Damir Perge's Blog: Entrepreneur Insights from the Trenches, page 25

Kitchenvention: Coasties Coasters

One of my passions is inventing products, services or startups. I’m always fascinated by how inventors come up with ideas. I discovered and use an ideation process that I discuss in my book, Entrepreneur Myths: The Startup Reality. But I never get tired of listening to how other inventors come up with their ideas, products, services, or startups.

The inventor of Coasties drink coasters is an incredibly smart guy. He has been very successful inventing products in the medical device category. Th...

Listen, Sense, and Respond, Execute: Using Strategies from Nature to Respond to Market Changes in Your Business

One thing you learn quickly, when studying nature in the domain of complexity science studies, is the need to sense and respond. This concept goes beyond being agile. Natural ecosystems are based on this concept because Darwinism comes into play under the selection of “only the fittest survive.”

Entrepreneurs should apply sense and respond strategy to startups and the launching of new products. The logic behind sense and respond is simple. When you enter new markets, you have to be able to sen...

Learning About Entrepreneurship on a Plane (Pt. 1) : How to Determine When to Manufacture Locally or Abroad

On a long flight, you can learn a lot about entrepreneurship if you happen to sit next to another entrepreneur. Recently, I was seated beside an entrepreneur who was traveling for his third time back to Asia to make sure the product he was manufacturing there was going to be ready to ship.

He talked about the difficulty in getting his product manufactured and he hoped this was going to be his last trip... he hoped. We had a lengthy conversation about his market, his opportunity and his time to...

Startupmentals 101: Budget vs. Schedule

When you are ready to launch a startup or new product, there's a seesaw struggle between meeting your financial budget and meeting your launch schedule. Do you launch your startup on time or do you launch it frugally? I say launch your startup or product frugally and on time.

Managing your startup cashflow is as much art as mathematics. It is the combination of the two because you deal with many variables playing out at the same time. You have to watch your money, and predict the cashflow on a...

Time-to-Customer: Forget About Time-to-Market Metric

In my opinion, entrepreneurs and investors are too focused on "time-to-market." Most of them consider this stage to be up to the point where you ship the product into the marketplace. Another market concept, which I discuss in detail in my bookEntrepreneur Myths: The Startup Reality, is the concept of "first-to-market" and why being first-to-market could make your startup go bankrupt.

Time-to-market and first-to-market are important market considerations, but there's one concept that is even m...

Emotionpreneur: When a Meerkat comes to the Rescue

I recently spoke about emotions in business, with a long-time entrepreneur friend. We are working on a few deals and it occurred to me last night that, no matter what the situation, this guy doesn’t get emotional. That’s the cool thing about hanging around great entrepreneurs. You can learn so much from them if you open your ears to listen.

One of the problems with having close entrepreneur friends is that you have a tendency to miss the obvious about their successful traits because you’re aro...

Entreprenetics: Pressure to Perform in a Startup Business

When you raise investment dollars from outside investors, whether you admit it or not, you’re going to feel pressure to perform. I’ve been there myself from both the entrepreneur and venture capital side of the equation. There is the same pressure to perform on the startup as the pressure to perform as the investor.

You see it often — entrepreneurs raise capital from venture capital and they think they’ve made it. But in reality the pressure to perform has just escalated to another level. And...

Startupmentals 101: Being Imperfect

Making perfect business decisions in launching new products or startups is hazardous to the well-being of your goal. Based on my empirical evidence while investing into more than 25+ entrepreneurs, too many entrepreneurs waste time trying to make that perfect decision about strategy, that perfect product specification, that perfect marketing message, that perfect branding, and that perfect look and feel of the website.

Trying to make it perfect before you launch can extend your startup cycle t...

Negapital: The Startup’s Ideal Funding Fantasy

When you take a course in thermodynamics, one of the first things you learn is the concept of ideal state. Ideal state is when you make certain assumptions, regarding an energy model, as the ideal conditions for reference. I'm not giving a thermo lesson today because I'd rather talk about the greatest startup fantasy of all — the ideal fantasy of negapital.

When you have invested into as many entrepreneurs as I have, you see a pattern regarding negapital. Entrepreneurs come to investors for ca...

Visual-o-matic: Tennis Lessons Applied To Startup Success

You can learn a lot about entrepreneurship from watching team sports like football, rugby, cricket, soccer, basketball, baseball — as well as individual sports like tennis. Soccer is my game, but I am also a huge fan of tennis. My former country of Yugoslavia produced some great tennis players including Monica Seles and Goran Ivanisevich. I enjoy watching tennis because you can witness quite a few psychological roller coaster rides during a game. Just like startups, tennis is a mental game as...