A recent report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation entitled After Inception – How Enduring is Job Creation by Start-ups?”, uncovered several notable findings about the job creation power of start-ups:
The number of start-ups that flourish and create jobs balances the jobs lost by companies that close.
80% of the jobs created in the first year are still here after 5 years.
Companies that start during recessions general catch up in hiring after the recession ends.
With thanks to Carmine Gallo, his recent post, The Three Elements of an Inspiring Pitch, reminds us of the power of emotion in telling our story to an interested community. The…
In an article entitled Five Ways Pixar Makes Better Decisions, Tom Davenport, a Babson College professor, refers to what I call “after action reviews” as a critical element of the creative decision-making used at Pixar.
In my earlier post, Powerful After Action Reviews, you can learn more about this concept, built and nurtured by the US Army.
Pixar uses the concept of “Dailies”
For Pixar, Davenport reminds us how movie makers use “dailies” to review their work in progress, showing movies to other filmmakers every few month to solicit critical insights that often make the movies better.
That’s the phrase one of my oldest and closest banker friends always used – he became the President of a major division of a major bank before he retired. You may not know that word – and it’s at least a “50-center”, maybe more, but he loved it and used it on me all the time.
… pause … have you looked it up yet or are you waiting for me to tell you? … come on ….
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Okay. It means charitable, as in “we’re not a charitable organization” … meaning we do have a few basic rules:
We expect to get paid … so we’d like to confirm that your projections provide sufficient free cash flow so you can actually pay us back.
We like to have some collateral in case something goes wrong.
We’d like to see some owners’ capital invested in the business so we know we’re in this together.
We’ll probably ask for your personal guaranty, too, to be sure you’re dedicated like the “bacon” and not just committed like the “egg”.
It would be nice if you had some kind of demonstrable track record and relevant management experience so we can assess whether you know what you’re doing in the business you’re in now.
Those are the basic rules … which is why I’m getting pretty tired of the endless news articles and blog posts about the lack of adequate capital for small business. (more…)
Today there's constant bickering among advocates who claim that the banking community is unwilling to lend to small businesses, and those who say that small businesses won't need loans until…
