Donna Fenn is an internationally recognized author and journalist who has been writing about entrepreneurship and small business trends for more than 20 years. She is the author…
Generation Y is starting companies at an unprecedented rate, and their approach to business is unlike anything you’ve seen. The generation described by the media as spoiled, entitled, even narcissistic, is proving these notions false…
I had this video made in iMovie made by my awesome web developer Jeff Nordstedt for the presentation I did at SXSW in March. It’s fun to watch, but also gives you a really good flavor for what/who is in the book. Not everyone who’s in the book is in the movie, BTW, because we wanted to keep it on the short side. Take a look and tell me what you think!
Most entrepreneurs have a tough time transitioning from the heady start-up days to growth-mode, when companies need more than a steady flow of great ideas and a few devoted souls to execute them. Growing companies require management skills and great entrepreneurs are very rarely great managers. Young entrepreneurs, particularly, often lack not only the desire, but the solid experience to manage growing staffs. That’s when it’s time to call in reinforcements, as Nick Thomley at Pinnacle Services did three years ago. Thomley, whose company provides home health care, housing, and employment services for seniors and people with disabilities, is featured in the “Social Capitalists” section of Upstarts!. He’ll tell you that he became a much happier CEO—and that his company became a much better place to work—when he hired a trusted COO and gave her responsibility for most of the day-to-day decision making that he had come to loathe. You can read about his journey on my BNET/CBSi blog. For Thomley, one of the best by-products of ceding many of his management duties was having the time to focus on making Pinnacle’s corporate culture a bit more fun. For a little glimpse of that, take a look at the video below!
I’ve been following the progress of a very cool new organization called The Unreasonable Institute. It’s a Boulder, CO-based incubator for not-for-profit and for-profit social enterprises that’s based upon the TechStars model: bring together people with great ideas, give them access to a little capital, mentors, and (most importantly) each other, and watch them soar. I love the idea of the incubation/accelerator model being used for social enterprises and I’ll be watching the progress of the 25 Unreasonable fellow throughout the summer. To catch up on what I’ve written already, check out my blog on Inc.com.
I caught up with Scott Belsky, the CEO of Behance at SXSW and had a great conversation with him about his new book, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, (Portfolio, April 2010). It seems to me that this book will be particularly valuable to young entrepreneurs, who are frequently filled with wonderful ideas, but who sometimes fall short in the execution department. You can read my interview with Scott on my new BNET/CBSi blog
You may have already heard the amazing story of Haiti earthquake survivor Dan Woolley, who was buried under the rubble of the Hotel Montana for 65 hours with only his iPhone and an SLR camera as survival tools. But you may not know that this story has an Upstart connection. Woolley extended his iPhone’s battery life with a “Juice Pack” battery extender made by Mophie, a company that was founded in 2004 by Upstart Ben Kaufman, and then sold in 2007. Woolley used his iPhone’s Pocket First Aid and CPR app to make sure he was treating his wounds properly; he listened to his music when he was feeling discouraged; and he set his iPhone’s alarm to wake him up every twenty minutes when he feared he might go into shock. Without the battery extender, Woolley may well have been cursing his iPhone’s dismal battery life like the rest of us. No, the iPhone didn’t save his life (a French rescue team gets the credit for that) but it sure did give him some valuable support and comfort. Don’t know about you, but I’m springing for both the First Aid app ($3.99) and the Juice Pack.
Mophie, by the way, continues to make very cool accessories for the iPod and iPhone, and Kaufman’s new company, Quirky, a social product development company, is rocking it with a growing stable of innovative products. You can check out the Mophie to Quirky evolution on this video.