The Entrepreneur's Manual: Business Start-Ups, Spin-Offs, and Innovative Management (edit title)

Kellen Byrnes edited the summary of The Entrepreneur's Manual: Business Start-Ups, Spin-Offs, and Innovative Management 12 hours ago.

• Chapter 1—An Overview of your Start-Up Hurdles

  -banks will only invest in a start up which:
  1-has a strong management team
  2-addresses a growth industry or defines an easily captured market segment
  3-requests adequate financing
  4-has well defined company objectives, philosophies, operating procedures and projections

  -The Milestones of a Start-Up:
  1-Discovery of a viable market segment and products/services which have enough demand in that segment to meet both your company’s and your founder’s goals
  -chapter 4 and 5
  2-the formation and development of an outstanding founder’s team
  -chapter 5 through 9
  3-the attraction of venture capital on your own terms
  -chapter nine through thirteen
  4-proper market penetration
  -chapter fourteen through eighteen
  5-growth stages to industry leadership
  6-freeing of founders so they may pursue their required life styles

  -book discusses how to reach the fifth milestone

  Control Systems

  MBO-Management by Objectives Control-family of control systems that forces employees to place companies goals first, individuals goals last

  MBE-Management by Exceptions Control-allow people to ignore ongoing routine operations until these operations have a difficulty

  MBM-Management by Motivations Control-controls which reward/punish individuals for their performance in meeting company objectives…usually tagged onto MBO or MBE systems—peer pressure is an important incentive

  The Maxims of Management By Objectives
  1-surround yourself with high caliber persons
  2-teamwork is essential
  3-delegate with pleasure
  4-plan everything
  5-order priorities so time spent yields greatest benefits
  6-maximize the work that gets done, not the work you do
  7-have the courage to make, and reverse decisions when necessary
  8-known your responsibilities in depth
  9-accept lost battles, not a lost war. Allow course to victory to be flexible
  The Maxims of Management by Exceptions Control
  1-recognition of problems is as important as solving problems
  2-examine problems within framework of organization as a whole
  3-solve the root of problems, don’t only treat effects
  4-accept things as they are, not as you wish they were. Be realistic/pessimistic about current conditions, but optimistic about possible progress.
  5-do unpleasant aspects of the job
  6-allocate cash very wisely, given its scarcity in the earliest stages
  7-successful managers are pro-active, not reactive. Actively search for problems, and fine-tune.

  Management by Motivations Maxims
  1-reward accomplishments, not capabilities
  2-know your people—their aspirations, how they tick
  3-let people know your pose in the world, promote innovations, uniqueness and experiments…react violently to dishonest, insincerity, and failure syndromes.
  4-recognize small successes
  5-realize different people think differently
  6-the more a person attempts, the greater the number of mistakes you should expect. Harping on errors exclusively could stifle innovation
  7-continuously develop your people so they progress, stagnation of employees will lead to stagnation of company performance
  8-develop skilled replacements for yourself and each key person
  9-Most excellent managers believe they must sell their departments goals and objectives. Study salesmanship continuously, the best managers are excellent salesman.
  10-success is a function of drive and ability
  11-think continuously about what you can do for the company
  12-stay positive
  13-provide constructive criticism and praise

  Chapter 2—Let’s Screw Our Heads on Right

  Axiom One: In a free enterprise economy, there are always more dollars searching for viable and developed ideas than there are ideas searching for dollars.

  Axiom Two: Your company must be the image of what your industry needs..the industry will not conform and be the image of what your company needs.

  -Competition is good, and will keep people lean, hungry and innovative
  -large companies are less nimble and poor at innovation, so lean start-ups can outplay them

  -effective output is the amount of output from a machine, given its inputs
  -there is no ‘machine’ with greater capabilities or more flexibilities than the people who will work with and for you
  -start-ups can work extremely well with a fraction of the personnel larger companies must hire

  -don’t disguise your zest for living. Enjoy yourself openly, and this attitude with be contagious…think infectious enthusiasm.
  -let your lifestyle fill into your company…e.g., throw promotional parties and mingle with people in your industry for fun
  -people will work far more vigorously if they are enjoying themselves, happiness is like fuel
  -incorporate humor whenever possible
  -companies objectives must be in harmony with your inner-self

  -addressing a growth industry is hugely advantageous when seeking to procure capital
  -be wary of using clichés in complex decision making processes
  -be wary of legal infractions
  -find alternative sources of income to sustain your lifestyle when you are in the early stages of building

  Theorem one: Maximize profits above all else…venture capitalists search for profit-maximizers

  Axiom three: your sales price is a function of a products value, not its costs to produce
  -be innovative in increasing your product’s value in the eyes of the customer

  -be wary of parasites

  Chapter Three—Select a Growth or Glamour Industry

  Axiom Five: If the financial communities feel that an industry is a growth industry, they will invest in it heavily enough in years to come to make it a growth industry.

  Axiom Six: If the financial communities feel that an industry will plateau and become stagnant, they will withhold essential funds and stunt that industry’s growth so that a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs.

  -market penetration is easier, and investment growth is higher in growth industries

  -force marketing groups to continually track the financial communities opinions so that you will not be caught off guard about growth industries
  -new growth industries will be discovered in journals and papers long before they are discovered by corporations, this presents an opportunity

  -glamour industries are growth industries with pizzazz, and are very attractive to investors who want to be associated with high-status things
  -associate your business as much as possible with reputable high status-persons, even if superficially, because then other people will desire to be connected

  Chapter Four—Market Gap Analysis

  -market gap analysis is a tool for uncovering areas in the market where demand exceed supply
  -when you add two individuals to one analysis, their results are usually over twice as productive as they would have been if each had run an individual analysis and totaled their results
  -mimic example from book to rny own gap analysis, use this as an example for alex and chris, so they can run their own gap analysis, and we can create as many ideas as possible

  Steps
  1-lay our company’s objectives as a reference point.
  2-segment your industry into its major components
  3-segment each of the major components of step two into its major sub-segments
  4-Segment the major sub-segments of step three into their minor sub-segments
  5-eliminate those areas which do not meet our specifications outline in step one
  6-list the problems that exist in each area of step 4
  7-eliminate those problem areas whose solutions do not conform to our specifications defined in step one
  8- Matrix analysis. List the problems along the left hand side, and along the top place the numbers of your specifications in step one. Place a check mark in each column where the solution to the problem would meet your requirements
  9- Along the far right hand side of your matrix, list probable solutions to each of the problems…list as many solutions as possible
  10-select the best gaps and begin verifying them in testing

  Chapter 5-Disguised Market Testing
  -to make certain that your start-up is addressing a viable gap run several indepdent tests and check their results to make sure they correlate
  -no one is going to invest major dollars in any venture without being certain that you have significant market demand

  Marketing Tests
  1-person-to-person interviews with major customers-best and most reliable technique, allows reading of facial expression and hearing of voice inflections
  -slow/expensive means of gathering information

  2-telephone interviews-faster and less expensive than personal interviews but it is less flexible and versatile

  3-library research—easy way to find statistics about data such as restaurant revenues, etc

  -correlate independent test results, make certain each independent test result correlates with the other test results to within acceptable limits
  -if the data doesn’t correlate, you are chasing a mirage instead of a gap

Shelfari edited the contributors of The Entrepreneur's Manual: Business Start-Ups, Spin-Offs, and Innovative Management Monday, July 27 2009.

• Added a contributor: Richard White: (Primary Author)