Mills Scofield

JULY 8, 2013

Consequently, last year I founded TheFounderProject - a new type of venture fund run almost entirely by students that invests in student startups. Some student startups have even received seed and series A term sheet offers from Canadian venture funds, and a couple have been accepted into Canadian accelerator programs.

Entrepreneur 192

Entrepreneur Venture Funding Venture Capitalist Project 192

The Horizons Tracker

JULY 21, 2021

They argue for a €100 billion fund that recruits from both public and private sources and aim for a long-term focus. The €10 billion fund aims to back startups with a mixture of grants and equity investments.

Venture Funding 127

Venture Funding Entrepreneur Proposal Media 127

CEO Blog

MAY 7, 2012

In that, I talk about the advantages of being small (like the Canrock Ventures fund). I wrote a blog entry on the Canrock blog called " A Fat Wallet is the Enemy of High Investment Returns " (this is a Warren Buffett quote). My 95 year old inlaws just got email for the first time. They rank among my idols.

Competitive Advantage 124

Competitive Advantage Venture Funding Blog Learning-by-Doing 124

CEO Blog

OCTOBER 28, 2011

I found the film inspirational since what I now do is early stage venture funding. It included stories of the founding of Cisco (and the firing of the founder by the VC), Atari, Genentech, Tandem, Intel and others. I was struck by the fairly long timeframes for success. Most "overnight successes" took 25 years.

Venture Capitalist 147

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Film Innovation 147

Harvard Business Review

JULY 14, 2023

These tactics will bring the company recurring revenue and venture funding more quickly. They recommend starting by using commercial success to prompt small, one-time defense contracts, partnering with existing defense channels, and building a dedicated sales team.

Software 16

Software Venture Funding Marketing Company 16

Terry Starbucker

FEBRUARY 16, 2011

The “Secret&# of success is not just a great idea, a positive attitude, and venture funding. Are you willing to put in a LOT of hard work and practice? A lot of us are so impatient when it comes to this – we want instant success. But it’s rarely so. Are you a “Santa or an Elf&# ?

Entrepreneur 273

Entrepreneur Venture Funding Finance Books 273

The Horizons Tracker

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Research from INSEAD suggests that the most common way of currently working with a startup is via a corporate venture fund. Successful partnerships. Whilst this is no doubt a valid way of working with a startup, there are other, less expensive avenues you can explore.

Incubator 89

Incubator Entrepreneur Venture Funding Incentives 89

CEO Blog

MAY 3, 2012

I contributed a chapter on Venture Funding in an eBook. The more your connections, the greater your influence (according to Klout) and the greater your chance of being retweeted or talked about. Please tweet this blog post and retweet all the @jimestill you can. Oops sorry - forgot rule 3. Wonder if that will improve my Klout score.

How To 140

How To Venture Funding Influence Media 140

Chartered Management Institute

SEPTEMBER 17, 2012

To begin with Board Connect has just four non-profit launch partners – Teach for America, New Schools Venture Fund, Charter Board Partners and the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation – but the hope is that this will quickly expand. “Board Connect takes advantage of connecting talent with opportunity and ties in social impact.”.

Venture Funding 73

Venture Funding Execution Tools Kaplan 73

The Horizons Tracker

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

In a bid to stand a better chance against purely for-profit firms, the organization recently shifted from a pure nonprofit to a hybrid structure whereby the founding nonprofit retains the majority of the shares in a for-profit company that can now raise venture funding from investors.

Power 75

Power Ethics Venture Funding Quality 75

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 27, 2017

There is an enormous gender gap in venture capital funding in the United States. Female entrepreneurs receive only about 2% of all venture funding , despite owning 38% of the businesses in the country.

Venture Capitalist 15

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Venture Funding Quality 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Two in particular are corporate venture funds, which invest in start-ups outside companies'' walls, and internal idea contests. And corporate venture funds, if well managed, can avoid the fickleness problem that plagues independent venture capital and crowdfunding. It doesn''t have to be this way.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Innovation Incentives 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Two in particular are corporate venture funds, which invest in start-ups outside companies’ walls, and internal idea contests. And corporate venture funds, if well managed, can avoid the fickleness problem that plagues independent venture capital and crowdfunding. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Innovation Incentives 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

If your business has high velocity, high margins, and a huge market, venture may be a good road for you. There are some helpful resources out there on venture terms , good venture funds vs. bad ones , and questions you may want to ask a venture capitalist if you meet one.

Venture Capitalist 15

Venture Capitalist Advice Venture Funding Incubator 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 5, 2018

Corporate executives seek to inject “Silicon Valley DNA” into their cultures, and policy makers point to venture-funded entrepreneurship as a solution for all manner of problems. Another possibility may be corporate venture funds , which often have the technical expertise to evaluate hard tech investments.

Technology 8

Technology Venture Funding Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2017

It’s not all about venture funding. When it is about venture funding, hone in on the best matches. Here are some suggestions that might help accelerator programs in those countries to better support these entrepreneurs. Accelerator programs are most successful when they provide the right help to the right people.

Marketing 9

Marketing Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2011

If big companies are to seize more fast-growth opportunities, they can learn from the venture capitalists that back the most successful entrepreneurs. Venture funds create a basic thesis about what industries will grow, and then they place a lot of inexpensive bets and give start-ups leeway.

Venture Capitalist 14

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Entrepreneur IPO 14

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 9, 2024

Entrepreneurs are uniquely positioned to provide innovative solutions to urgent challenges that require concentrated, collaborative effort. But to scale these solutions, founders need more than just capital — they need strong, effective support from their investors.

Entrepreneur 23

Entrepreneur Innovation Environment Power 23

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 13, 2014

Much of this activity is driven by a handful of highly active funds at firms like Intel, Google, and Qualcomm. But the number of corporate venture funds doing deals each quarter has increased about 50% since 2012. VC dollars, but this year that number has hovered around 30%.

Venture Funding 10

Venture Funding Company Maturity Follow-up 10

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 24, 2011

Our IDEAS Ventures fund is a joint arrangement with the National Research Foundation as part of the National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise. The government plays a big role in the city's ecosystem — administering grants and programs that provide financial support for startup companies.

Venture Capitalist 16

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Handbook Entrepreneur 16

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Maybe it’s learning that your co-founder is prepared to work with the wrong venture fund or that they’re actively willing to hide bad results from your board. But rest assured: you’ll almost certainly see reality at precisely the worst possible moment for you and the company.

Company 13

Company Venture Funding Banking Education 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 16, 2016

If the limiting factor for the startup economy is capital, you’d expect newly founded venture funds to generate solid returns. The biggest barrier for most startups isn’t raising that first round of capital — it’s scaling, which in some ways is getting even harder.

Venture Funding 9

Venture Funding IPO Finance Constraint 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 12, 2024

Research involving numerous accelerator programs and interviews with various stakeholders reveals that startups in these programs typically achieve higher funding and survival rates. What role do business accelerators play in boosting the growth of early-stage companies? And they work.

Succession 24

Succession Education Advice Environment 24

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 22, 2014

In January 2014 IBM announced they were spending $1 billion to launch the Watson Group , including a $100 million venture fund to support start-ups and businesses that are building Watson-powered apps using the “ Watson Developers Cloud.”

Venture Funding 14

Venture Funding Entrepreneur Agility Business Model 14

Harvard Business Review

JULY 25, 2012

In the case of venture-funded companies, which have little operating experience and untested ideas, the bargain is both the idea and the people, with the latter more important than the former. Why, then, destroy one asset to "improve" another?

Venture Capitalist 15

Venture Capitalist Venture Funding Gordon CEO 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2018

Taking this strategy a step further, the company established Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV), a venture fund based in San Francisco that looks for other inventive, environmentally sustainable ways to improve crop yield.

B2B 8

B2B Chemicals Venture Funding Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 19, 2011

And companies in Accra include venture fund Oasis Capital and agricultural private equity house Injaro Investments. The Nairobi-based firms include banking-software developer Craft Silicon, digital-marketing agency Pamoja Media, call-center operator KenCall, POS vendor Paystream, and online content aggregator A24.

Venture Funding 14

Venture Funding Banking Participative Globalization 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2012

Big names like Ford and Sears are setting up data labs in the Bay Area and we have just witnessed the launch of Data Collective , a data-only venture fund set up by some of Silicon Valley's leading lights. Big data is enjoying unprecedented attention, with more than $1 billion invested in it in the last year alone.

Venture Funding 15

Venture Funding Price Technology Retail 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 4, 2014

According to an analysis of venture fund returns by Harvard Business School’s Josh Lerner , more than half of all VC funds delivered no better than low single-digit returns on investment. Worse, only 20 per cent of funds achieved 20 per cent returns (or better), a figure that they might be expected to deliver.

Venture Funding 14

Venture Funding Entrepreneur Incubator Advice 14

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 29, 2016

The six activities are: 1) Identify entrepreneurs (through things like business plan competitions); 2) Train entrepreneurs (both in schools but also in increasingly common startup training programs like the StartUp Institute and General Assembly); 3) Connect and sustain entrepreneurs (through meet-ups or entrepreneur organizations, as well as incubators, (..)

Incubator 11

Incubator Entrepreneur Venture Funding Policies 11

Harvard Business Review

MAY 26, 2014

According to a recent Rock Health report , venture funding of digital health companies exceeded $1.9 All recognize the enormous size of the opportunity to make a profit while improving care, lowering costs, and improving health. billion in 2013, up 39% from 2012. Access to data is enabling us to better understand and address problems.

Health Care 8

Health Care Venture Funding Entrepreneur Pharmaceuticals 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 16, 2011

Such a strategy limits an early venture's funding in order to force the business to develop a profitable business model and then invests heavily in growth once such a model is identified — Christensen terms such investments "good money" for incubating growth businesses and extols the strategy for three reasons.

Christensen 20

Christensen Fixed Costs Metrics Business Model 20

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 12, 2017

I first encountered the term last year, in an intriguing interview with a CEO named Victor Ho, cofounder of a customer loyalty company that has raised more than $100 million in venture funding. Ho talked about his childhood, his college years, and the experiences that shaped his entrepreneurial instincts.

Schein 8

Schein McKinsey Venture Funding Customer Loyalty 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 20, 2012

We now face new competition from Silicon Valley start-ups with venture funding and a great idea, as well as from mature industrial and technology powerhouses from the Fortune 500. But technology innovation is a powerful draw and, in business, when an opportunity arises, there is no shortage of players getting into the game.

CEO 8

CEO Chief Executive Officer Venture Funding Taylorism 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 17, 2012

And when innovation programs do get launched, like an internal venture fund or an idea wiki, they tend to either be organizationally isolated or easily marginalized. For industry incumbents, the problem isn't a lack of resources or a shortage of human creativity, but a dearth of pro-innovation values, processes and practices.

Innovation 15

Innovation Process Competitive Advantage McKinsey 15

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 5, 2017

This is evidenced by the number of venture funding deals , which grew some 200% between 2010 and 2014. .” They may be frogs in a boiling pot. The CVS-Aetna marriage is only the tip of the iceberg. The number of startups in the health care delivery arena is staggering.

Health Care 8

Health Care Insurance Incentives Venture Funding 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 24, 2016

But this is not nearly frequent enough for Deere and companies facing fierce competition for rare technical talent from venture-funded startups and big software and services competitors like Amazon and Google.

Morale 13

Morale Metrics Motivation Venture Funding 13