Why B-Schools Set Up Entrepreneurs To Fail

By Sramana Mitra I know I am entering highly contentious territory. Academia generally looks down upon entrepreneurs even as they teach entrepreneurship in business schools and other university programs around the world. Meanwhile, I have come to observe that most business school programs have an extensive emphasis on fundraising, especially from venture capitalists, and little

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Sramana Mitra’s Lean Start-Ups Workshop At NASSCOM Product Conclave

Here is some video from Sramana’s workshop at the NASSCOM Product Conclave last month:

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2010: Phitch

By guest author Praveen Kumar ePhiphony Incorporated develops and publishes the inventory investment optimization solution suite Phitch, which provides software add-ons to existing accounting enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting packages that make it easier to optimize inventory. Phitch is designed to boost the performance of ERP platforms by determining inventory alerts, reorder points, safety stocks, and order

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What Do I Need From An Incubator?

By guest author Nari Kannan As an entrepreneur, what do I need from an incubator? Of late, there has been a lot of discussion in this forum about incubators, what measures they use for their own success, their business models, and so forth. In this post I discuss five things that I, as an entrepreneur, need

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Entrepreneurship Education: Idea Validation

Every Thursday morning, I coach five entrepreneurs with many more listening to the sessions. And like a parrot, I keep asking these entrepreneurs to validate their ideas. I give them a framework with which to do so. I give it to them ahead of time hoping they would use it and come prepared. And yet

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The Web Startup Success Guide (Part 3): Startup Incubators

By Guest Author Bob Walsh [After interviewing Aaron Patzer about the founding of Mint.com and Rebecca Lynn of Morgenthaler Ventures about early-stage venture capital, in this final excerpt from his forthcoming book, “The Web Startup Guide”, Bob discusses startup incubators and how they can help entrepreneurs in the US and around the world.] To close

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Entrepreneurial Executives?

I wrote this post on February 11, and have received a large stream of deals that are looking for financing. As I am working through these, it is becoming obvious to me that in most cases, the ventures need a couple of more key people in specific functions.

Building Tech Startups in India: Summary

The Good It is a matter of time The local market for technology products is nascent; the VC model for financing startups fairly new and some issues will work themselves out over time. The current vicious circle – relatively inexperienced entrepreneurs and risk-averse VCs – needs just a few hits to break the cycle.