Small business owners aren't known for being great planners. That's because small businesses tend to react more than they plan, or they created a plan 10 years ago and haven't revisited it since. Such an approach may have worked well in the past, but today -- in the aftermath of...

Much has been written about the importance of entrepreneurship -- particularly high-growth entrepreneurship -- in reviving our national economy. Numerous reports show that young entrepreneurial companies are disproportionately responsible for job creation. In fact, a Kauffman study asserts that, between 1980 and 2005, all net new jobs were...

This afternoon in Boulder I'll be on a panel as part of the White House Startup America Roundtable. If you weren't invited to the event, there is a web site called Reducing Barriers to Innovation that you can participate in.

Over the past few years, I've...

Loyalty programs are an effective way to reward your most frequent customers. In other words -- you should definitely have one.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as issuing a few colorful punch cards and calling it a day. As fun as they are, these wallet-fatteners don't come close to allowing...

Have you ever heard of The Point?

It was a website launched in 2007 that enabled individuals to come together to solve problems that would be difficult to solve alone. Targeting citizens, parents or employees, the site enabled fundraising or activism campaigns -- only after a certain number of...

I've been thinking a lot about the differences between first time and serial entrepreneurs. We invest in both and do not have a preference between the two. But there are significant differences.

The best first time entrepreneurs have been stewing on their idea for quite a while. It is a...

I believe that a good domain name is an important success factor in building and launching consumer web services. It's not in my top ten but it could be. It's certainly something we think about a lot when making investments and working with companies post investment.

A number...

The lessons I learned from my first startup company are ones I never forgot.

The first two years of my first business, developing, producing and selling sportswear clothing, was challenging and exhilarating. The business grew quickly because I apparently designed a product that appealed to a wide range of...

As June approaches, the million and a half students set to graduate from college in the U.S. this year likely have just one thing are their mind: the job market.

For each of these students faced with an uncertain, unstable or imprudent future, there will be a strong impulse...

The worst of the Great Recession is apparently over. The economy is growing again, and the unemployment rate is down to 8.8 percent from its peak of 10.1 percent.

Yet even if the acute crisis is abating, the grim fact is that the U.S. economy still faces chronic health problems....

As many as 2.5 billion people in the world -- 1 in 3 -- do not have access to functioning sanitation systems. Not surprisingly, a host of maladies arise for families faced with this situation, ranging from malodorous living conditions to major diseases. Throughout the developing world, diarrheal disease is...

A recent New York Times article dove into the idea of organically creating the next Silicon Valley. Its author, Steven Davidoff, reviewed the different ingredients public and private sectors are adding to their entrepreneurial ecosystems and touched on a growing consensus that government does, and should, have a...

The financial crisis caused a great deal of damage to the capacity of entrepreneurs to access traditional sources of funding, such as bank credit, credit card debt and home equity loans. And "friends and family," another common source of startup capital, are as financially stressed as the founders themselves.

To...

If you're not thinking of your customers as gamers yet, then you're missing out on all the fun.

Whether you know it or not, customers are playing a number of games when they enter your business. They may or may not be playing overt games -- groaning over another Angry...

What's the secret sauce for job creation? Step one is to identify who actually creates jobs (hint: entrepreneurs), and it seems like all parties in Washington finally agree on this one. Step two is to find the best way to, if you can forgive the term, stimulate them.

Imagine my...

As the way we work continues to evolve, businesses should think about how the physical office needs to change as well -- and perhaps even rethink their whole concept of what and where the office is.

A fundamental shift of where business is conducted is happening as WiFi connectivity...

I was at an board meeting yesterday morning for a new seed deal that we've done that will be announced next week. I love the product vision - it's in an area that I've been working in for a while across a variety of companies and will take a new...

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble." -- Macbeth

Every time I hear the word "bubble" I think of that quote from Macbeth. I also think of Tulip Mania and the South Sea Company which purportedly was the source of the concept of an economic bubble. And...

Could having friends be bad for business?

In the first installment of this two-part series, we explored social dynamics that could "turn friends into chains." In this second article, we focus on a more subtle and perhaps more harmful aspect of social connections: their blinding potential.

In...

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
-Oscar Wilde

Too often startups take a dangerous route to setting price by just looking at how much a product or service costs to provide and how much competitors are charging, and then setting the price in...