Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

by Lars Tvede, Mads Faurholt
Released October 2018
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9781119521235

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Book description

Build a world class business with a clear blueprint to success

Entrepreneur: Building Your Business From Start to Success is your guidebook to achieving entrepreneurial success. Whether you’re an existing business owner seeking to increase your reach, or a budding entrepreneur ready to take the next step, this book provides invaluable guidance from experts who have made it happen time and time again. A simple step-by-step process will help you translate your ideas into effective business plans, raise the capital needed to start and grow your business, build a winning team and leave the competition behind. Drawing upon their experience founding more than 30 companies, the authors share their entrepreneurial wisdom and reveal the real-world techniques that lead to success.

With a pragmatic and personal approach, the authors explore the personal characteristics that are vital to achievement; managing stress, withstanding heavy workloads and coping with potential health concerns are subjects often overlooked in the pursuit of business achievement. Addressing the link between business concerns and personal welfare, the authors offer suggestions on how to most effectively reconcile entrepreneurial drive with personal well-being.

  • Build or revitalise a business with proven methods from two globally-recognized experts in the field
  • Develop an effective business plan to maximise your probability of success
  • Understand funding markets and raise capital necessary to start or grow your business
  • Grow your business by beating the competition and dominating your market

Providing invaluable insight into real-world entrepreneurial methods that work, this book arms current and future business leaders with the skills, knowledge and motivation to create the organization of their dreams. 

Table of contents

  1. COVER
  2. INTRODUCTION BY PETER WARNOE
  3. PART 1. ABOUT ME AS AN ENTREPRENEUR
    1. 1. MY ENTREPRENEURIAL ROLE
      1. Why do people become entrepreneurs?
      2. What kind of entrepreneur?
      3. It has become easier!
      4. Lifestyle or growth entrepreneur?
      5. How big is the risk?
      6. How can I reduce the risk?
      7. Alternative paths to the entrepreneurial life
      8. Risk is relative
      9. What does it require of my personality?
      10. Who are most successful?
      11. Can entrepreneurship be taught?
      12. Do I need to be an expert within the sector?
      13. Is it really as hard as they say?
      14. Is it economically worthwhile to become an entrepreneur?
      15. At what age should you become an entrepreneur?
      16. Does it require management experience to start?
      17. Does it require a lot of capital?
      18. Should I wait for the brilliant idea?
      19. Endnotes
    2. 2. MY PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS
      1. Decide how to tackle the unpleasant parts of your job
      2. Don't defer your life
      3. Optimize the combination of work, sport and socializing
      4. Combine and time your efforts
      5. Plan your work week before it commences
      6. A good day
      7. Read and listen effectively
      8. Use voice recognition
      9. Organize your thoughts and control your projects effectively
      10. Free up time for the most important and what you do best
      11. Keep track of the many invitations
      12. Streamline your travels
      13. Optimize the use of electronic productivity tools
      14. Keep track of contacts
      15. Be practical with emails
      16. Manage your passwords
      17. Use time-saving tools when designing documents
      18. Organize meaningful meetings
      19. Maintain a positive attitude
      20. Maintain your social ecosystem
      21. Efficiency in other words
      22. Endnotes
    3. 3. MY PUBLIC IMPACT
      1. How do I get invited to give speeches?
      2. How do I prepare great speeches and presentations?
      3. How do I structure a good speech?
      4. How do I use illustrations during my speech?
      5. How do we optimize our presence at exhibitions and fairs?
      6. How do we get set up on social media?
      7. How do I use social media to become better informed?
      8. How do I promote my social media presence?
      9. How do I become a blogger and make webinars?
      10. Which equipment do I need for multimedia posting?
      11. How do I make compelling social media posts?
      12. How often should I post?
      13. How do I use social media at corporate events?
      14. What is the 70:30 rule?
      15. How can my business become well covered by the press?
      16. What should I do when I am contacted for an interview?
      17. Should I make an agreement with the journalist?
      18. Are there practical issues regarding the interview that I need to consider?
      19. How do I make journalists come back for more?
      20. Is there anything I should be careful about in interviews?
      21. Endnotes
    4. 4. MY FACE-TO-FACE IMPACT
      1. How should I run sales processes?
      2. The sales funnel
      3. The efficient sales meeting
      4. Sales processes must be planned
      5. Methods concerning the sales opening
      6. How to prepare for a sales meeting
      7. Using sales crutches
      8. How do I find out about the organization I am selling to?
      9. What is the sales compass?
      10. Part-closings
      11. Closing the deal
      12. After-sales
      13. Managing complex sales
      14. What do I do if sales turn into negotiation?
      15. Can a negotiation process be scripted in advance?
      16. Partnership development
      17. Horse trading
      18. Lists of requirements and deadlines
      19. Endnote
  4. PART 2. ABOUT MY COMPANY'S IDEAS AND FUNDING
    1. 5. MY COMPANY'S BASIC IDEAS
      1. Business idea generation
      2. Techniques to develop ideas
      3. Examples of product ideas to consider
      4. Ideas regarding speed and timing
      5. Ideas regarding marketing
      6. How to think about ideas
      7. But can it make money?
      8. Five mental tools
      9. Endnotes
    2. 6. MY STRATEGIES FOR NETWORK EFFECTS
      1. Viral effects
      2. Multi-sided platforms
      3. The chicken-and-egg problem
      4. Using initial coin offerings
      5. Token network effects
    3. 7. FOUNDING AND STARTING MY COMPANY
      1. Where should the company be located?
      2. Other location criteria
      3. The quality of the overall start-up environment
      4. How successful are different venture scenes?
      5. The European venture capital market
      6. Why are European venture capitalists earning less than American VCs?
      7. Which accounting system should I use?
      8. How do I make a shareholders' agreement?
      9. How do I choose a company name and a web domain?
      10. How do I create a logo and website quickly and cheaply?
      11. What if I need a webshop?
      12. Endnotes
    4. 8. MY SOURCES OF FUNDING
      1. Bootstrapping via free labour
      2. Types of funding in various growth phases
      3. Which sources of capital can you choose between?
      4. How do investors think about return from my company?
      5. Where does the capital come from?
      6. What types of investors exist?
      7. The founders' investments
      8. Investments from friends and family
      9. Funding from business angels
      10. How do seed rounds work?
      11. Funding via convertible notes
      12. Funding via initial coin offering
      13. Use of crowdfunding
      14. Funding and support from incubators
      15. Funding from accelerators
      16. Funding from venture capitalists
      17. Founder friendliness
      18. The favourite children
      19. Funding from growth funds and private equity funds
      20. Pre-IPO financing
      21. Funding from companies, strategic investors and corporate VC funds
      22. Funding/investment through venture debt
      23. Financing via initial public offerings
      24. Pros and cons of external financing
      25. Endnotes
    5. 9. MY FUNDING PROCESSES
      1. Tools you need from the start
      2. The pitch and the summary
      3. The written summary
      4. The pitch emails
      5. Excel with financials
      6. Demo reel or physical working demo
      7. The pitch deck
      8. How should my pitch deck look?
      9. The pitch meeting: what's on investors' minds?
      10. The trend is your friend
      11. What do investors think about presenters at pitch meetings?
      12. How do I run my pitch meeting?
      13. Famous first words
      14. How do investors determine my company valuation?
      15. Some mechanics of valuation calculations you need to know
      16. What should I be aware of in the shareholders' agreement when dealing with investors?
      17. The term sheet
      18. What should I think about the term sheet they gave me?
      19. How does the share subscription work?
      20. How can I raise loan capital?
      21. Can I avoid raising capital by streamlining my working capital?
      22. How do I get grants for my business?
      23. Endnotes
  5. PART 3. ABOUT MY TEAM AND MY CORPORATE CULTURE
    1. 10. MY CORE TEAM
      1. Should I have a co-founder?
      2. Important discussions between founders
      3. Entrepreneurs' deepest motives – from the investors' point of view
      4. Who are the ideal co-founders?
      5. Relevant work experience
      6. The ability to understand each other
      7. The crucial difference
      8. The shareholders' agreement
      9. What is the value of previous experience?
      10. What is the idea worth?
      11. Dynamic versus static equity allocation?
      12. Which founder should be the CEO?
      13. How do I work with boards?
      14. A great board
      15. How should I cooperate with my board?
      16. How should my board meetings play out?
      17. Do I need a mentor, coach or advisory board?
      18. Endnotes
    2. 11. MY OUTSOURCING AND MY STAFF
      1. When should I outsource?
      2. Crowdsourcing – the coolest outsourcing
      3. How do I structure an employment process?
      4. How do I find my candidates?
      5. No-go companies and preferred companies
      6. How do I cooperate with recruiters?
      7. What about references?
      8. How do I interview a candidate?
      9. About highway builders in start-ups
      10. How do I remunerate employees in my start-up?
      11. How do option schemes work?
      12. What should happen when an employee starts?
      13. Tell your colleagues who you have hired
      14. What about job titles?
      15. How should I fire people?
      16. What if a CEO should be replaced?
      17. Purpose, virtuosity, culture and autonomy
      18. Thoughts on culture
      19. The monkey's world
      20. How to avoid politics
      21. Start-ups are unpolished
      22. Endnotes
  6. PART 4. ABOUT MY COMPANY'S GROWTH, STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES
    1. 12. MY GROWTH PHASES
      1. Product-centred development
      2. Traditional marketing cascade
      3. Agile business development
      4. Inquisitive Tom
      5. Customer development during the discovery phase
      6. User stories
      7. The earliest market analysis – desk research
      8. The earliest market analysis – field research
      9. Business plans versus business canvases
      10. The validation phase
      11. The efficiency phase
      12. From nailing to scaling
      13. How the market for a product evolves
      14. How distribution structures change as markets evolve
      15. Endnotes
    2. 13. MY MARKETING MIX
      1. Segmentation approaches
      2. What are mass customization and big data?
      3. Becoming ‘category king’
      4. Product policy
      5. Which pricing strategies can I choose from?
      6. What is crucial to my promotion?
      7. Guerrilla marketing
      8. Optimization of the marketing mix in head-to-head competition
      9. How the company can be strengthened through alliances
      10. When and how do I make a marketing plan?
      11. Endnotes
    3. 14. MY FIVE BIGGEST COMMERCIAL THREATS
      1. Mistake #1: poor product/market fit
      2. Mistake #2: internal disputes
      3. Mistake #3: premature scaling
      4. Mistake #4: unbalanced scaling
      5. Mistake #5: unsuccessful transition from early adopters to mainstream
      6. Endnotes
  7. PART 5. ABOUT MY EXIT AND WHAT COMES AFTER
    1. 15. MY ALTERNATIVE EXIT ROUTES
      1. Why should I sell out?
      2. In which ways can I make an exit?
      3. How do I sell shares on secondary markets?
      4. How do I sell to strategic partners?
      5. Selling shares to the public
      6. What about my own role after a sale?
      7. Endnote
    2. 16. MY EXIT PROCESSES
      1. How do I increase the exit value?
      2. How do I make a trade sale?
      3. What is my role after the trade sale?
      4. How does an IPO play out?
      5. What is the due diligence process and what is the red herring?
      6. How do the lock-up period and green-shoe work?
      7. Roadshow, quiet period, pricing, book building and allocation
    3. 17. MY NEXT PROJECT
      1. We and our hubris
      2. Should I become a serial entrepreneur?
      3. Lifestyle projects
      4. Financial investments
      5. Angel investments
      6. Do charity
      7. Final words …
      8. Endnote
  8. APPENDIX A: 116 BUSINESS STRATEGIES FOR ENTREPRENEURS
  9. APPENDIX B: 46 TYPICAL CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS IN START-UP COMPANIES
  10. APPENDIX C: LIST OF USEFUL WEBSITES, APPS AND WEB-EXTENSIONS FOR ENTREPRENEURS
  11. GLOSSARY
  12. ABOUT THE AUTHORS
  13. INDEX
  14. END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

Product information

  • Title: Entrepreneur
  • Author(s): Lars Tvede, Mads Faurholt
  • Release date: October 2018
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9781119521235