Overview
Entrepreneurship is the hottest growth area in the United States. Rob Ryan, through his Entrepreneur America program, provides advice (and sometimes capital) for some of the best and brightest young business people today, including graduates from Cornell, MIT, and Harvard. According to Ryan, anyone wanting to succeed as an entrepreneur must constantly evolve.Based on his own wildly successful business ventures with Ascend Communications and his "been there, done that" experiences supporting other entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur America fosters fresh ideas for business-building by teaching the fundamentals of focusing, developing, and promoting their ideas, and crating a healthy, vibrant company that thrives on change without succumbing to disorder.
About the Authors:
One of the pioneers of the high-tech industry, Rob Ryan founded Ascend Communications with $2.5 million in venture capital. In June 1999 Lucent bought Ascend for $25 billion. Ryan's work has garnered extensive media coverage, including USA Today, Money, Inc., and Fortune. He lives on his 1,000-acre ranch in Hamilton, MT.
Phaedra Hise lives in Richmond, VA.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Exclusive Author EssayEntrepreneur America at Roaring Lion Ranch, Montana, by Rob Ryan
Entrepreneurs contact me through word of mouth, referrals, on-campus lectures at Cornell, MIT, and Stanford, email ([email protected]), or on my web site (www.entrepreneur-america.com). Either way, the entrepreneur ends up sending an executive summary describing their business. If I think it has promise, I set up a phone call or a meeting in Silicon Valley or Boston. After the meeting, the entrepreneur most likely has a big homework assignment. Once the entrepreneur has completed most of the assignment, the start-up team is invited up for a working session at the ranch.
Entrepreneur America was planned to cover the lessons we go over at the boot camp.
First up:
1. Entrepreneur Wannabes: Ninety-five percent of my entrepreneurs are not ready to talk with a venture capitalist. They have not answered some very fundamental business questions.
Next up:
2. Do the Dogs Like the Dog Food?: Most of my entrepreneurs have some decent technology, but the product, the application, and the customers they aim at are really boring. Basically, do customers really, really like and need what you are offering? How do we get you positioned so you are aimed at the right target?
3. The Sunflower Model: At the ranch, we draw a sunflower on the whiteboard. The center of the sunflower is your core competency, the petals are all the possible ways we can leverage that core. One petal is your existing product and existing application/market.
4. The Keys to the Gold Mine: What is the fundamental business proposition? Where are you aiming your product? Do the customers have money? Do they have a severe need for your product? Do they currently spend lots of money on this need? How much money do you save or make for the customer? How differentiated are you from competitors? Does your solution spread with no further salesmanship?
5. Peeing in the Wells: All the entrepreneurs I meet are looking for money. Many are eager to set up meetings with venture capitalists. Lesson Five gives you an annotated example of a winning business presentation to raise money and a winning executive summary.
6. Sucking the Air out of the Room: How do you take that decent model and turn it into a real home run? Lesson Six is all about how you become No. 1 and stay No 1.
7. You've Got the Money, Now What?: Having raised money from VCs or angels, it is time to get on with leading and managing the company's growth. This chapter has some tips on how to manage yourself and your board.
Entrepreneur America will guide you on your start-up journey. You will read about how my start-ups, each in their own way, went through these lessons. You will watch companies like LookSmart, founded by a husband-and-wife team, Evan and Tracey, move from impending disaster (unable to meet payroll) to a successful IPO with Goldman Sachs in just eight months. You will see Silicon Spice, a dream company begun by two young MIT entrepreneurs, raise over $60 million and build a world-class management team. The stories are endless. Virtual and its four young MIT engineers took something as mundane as the conference whiteboard, and with the help of their product, Mimeo, turned themselves into an exciting IPO-destined company. And VirtMed is a classic example of following the lessons -- they looked at the health information field and came up with a brilliant idea of how to help clinics and hospitals with their billing. See how they staged their funding and are building a powerhouse company.
These are some of my Entrepreneur America companies. No matter whether your goal is to build a high-tech semiconductor company, a high-flying Internet e-service company, or just improve your small business, the lessons from Entrepreneur America will help you better achieve those goals.