "Anonymity is just the way things are done. It's an accepted part of the Internet, but there's no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments," says Huffington. "I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity." Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures says there is plenty of room for innovation within comment boards. Wilson uses Disqus on his blog and has some suggestions for features they could include to make the commenting experience better, but he believes one of the ways to innovate in the space is to introduce game mechanics into commenting. "Game mechanics will reward the kind of behavior the community wants and will punish the kind of behavior the community does not want," writes Wilson on his blog. "The anonymous commenter who has valuable information but can't publish in their own name will be rewarded. The anonymous commenter who leaves a hostile name calling piece of crap will be punished. And the comment thread and community will be better off for it." Entrepreneurs that strive to create a truly innovative product usually first start with a problem that needs solving, and comment systems are certainly a problem that needs solving. Therefore by some transitive property, innovation in the commenting space seems to be an open door of opportunity for startups to walk through and offer a solution. Are there other companies like Disqus that may be looking to disrupt the traditional comment system, or do you have an idea for making the process more user friendly? Let us know your thoughts on the state of comments and how you would change them in our very own comments section below! Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb. Discuss

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Comment Innovation: An Open Door of Startup Opportunity?

Although the median age of CEOs is 54, one of the fasted growing demographics of entrepreneurs is young people. According to a survey by JA Worldwide almost three-quarters of high school students indicate an interest in becoming entrepreneurs. Although there are a few college programs dedicated to entrepreneurship, even with the preparation from a college degree program many young entrepreneurs can flounder . To help remedy this, Under30CEO.com has collected advice from its users and offers "Young Entrepreneur Advice: 100 Things You Must Know!" Sponsor Many of the tips echo the idea that it's a cold, hard world out there, and that young entrepreneurs would do well to hire great people, to delegate administrative tasks to others, and to develop strong professional and personal networks, not just of potential customers but of others more established in their field. Some of the notable themes: Know Your Market : "I wish I'd know how much easier it is to build a business around an established market that's already looking for a solution to its problems rather than trying to build the market around the business I wanted to start." - John Crickett Money Matters : "Finding the right Accounting / Financial Manager right up front was our biggest learning and biggest mistake. Completely changed our financial performance and caused us to hit a wall we should have avoided." - Mike Cleary Don't Worry too Much about Education : "It is OK to trust your instincts - even when they are not necessarily backed up by years of finance/accounting or business school credentials" - Jenn Benz Learn to Manage People : "I wish I would have known that the hardest part of owning and operating my own business would NOT have been how to create revenue on a monthly basis. I wish I would have hired a full time IT guy and a shrink to manage with my sales force!" - Bradley W. Smith Have a Business Plan that Includes an Exit Strategy : "Have a serious exit strategy & plan prior to opening doors. As an entrepreneur I was ready and willing to take the plunge to open my own company, but didn't realize I had to structure my company around the exit strategy (i.e. make it sellable and transferable, and self sustaining without my everyday presence)." - Christopher N. Okada Cultivate Strong Support Networks : "I wish that early on I had sought out more business leaders in my field. It wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized the value of the knowledge to be learned from veteran industry players and how it could help me grow my business." - Jim Janosik Take Care of Yourself : "You can't put your life on hold while waiting for your venture to hit. I have tremendous regret around all of the family events, vacations, and time with friends that I missed because I was working on getting my film/company off the ground." - Pamela Peacock You can read the full post here . What advice would you add to this list? Discuss

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Entrepreneurs Under 30: Advice From Your Peers