The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. This week 100 educators from around the world will come to Stanford to learn how to teach it.

At its heart, small business is about entrepreneurs going for it, taking on risk and chasing their dream, with access to funding being core to their ongoing success.

The average startup iterates multiple times before they find the right product, often drawing up new ways to find traction. Here are five of the most common I've come across within the startup community.

For many entrepreneurs "raising money" has replaced "building a sustainable business" as their goal. That's a big mistake. When you take money from investors, their business model becomes yours.

I started my first business about 15 years ago and can comfortably say that while the basic process for setting up a business to handle growth hasn't changed much in that time, the tools have changed IMMENSELY. For a small investment, these tools will help you set up your business for sustainable success.

Americans must take the opportunity to lead, or eventually find ourselves following. The fact that countries around the world are adopting America's model for innovation creates tremendous long-term opportunities to build grassroots links across the globe.

Financial projections that make sense in your business domain, and cross-foot with available data from independent market analysts are no guarantee that you can deliver. They do show you already stand out from the crowd of talk-only entrepreneurs, understand financial realities, and are willing to commit.

Last month I beat the abysmal startup odds to become one of the very few that finds meaningful traction, intrigues one of the big players, and gets acquired.

Planning in most businesses doesn't work because the business lacks the leadership, the controls and processes, or the proper protection of assets in order to make the plan a reality.

If the motivation is anything less than, "I just can't not do it," you might want to think twice because times will get tough. Here are five other things I've learned in the first six months of building a company.

Here is the text of the speech I delivered May 10 to the University of Minnesota College of Science & Engineering.

Time is a finite resource, making it very valuable. You cannot repurchase or reproduce time once it has been used. You must understand and be ready for the actual volume of decisions you will be making as an entrepreneur.

Some company killers are obvious. Competition. Obsolescence. Too much debt. They're sexy problems. They make the headlines and you're already aware of them. But there are hidden threats that you don't even know exist.

Yes, the economy was rough on commerce for a while, but still many businesses fail unnecessarily. If I've gained any wisdom about business, it's that there is a learning curve and you must always improve your skills for your business to thrive.

Being unafraid to put yourself out there and networking at every opportunity shows that you've rolled up your sleeves and are ready to get to work, that you've got big plans and big moves in your future and that you're a startup worth noticing.

Conflict presents an opportunity to leverage differences to generate creative solutions and improve relationships. This first in a series of posts on startup negotiations shares one approach for overcoming disagreements effectively.

Turn your abilities into resources to help you grow your business. Don't be afraid to set a trend rather than follow one; and be bold, the rewards it brings are immeasurable!

Behind every "overnight success" is a story of a person or a team toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends and partners supporting them. Consider the following two stories.