There are too many to list individually, but most come from having someone with experience. People often confuse smart with experienced and think they can do anything new well. Science and logic says this is not possible with anything complex.

Few things are as complex as entrepreneurship. Hardly anyone would read a book on flying and hop in a plane alone to fly it. Or try to climb Mount Everest alone. But everyone thinks they can build a new business for some strange reason. As a result, we have an 85% failure rate of new businesses. Ones with coaches and mentors greatly outperform because they avoid the hundreds of common mistakes and pitfalls, some of which can be fatal to a business. These companies where the CEO and executives use coaches even outperform the S & P 500 (mature companies) by a wide margin. They are working on constant improvement of the team, which makes all the critical decisions. And this reduces turn-over, challenges people and gives them career growth...

This varies by the amount of money being raised and stage of development of the company. I have posted a due diligence checklist on my blog, you can find for full detail.

Any amount over $1M will likely require substantial look into all company officers, financial statements, customer records in addition to review of the company’s business plan and product(s). Expect serious investors to ask about everything you can imagine. And the more open you are, the better. Although VC will likely refuse to sign NDAs as many of these would place too many constraints on them over time, this does allow you to withhold some trade secrets and protect your “secret sauce”. This could be your source code, trade secrets and algorithms or other secrets you do not want to expose to competitors.  This is a big gray area and negotiable, but you should be careful, as VCs are not prevented from investing in your competitors after pulling out of your deal. And they can legally transfer...

By Arielle Pardes

Applications for new businesses rose 20 percent last year, after languishing for a decade. Many newly minted founders attribute it to the pandemic.

ANGELA MUHWEZI-HALL HAD a startup idea long before the pandemic—it just never seemed like the right time. She had a steady job at a university, a 401(k), and the ability to take paid time off. Then came March 2020. As the university shut down and Muhwezi-Hall retreated to work from home, she started to think about making the leap.

What she wanted to build was a job platform for service workers. While the idea was old, the timing was suddenly perfect: Millions of service workers had just been laid off and were looking for new jobs. She recruited her sister, Deborah Gladney, to help build a prototype. By August, the sisters had quit their full-time jobs to work on the startup, QuickHire.

Muhwezi-Hall and Gladney are part of a rising tide of first-time entrepreneurs. In 2021, more than 5.4 million applications...

First, you learn the difference between “there” (a place) and “their” possessive plural.  If you lack written skills, it will be easy to lose the respect of others that have them.  In fact, it could become a joke that prevents anyone from respecting you unless you work in the mafia.  I say this because this question was sent to me in writing, and this is a pretty common error that says your English/ written skills are bad.  Written skills are critical. You must be concise, unambiguous, clear and more.

I just recently had a contractor set a Google Ads budget at a much higher rate than I had said to him in an email I sent. I thought that I was 100% clear, but his interpretation was a daily number now, instead of a total for today. Oops!  That mistake cost over $1,000 in extra ad spend before I even knew it happened.  So even with 30+ years of management experience, I am still making mistakes. I read more into the contractor's...

A new report finds that STEM programs and professional degrees often pay off, while those in arts and humanities frequently do not. Many M.B.A. programs also offer a negative return on investment.

It’s no secret that some advanced degrees don’t pay off. But a new report from the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity offers some surprising insights—including that 60 percent of M.B.A.s and other business-related master’s degrees fail to provide a positive return.

The report, “Is Graduate School Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis,” analyzes data for nearly 14,000 graduate degrees—11,600 master’s degrees plus 2,300 doctoral and professional degrees—at 1,441 universities.

“I think one of the biggest takeaways is the results for master’s degrees. We find that 40 percent of master’s degrees show negative ROI, that they do not have financial value after accounting for the cost of...

‘I Paid For Fine Dining, But I Got McDonald’s’: MBA Student Testifies In Rankings Fraud Trial

Kristy Bleizeffer 

Ousted Temple Fox Dean Moshe Porat

After nearly three years and almost $120,000 in federal loans, Ibrahim Fetahi says his degree from Temple University’s Richard J. Fox School of Business and Management is not worth the hefty investment nor his nearly $100,000 in outstanding debt.

“In my mind, I paid for fine dining, but I got McDonald’s. Yes, I got food, but I didn’t get the quality I paid for, or the service,” Fetahi testified today (November 10) in the federal criminal trial of Moshe Porat.

Porat is the former Fox dean

accused of cheating on several U.S. News & World Report rankings, leading to four consecutive national No. 1 online MBA rankings before the scheme unraveled in January 2018. The trial resumed today (November 10) in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania district court following...

What gets most early-stage companies in trouble is the areas that they just don't understand, that they don't know enough about.  In other words, the biggest problem is that they don't know what they don't know.  Nearly every failed company will say they ran out of cash, couldn't raise enough capital, or just did not get the sales they expected quickly enough. But these situations are generally the effect, not the cause. Generally speaking,  other problems that the company or entrepreneur does not understand very well are usually the root cause. This situation is actually far more dangerous than just not knowing because you cannot tackle a problem that you do not even know exists.  The best entrepreneurs and CEOs are learning machines and understand what they do not know.  I call this the Prudent CEO or person that appreciates the fact that the last Renaissance man, or woman, existed hundreds of years ago. In this day and age, there is just way too much...

Venture capitalists are not known for their humility, so take note of the following confession:

Venture capitalists are chickens. Compared to entrepreneurs, they're spectators in the great game of small business hardball. They would no sooner personally guarantee a corporate bank loan than they would jump off the cliffs of Acapulco. Contrary to popular opinion, however, they are not totally worthless - they work long hours, sift through more garbage than a trash collector, and have to get used to disappointing 99 entrepreneurs for everyone they please. They are veteran roller coaster riders, but never get used to those big drops. They are, above all else, risk reducers - they prospect in the land of the commercially unfaceable, and try to differentiate the superstars from the merely enthusiastic. Most of them are pretty good at it, a result of lessons learned, mistakes made, and successes observed.

Over the past 29 years as a venture capitalist, I've screened thousands of...

Why You Always Need An Experienced CEO Involved At Some Level

Would you walk into a legal trial without an experienced attorney to represent you? Would you let a new medical school graduate perform their first brain surgery on you alone? Of course not!? However, many entrepreneurs who start a company print “President” on the door and do just that. They tackle huge new problems without any experience as a CEO in one of the most complex, expensive, and risky things they will ever do! So they think they save money, but they often drive their risk up 1,000% and costs 10% to 100% or more!

Consultants are plentiful, the advice is easy to get, it can be free or VERY expensive, but is it from someone who has succeeded in the past doing exactly that job? Not just as a ‘consultant’ but with full responsibility for success? In this environment, mistakes can be fatal, so don’t make this mistake.

No wonder only 6 in 1,000,000 ideas will ever reach an IPO. Contrary...

This is a great list for both taking on a new CEO position and getting up to speed, as well as to develop a proactive development and learning program for any CEO or senior executive wishing to improve their executive management skills. It lays out well all the things you need to juggle when you have both the privilege and responsibilities of the top spot in any organization.

General Operations

1. Establish primary goals of the Board -- maintenance of status quo, evaluation, and recommendations or take charge through the implementation of the new game plan.
2. Meet all first-reports, introduce the game plan and initiate implementation of action items on this list.
3. Have all first-reports complete the Agenda for the Future.
4. Discuss the dozen biggest problems and opportunities from the perspective of all first-reports.
5. If survival mode is required, cut costs immediately where necessary and prudent and in accordance with the Board's short and intermediate-term goals.
6. Identify and...