Entrepreneurship
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A new kind of agent could help creators navigate and negotiate a rapidly evolving landscape
Part of making it as a creator is the luxury of having an agent — someone who pitches your talent to others, advocates for your rights in contract negotiations, and makes sure the value of your talent is captured to the maximum extent possible in every situation.
Having an agent’s representation has long been the privilege of elite actors, authors, and athletes. But an agent’s core service — representing and amplifying a person’s talent to others — is something everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from.
One stellar literary agent was a game-changer for me as a writer and…
No Mercy No Malice
The economic flood gates are about to open wide
Post-crisis periods are among history’s most productive eras. London rebuilt after the Great Fire with grand new architecture, and Europe, after the worst of its plagues, underwent a commercial revolution. The Marshall Plan turned enemies into allies, fomenting peace and prosperity for more than half a century. Leaders also emerge from crises. Ulysses S. Grant was a washed-up soldier without prospects until war broke out, but that war created the opportunity for Grant to save the Union and advance the cause of freedom. This is all to say: In the next 36 months, I believe our economy will birth a…
The death of Indie.vc spells the end of a movement that valued steady profits over breakneck growth
This week, Bryce Roberts, a Salt Lake City–based venture capitalist and the brains behind Indie.vc, announced that his VC firm that focused on sustainable profits over rapid growth would no longer be accepting or making further investments after funding nearly 40 companies over six years. “This is not intended to be a pity party,” Roberts wrote. “Rather, a public acknowledgment that the initial Indie experiment has come to an end.”
It’s a surprising ending for an idea that many in the entrepreneurial community lauded as a step in the right direction to address some of the longstanding systemic issues and…
Nick Huber is leading a growing entrepreneurial movement that’s anti-unicorn—and pro-plumbing
It’s early evening in Athens, Georgia, and Nick Huber, entrepreneur and recently crowned startup expert, is about to record a podcast. Huber and his followers aren’t your typical founders. They don’t want to divine the next unicorn, launch a SPAC, raise a wad of eight-figure VC funding, or even break into a Y Combinator class. They have their eyes set on something more earthly, if not provocative: hatch a really solid pest control or lawn care business. “You ask anybody what entrepreneurship is, and they think of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Shark Tank,” Huber says. “The real, true…
‘Following his Instagram is like taking a master class in launching business ventures’
So much for Dry January. The new year began inauspiciously with the Slack outage on the first Monday back at work, and the chaos escalated rapidly from there with the storming of Capitol Hill, the second impeachment of President Trump, and fears over whether there would be a peaceful transition of power. Yes, 2021 has been so stressful that people everywhere quickly ditched their 31-day wellness and detox plans, reaching, instead, for their preferred alcoholic beverage of choice to numb their 2020 PTSD.
In other words, 2021 hasn’t been what the general public had hoped for. But growing consumer…
After New York magazine published a cover story cataloging 500 notable New York City businesses that shuttered for good during the pandemic, writer and director Julio Vincent Gambuto wrote about the heartbreaking loss that happens behind the scenes for entrepreneurs and their families. His own father’s entrepreneurial woes were one of the foundational experiences of his childhood, he writes, one that still seeps into his work as a film director. “Despite our family’s best efforts to save my father’s quest for the American dream from devolving into an American nightmare, we lost that business,” he recalls. …
They say everyone deserves a second chance, but Noa Santos may be pressing his luck. The entrepreneur is back with another interior design startup that somewhat resembles his last: Homepolish, the VC-backed company that crumbled in 2019, leaving designers unpaid — some owed as much as $32,000. “Behind the company’s glossy Instagram feed was a much messier reality,” wrote Marker contributor Courtney Rubin, when she documented the company’s spectacular fall.
Santos’s new venture, Freddie, is a membership-based network for interior designers. “Freddie is grounded in the idea of herd intellect,” he told Architectural Digest, “We all lift each other up.”…
Avoid the danger of filling all your early leadership roles with C-level and VP-level titles
A long time ago, I was consulting for a company that raised its first big round of VC funding and then immediately hired a dozen VPs away from companies whose names you would be familiar with.
I’ve never seen 12 people do more damage to a business in a shorter amount of time. You couldn’t have more than two of them in the same meeting without it devolving into an ugly, awkward argument over who knew better based on their experience at the dying brand-name corporation they were so eager to leave.
I’ve come to believe there is one universal…
Number of the Day
A new batch of entrepreneurs are starting up companies as unemployment rises
111,680: That’s how many applications were filed to start new businesses the week of August 10, a 69% increase over the same week last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
It’s not just a one-time spike, either. The previous week saw 113,860 applications for new business tax IDs (up 75% year-over-year). And more than 100,000 new business applications have been filed every week for the last eight weeks, surpassing the number of applications filed in the whole second quarter of 2020. Felix Salmon of Axios ties the wave of entrepreneurship to the recent surge in e-commerce sales over the…
Everyone claims to be an expert, but can they really help you build your business?
There are three types of people an entrepreneur needs to build a successful business: employees to build the company, advisers to influence the direction of the business, and investors to provide the fuel and connections.
Within each of these three groups, there are a lot of folks who will call themselves “startup experts,” but there are very few with the experience to help you build something from idea to reality and generate revenue. If I had to pick one adage that I rely on most often as a startup founder, it’s this: There is no single best practice for any…
