Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Dan Isenberg failure story - a printing company undone by the dot-com collapse

Dan Isenberg is the executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project and the author of the great new book "Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value." As part of our longer interview, after discussing the pros and cons of the culture of celebrating failure, Dan related his own failure story and what he learned from it. He talks about a startup that grew quickly and imploded ever faster than that in the crazy dot-com bubble era of 2000-2001. Access the story here (30 minutes). The failed venture. Lessons from the failure - the sixth sense of business danger; the speed of failure; reading the macro situation; the "Dersu Uzala" story

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Dan Isenberg podcast - on contrarian entrepreneurs

Dan Isenberg is the executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project and the author of the great new book "Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value," a very valuable book on the subject. We had a wide-ranging conversation on failure, mistakes, lean startups and whether entrepreneurs need to try to get very big. Enjoy! Access the podcast here (30 minutes). Summary: 1:15 What "Worthless, Impossible and Stupid" is about 3:10 On the emerging "Failure Culture" 7:30 The fine line between success and failure in new ventures 8:20 Is the first mover advantage really an advantage? 9:25 Do entrepreneurs have to be innovators to succeed? 10:00 Dan's failed venture 11:30 Lessons from the failure - the sixth sense of business danger; the speed of failure; reading the macro situation; the "Dersu Uzala" story 13:33 Is there a scarcity of capital for entrepreneurs? 17:00 On the Lean Startup movement; not so novel - "that's the way our grandparents did business"; "a lot of really good ventures will require a lot of capital" 18:55 Is a flower-shop owner really an entrepreneur? "There's not a continuum between self-employment and entrepreneurship." 22:30 Entrepreneurs as job-creators - and public policy (please be patient with the interviewer's 90 - 90! - second question. He got carried away.) 28:05 A bit more on the book - great entrepreneur stories without even one about Steve Jobs