Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?

We’re working with Nicole Kohari, a PhD candidate at Akron University to better understand entrepreneurs and what makes us tick. If you’re an entrepreneur, please take a few minutes to complete the survey. Also, feel free to forward this to other entrepreneurs.

An event founded around the concept of “focusing on learning by creating” is now making its way to Cleveland. An email to local entrepreneur Doug Craver from its organizer Andrew Kavanaugh:

Hi Everybody,

If you are receiving this email then I believe you are an invaluable member of the Cleveland Entrepreneurial Community and I’d like to ask you for a bit of help with the Startup Weekend - Cleveland event. Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event that brings together developers, graphic artists, business & marketing, legal and more for a fun filled weekend of pitching ideas and bringing the popular ideas to life. There have been nearly 30 Startup Weekend Events in the United States, Canada and, most recently, in Greece - including an event in our backyard (Columbus). After a great run of votes on http://startupweekend.com/cityvote/ - I’m happy to announce that we’re bringing the party to Cleveland.

We’re still putting together the logistics of the entire event and talking with a few different venues in order to get enough space for the 80-150 expected attendees. But in order to make this event a true success, I need a good team of people that can execute this event with me. I’m looking for 5-6 people to assist in planning the event, specifically, people that can:

1) Spread the word - the size of the event will dictate its’ success and ensure that we can continue to have these types of events in the future.
2) Raise sponsorship dollars - since we’re providing food, entertainment, some legal advice, etc; we need to raise about $5,000 and possibly more or less depending on the venue’s level of generosity.
3) Swag - who doesn’t like a gift bag for showing up to the event. Someone that can help with the design of our logo & tshirts would be great as well.
4) Help run the event - the event starts with registration, drinks, dinner, elevator pitches & voting, we’ll need a few volunteers to keep things running smoothly at all of these stages.

Crain’s Cleveland is running an article on the event in January and I hope to get The Plain Dealer involved in spreading the word shortly - this is shaping up to be quite the event and I hope that you can all assist or attend. If you would like to be involved or know someone that can help, please contact me at your earliest convenience. Everybody that replies will be invited to our first meeting in January where we can talk the logistics & roles.

Thanks for your consideration and Happy New Year,

-AK

Please spread the word and let’s make this event an outstanding success that continues to grow!

A brief powerpoint presentation I created for a recent education conference in Columbus. Please forward to friends and send comments.

Originally posted on InnovationCompass.

Entrepreneurs face steep challenges every single day.

It is taking three times as long to ship your product than you had estimated. A key supplier (the one that was discounting their materials by 25%) just went out of business. The market is lukewarm to your first release. Each day, you worry there will not be enough time or money to hit escape velocity.

Enter the massive sell-off on Wall Street and the accompanying global economic crisis.

What’s a struggling entrepreneur to do?

Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com, has a unique stance on how entrepreneurs should weather the storm. Jason broke his blog silence this week and posted a popular email he had previously sent out to his subscribers.

In a section comparing the dangers of a pilot trusting his instincts in poor weather conditions to an entrepreneur going with her gut right now, Jason asserts that “you must trust your metrics (revenue, burn rate, page views and earning[s]), not your senses. Your senses and emotions are FUBARed right now, but your metrics are not.”

In other words, in the midst of the confusing and uncertain economic conditions we all face, Jason argues that entrepreneurs should fly by their numbers, not their instincts. To do otherwise would be a move toward entering the dreaded “death spiral.”

In many ways, I think this is sage advice. It sounds sensible and feels safe – how can you argue that your metrics don’t matter? His advice is also comforting and soothing to your edgy, raw nerves: take a deep breath and focus on your numbers.

After I let his words settle in a bit, I could not help but feel there is more to the story. I know it makes sense to look at your instrument panel when flying in fog (how else do you know up from down?). Okay, check. Yes, I will watch my metrics and glean everything I can from the picture they paint. But there is a voice inside my head urging me to also feel my way forward when facing a crisis. It nudges me to lean into the problem with my instincts, intuition, and confidence as my guide.

In Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin introduces us to an amazing rock climber by the name of Chris Sharma. Chris renders previously “unclimbable” rock faces, well, climbable. Other rock climbers keep a hand and a foot on the rock in order to make steady progress. This method works, but when a climber encounters a rock face where one cannot get a toe or finger hold, he is stuck. When Chris hits a seemingly dead end, he does a “dyno” and literally flies up the rock. Chris’s immense self confidence, faith, persistence (and fitness) get him to the top.

In leaving behind trusted rock climbing methods, Chris uses (he did not invent the dyno) a better way to scale “impossible” faces. Watch Chris climb in Squamish, B.C.:

Chris chooses a maverick (are you sick of that word yet?) approach. And in doing so, he finds success.

Does Chris ever fall? If you watched the video, he can see that, yes, he falls all the time. Chris is anchored to the rock with ropes and clips, so in that sense, he does not totally abandon “reasonableness.”

I am not suggesting that entrepreneurs forge ahead – in good times or bad – with blind carelessness and a bloated swagger. When you enter extreme weather, you do need to rely upon your metrics to guide you out of murky territory.

But there is also something to be said for occasionally “doing a dyno” to find your next finger hold on your upward climb.

Last year I posted about a pilot entrepreneurship program that a friend (and fellow entrepreneur) and I taught at a local high school. Somewhat astonished by the fact that 24 high school kids agreed to come to school 45 minutes early for the entire year, I asked the students a simple question: Why?

The answer was clear: “Because it was taught by real-world entrepreneurs.”

Entrepreneurship has become an essential aspect of education that we can no longer afford to overlook. Small businesses are now responsible for the vast majority of new job creation and economic growth. Entrepreneurs are now driving (what’s left of) our economy, yet we’re still teaching our kids to go to school, study hard and get a good job.

Who is going to create those jobs?

A recent Gallup Poll commissioned by The Kauffman Foundation shows that 69% of high school students want to start a small business, yet 84% of those surveyed report that they have no preparation to do so.

Bill Gates put it differently: “Training the workforce of tomorrow with the high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 50 year-old mainframe… It’s the wrong tool for the times.”

Entrepreneurship is more than business plans and balance sheets. It’s a mindset that exposes opportunity, ignites ambition and fosters critical thinking, financial literacy, global awareness and other essential 21st century skills. It’s a mindset that can empower ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It’s a mindset that every student needs.

Entrepreneurship is also a mindset that is difficult to convey (and easy to kill) in a traditional textbook/classroom environment.

Based on that experience and our partnership with The Cisco Entrepreneur Institute, my colleagues and I have come up with a scalable solution.

We’ve established a non-profit organization and are now in the process of creating an interactive entrepreneurship education program that utilizes multi-media online and distance learning technology to enable students and their teachers to interact with, and learn from, real-world entrepreneurs.

The teacher-led program is based on the collective knowledge and experience drawn from a diverse array of real-world entrepreneurs. The curriculum is designed to immerse students in project based learning that will expose them to the fundamental concepts of entrepreneurship and help them develop the skills that will enable them to recognize opportunities, manage risks and learn from their results.

In addition to the interactive multi-media content, we’re also establishing a rapidly growing network of entrepreneurs, angel investors and small business owners who are willing to share their knowledge and experience with students within their communities.

Our concept is a collaboration of educators and entrepreneurs, business and community leaders, working together to redefine the American high school experience, to create dynamic learning environments so that all students are prepared for success in today’s world.

The bottom line is that we need your help. Please forward this post to anyone you think may be interested in helping raise money, recruiting talent or piloting our program. The potential impact - for our students, our communities and our nation as a whole - is profound.

John Osher is the consummate inventor and entrepreneur. He has developed hundreds of consumer products, including an electric toothbrush that became America’s best-selling toothbrush in just 15 months. He also started several successful companies, including Cap Toys. He built sales to $125 million per year and then sold the company to Hasbro Inc. in 1997. But his most lasting contribution to the business world just may be a list of screw-ups he jotted on the back of a piece of paper.

“After I sold my business to Hasbro, I decided I’d make a list of everything I’d done wrong and [had] seen other entrepreneurs do wrong,” he explains. “I wanted to make a company that didn’t make any of these mistakes. I wanted to see if I could come up with the perfect company.”

He came up with an informal list of “16 Mistakes Start-Ups Make”-since expanded to 17-that has been used in a Harvard Business School case study, has been cited in many publications, and has become a part of what he teaches budding entrepreneurs in his frequent university lectures. He also used the list when he developed Dr. John’s SpinBrush, a $5 electric toothbrush that he sold to Procter & Gamble for $475 million.

I asked John to share his list of 17 startup mistakes with us. He graciously agreed.

In a recent interview with Rahul Chowdhury, founder of Denuo Source, Rahul described how business school gave him the courage to think big.

“At the end of the day no matter what you do, you start a small little shop on the corner of Michigan Ave. that’s selling newspapers, it still takes a lot of effort. Any business no matter what you do takes a lot of effort. So might as well do something bigger because the effort’s the same.”

Why not think big?

Behavioral science tells us that our self-concept is largely shaped early in life. Our beliefs about who we are, what we deserve and what we are capable of are often determined by the unspoken environmental influences of our early childhood.

Yet these beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of often have no correlation with our true abilities. Much of our self-concept is shaped by self-imposed limitations that are based on unchallenged assumptions. Meanwhile, our untapped potential lies dormant.

In her book A Return To Love, Author Marianne Williamson wrote “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

We often make important life choices based on these self-imposed limitations. We list all the reasons why we can’t, how circumstances beyond our control prevent us from living the lives we imagine. Yet our choice are often based on these unchallenged assumptions.

It has been said that courage is not the absence of fear, it is the willingness to forge ahead in spite of it. As I travel around the country interviewing entrepreneurs, I’m still astonished by their stories. And if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that opportunities abound.

Those who succeed are not born with any innate talent or abilities. They are not particularly brilliant, privileged, well educated or lucky. They succeed simply because they are willing to push the limits of what they think they are capable of.

So ask yourself, why not think big? The answer may surprise you.

Venture capitalist Jonathan Murray of Early Stage Partners described the startup process as a series of iterative experiments rather than a linear projection. Rather than writing a business plan with cash flow projections that have little or no basis in reality, Jonathan suggests a more realistic approach- a balance between objectivity and entrepreneurial zeal:

Experiment #1: Can we make a product? The objective of this first series of experiments (seed/pre-seed stage) is to build a prototype and is typically run by the founders with bootstrapped financing from friends, fools and family, personal credit and other non-traditional sources.

Experiment #2: Can we get a few customers to buy the product? Once a prototype is built, the second set of experiments is to get a few “live” customers to purchase the product and provide initial feedback. This (early) stage typically involves the founders working in collaboration with professional managers and may be funded by early stage venture capital or angel investors.

Experiment #3: Can we get a lot of customers to buy the product? Once revenue has been achieved, this third (growth stage) of the startup is typically run entirely by professional managers and is financed by institutional venture capital investors.

While this is an oversimplified and generalized overview, it is one that can shed much light on the process while perhaps eliminating much of the potential for heartache and frustration for all who are involved.

Remember, objectivity is the key.

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We’ve just finished a series of video interviews with successful entrepreneurs as part of an online education program we’re creating for the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute- an amazing journey that provided some powerful insights into the mindset of successful entrepreneurs; how they think, how they’re able to recognize opportunities and the underlying characteristics that enabled them to transform those opportunities into successful new ventures.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset course will become available, both online and in a blended learning environment, through The Cisco Entrepreneur Institute later this summer. Meanwhile, we’ve begun to post some of the interview clips on our site. Stay tuned.

In an age where innovation and creativity are as important as literacy, why are we still educating our people out of their creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. With ample anecdotes and witty asides, Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people.

“We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. The universality of his message is evidenced by its rampant popularity online.

If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, please stop whatever you’re doing and watch it now. Then share this with a teacher.

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