Damir Perge's Blog: Entrepreneur Insights from the Trenches, page 11

Startup Team Diversity: When Diversity in Age and Culture Provides a Competitive Advantage in a High-Tech Startup

In this era of the second technology revolution, you may believe that twenty-something-year-olds have an edge when it comes to starting and launching technology startups. But in reality, they don't.

Recently I was talking with a bright twenty-something technologist. We hit upon the topic of how younger generations have started taking over the technology marketplace because the cost of developing ideas has come down substantially. “Ten years ago, I had to spend a million dollars to develop some...

Startup Linemen: The Constraints of Startup Growth Due to the Weakest Link

When I invest into a company, I not only develop a psychological profile of each member of the founding team, I look at the rest of the employees as well. The people you hire are the ones who transform your startup vision and strategy into execution reality.

No matter how good of a quarterback, wide receiver or running back you have on your startup founding team, without the right employees to launch and scale, you could get into the “Red Zone” (the last 20-yards before the end zone) and never...

The 3P's of an Extremely Successful Startup

You're probably familiar with the famous 4P's of marketing: product, price, promotion and placement. You must strategize and execute these 4 P’s if you want to have a successful product. In startups there are 3 P's that are even more important P's: people, people, people.

Did I mention that people are the most important? Without the right people you got no game on the 4P’s of marketing. Did you pick the right people for your startup?

Now back to finishing my cup of Starbucks espresso. Tell me y...

Pressure to Innovate: The Circle of Innovation

When you choose the life of being an innovator, you eventually feel the pressure to continuously innovate. It’s a double edged sword. The more you innovate, the higher the expectations you set with your customers. At some point, your customers become like little spoiled children—expecting cool, new stuff all the time. This is exactly the case of Apple. I am not going to deny it to you—they have spoiled me. I am expect something very cool and disruptive from them every year.

Innovation means de...

Businessnatomy: How Strategy Plays Out in a Business Model for Samsung Against Apple

Strategy is a critical part of the business model of any startup, growing, stagnating or even failing business. Many entrepreneurs fail to integrate business modeling with their overall business strategy. However, wherever there is competition, business strategy exists.

Creating a business model without thinking through Professor Michael Porter’s classic five competitive forces of an industry is like operating in a vacuum. These five forces include three forces from the horizontal competitive...

When Startup Optimism is Startup Stupidism: Why Startups Shouldn't Think Like Thomas Edison

(Image Source: Damir Perge, St. Louis Airport)

While traveling through the St. Louis airport, I got stuck with flight delays. Imagine that. Passengers were packed in the airport like sardines. I walked around but I couldn’t find an empty seat. I needed my "parking magic" powers. But they didn’t come. It was a desperate situation.

Suddenly I spotted six empty seats in a row. I walked toward them, realizing it was the handicap section. I said to myself, "What the hell … I’ll sit here until I see...

Startup Secret #0: The Formation of a Team for Building a Billion Dollar Startup

As a venture capitalist, I've seen thousands of business presentations. As an entrepreneur, I have written more than 50 startup presentations over the years. The sequence of slides in the presentation is important. Your goal is to get investors excited about your startup.

Your first page usually contains a short description of the company and your vision. The next set of slides shows the problem you’re solving in the marketplace, followed up with market information including: size of the marke...

Startup Secret #1: The Secret to Increasing Speed in any Startup

A friend of mine has worked in the corporate world his entire business life. This guy is extremely smart. I can’t believe that he hasn’t gone the entrepreneur route yet. But everyone has their own entrepreneur journey to go through at some point in their life.

I've never gone the corporate route, so I can’t understand the mentality of being corporate. One thing I see is that “corporate career people” looking to climb the corporate ladder think in terms of chiefdoms and the amount of people wor...

Startup Monsters: The Difference Between Hits and Super Hits

The physics behindpower law teaches you to respect those freaks of nature I call super hits. As a venture capitalist, you have to understand that not all of your investments are going to be huge hits. This is why most astute investors understand that numbers, in terms of investments made, can make a difference in finding the big hits that cancel out the investment losses. And the more investments you make, the higher the probability you will find a big hit. The same applies to entrepreneurshi...

Seek and Destroy Startup Bottlenecks in Your Digital Business

The capacity of your startup is limited by the biggest bottleneck within your organization. You must seek out and destroy every bottleneck in every function and process of the business.

One obvious sign of a bottleneck is large inventories sitting idle between processes. This slows the flow of your company's value in its journey to provide customer satisfaction. But what if you can’t see the inventory because your business is 100% digital? Look for the “waiting time” between the processes. The...