Ed "Skip" McLaughlin's Blog, page 7
March 29, 2016
Avoid This Startup Blunder When Pitching Investors
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when pitching to investors is to claim that you have no competitors. As investor Marc Andreesen said in a posting on Quora, “It’s almost always a red flag when someone asserts that they have no competition – from an investor standpoint, good markets naturally draw competition, and so if there is no competition, that often means that a company is in a terrible market.”
Andreesen, who is a general partner of the venture...
March 22, 2016
What Is Your Real Market Opportunity? 8 Questions for Startups
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
How will you assess the market opportunity for your new business? Success stories like Nike, Apple, and Tesla show that the greatest opportunities lie in industry sectors that are growing and changing. You, too, will benefit from knowing your market, fully understanding the business you are in, and evaluating and quantifying your market opportunity.
Know Your MarketLook beyond the market that seems self-evident. Ty Montague’s Inc. article, The Key Innovati...
March 10, 2016
Pre-Orders Guarantee Startup Success – 6 Steps
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
A pre-order is an informal commitment from customers to purchase your product before it is formally offered to the market. Pre-orders are vital to any new business because they validate your business idea before you launch.
Like many entrepreneurs forming B2B startups, I had the advantage of a significant, pre-existing corporate relationship base to build on. In a few cases, my customer relationships were close enough that I could try out my idea informally...
March 3, 2016
5 Movers & Shakers of Entrepreneurship
Previously Published on LinkedIn
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
“The Real McCoys of Entrepreneurship,” five extraordinary people and entrepreneurs, have paved the way for others to follow their dreams. One entrepreneur comes from the pages of history, and four others are history-in-the-making entrepreneurs that live among us today.
Elijah McCoy The Original “Real McCoy”
Elijah McCoy, who lived from 1844 to 1929, was a Canadian engineer and inventor. He left behind 57 U.S. patents, 50 of...
February 24, 2016
3 Steps to a Profitable Startup
Previously Published on LinkedIn
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
Why do some startups succeed, while others wind up in a death spiral? A recentBloombergBusiness article, “A Not-So Rosy Path to U.S. Expansion for Flower Delivery Startup BloomThat,” by Ellen Huet, provides an example of one of the most common reasons startups fizzle and fail. A quick summary here of the gutsy steps BloomThat executives took to save their business provides a backdrop and introduction to the three critical ste...
February 16, 2016
Honesty – The Surprising Secret to Startup Success
Previously Published on LinkedIn
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
Most of us were brought up hearing the story about George Washington cutting down his father’s prize cherry tree and coming clean about it in a grand gesture of integrity and honesty. The point of the story is to set up and use a well-admired figure to teach the virtue of honesty, and the story has worked for many years. Most people, when asked, will say, “Honesty is the best policy.”
But how many individuals and corporatio...
February 9, 2016
Unicorn Face-off: Investors VS. Startup Employees
Previously Published on LinkedIn
By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker
With the recent downturn of some unicorn valuations and its potential effect on more than 150 unicorns worldwide, a face-off is brewing between investors who are first in line to get their payback and the holders of common stock, such as employees (or even founders), who may never see a dime.
What are the main points of contention, and should this face-off drive employees to set their sights on startups with less glamour and...
