Jay Samit Quotes
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Creating the right advisory board for your startup can be the single most important step you take in building a new business.
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Historically, more media has been consumed sitting in front of the television than any other device. Controlling this screen has been the goal of major technology, consumer electronic, and telecommunications companies.
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With less and less television being watched live, consumers are enjoying the freedom to record at home or in the cloud, watch locally or on the go, and binge watch entire series that they never had the time to enjoy.
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As good and as smart as you may be, no one knows everything. I truly wish I was as smart as I thought I was when I started my first company.
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As counterintuitive as it sounds, 'speed to fail' should be every entrepreneur's motto. Success isn't born wholly-formed like Venus from a clamshell; it's developed through relentless trial and error.
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Instagram, Swiffer, and Nest had to compete with consumer habits and perceptions. Breakout products face competition from the formidable inertia powering the status quo.
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You don't need to be an engineer or a tech person to benefit from technology. You can hire them.
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You need to begin to network with angels and VCs while you are still ideating. It is easier to ask someone you know for funding than a stranger. Build your financial network by attending as many industry functions and reaching out for advice from experts online.
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No matter how much we tweet, blog and post, nothing in business is as powerful as actual face time with prospective business partners and customers.
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A successful entrepreneur is one who recognizes her blind spots. You may be the world's best engineer, but you probably have never run a 10-person sales force. You may be a brilliant marketer, but how do you structure a cap table?
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As a serial investor who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups, I know that the business plans coming out of incubators tend to be vetted and more thoroughly validated. The incubator's input into your business plan will make you look far more polished and experienced - even if you have never run a business before.
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YouTube began as a failed video-dating site. Twitter was a failed music service. In each case, the founders continued to try new concepts when their big ideas failed. They often worked around the clock to try to overcome their failure before all their capital was spent. Speed to fail gives a startup more runway to pivot and ultimately succeed.
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To effectively reach consumers in the new social environment, brand managers need to learn how to translate their budgets into the digital realm, which also means understanding the advantages that digital can provide over television advertising.
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Every company, regardless of size, is competing for the same pool of talent, which is why top recruiters can even command equity for finding key hires. Internships give startups a chance to hire the best and brightest from our universities at a fraction of the cost that these same minds will command when they receive their degrees.
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So many of the major decisions that affect the entire future of your enterprise happen during its first year in business. In fact, most don't make it because they don't know how to get the resources they need to survive.
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Founding a successful startup is no different than forming a rock band.
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Silicon Valley's long-running track record of creating globally disruptive startups is the envy of the world.
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Every product you have ever loved was a compromise from the ideal vision of its creators to the realities of shipping on time, on budget, and on price point. Anyone who has ever manufactured a physical product that had to be on the shelves for Christmas shopping knows how painful these choices can be.
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Consumers value their personal time and are loyal to those companies that make their lives more productive. Brands gaining some of the biggest successes in social media are engaging with millions of consumers through value exchange.
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While commercials interrupt consumers' enjoyment of a TV program, social media allows video to enter the conversation between friends in a non-intrusive way with an opt-in choice.
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To thrive, all businesses must focus on the art of self-disruption. Rather than wait for the competition to steal your business, every founder and employee needs to be willing to cannibalize their existing revenue streams in order to create new ones. All disruption starts with introspection.
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Never expect that your startup can cover every aspect of the market. The key is knowing what segment will respond to your unique offering. Who your product appeals to is just as important as the product itself.
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The secret to fundraising comes down to three magic words: before, more, and strategic.
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Instead of focusing the traditional planning cycles where companies benchmark their businesses against existing competition, teams need to be developed to foster internal change and disruption. Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.