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The U.S. Presidential race has reached a critical juncture. The Republicans have a confirmed nominee in John McCain; as for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has bounced back, while Barack Obama retains a marginal lead in terms of delegates. How the presidential race evolves will be shaped in part by the increasingly worrisome state of the U.S. economy. Consumer prices are rising, oil has crossed $103 a barrel and gold is nudging $1,000 an ounce — suggesting that the economy could be entering a phase of 1970s-style stagflation. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, however, told Congress last week that he doesn’t anticipate stagflation, and he continues to indicate his willingness to keep cutting interest rates. What lies ahead for the U.S. and world economies? Knowledge@Wharton discussed these questions and more with finance professor Jeremy Siegel, author of The Future for Investors.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeDUeIBomzM&rel=1&border=0]
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Last month I talked about blogging platforms and the value blogging can bring to ecommerce sites. When a website makes the decision to begin a blog and decides upon a blogging platform, it will then have to decide who will blog and how often. Time allotted to blogging is also a relative issue, as is subject matter. So why bother at all? Relative to static ecommerce sites, search engines consider blogs more real and trusted because blogs tend to have fresh content and there is a less financial, more informational link between a blog and its readers. An ecommerce site should take advantage of this tendency by adding a blog to augment the overall site.
Tag: Wharton
I had the opportunity to speak at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania last week about an article that Dr. Eric Clemons recently authored for the Journal of Management Information Systems, "An Empirical Investigation of Third-Party Seller Rating Systems in E-Commerce: The Case of buySAFE". My presentation was focused on marketplace economics and specifically about information asymmetry, signaling, the "Market for Lemons" concept, and buySAFE. In addition, I was able to share a few thoughts about my entrepreneurial experience with buySAFE.
As always, I had a great time as the guest of Dr. Eric Clemons, and I enjoyed hearing the passionate questions, insights and feedback from the students. One of the students posted an article about my visit on his blog, The Un-Wharton.
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Bob Greene, co-founder of Contour Venture Partners in New York, wants you to know that venture capitalists aren’t half as tough as their reputations would have you believe. "A lot of entrepreneurs think VCs are haughty or arrogant," says Greene, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the Wharton School in 1982. "All the VCs I know, we do it because we love it. We want to see entrepreneurs succeed. If the wrong impressions get cast, it’s because we get inundated with requests for review and capital."
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The most important advice Jeff Fluhr, W’96, Eng’96, got as a young entrepreneur was to go with his gut. Fluhr, founder of online ticket sales website StubHub, says he had to stay focused on his vision for the business even while others who became involved in the business advised differently. “I learned that it’s important to listen to what others have to say,” said Fluhr. “But you have an obligation to do what you think is right.” Fluhr co-founded StubHub in March of 2000 and was responsible for setting the overall strategic direction. As CEO, he led the company to its position as the fan’s top choice when looking for a safe and trusted way to purchase or sell event tickets online, attracting A-list investors and advisors including major league sports teams, NCAA universities and top performing artists. StubHub was sold to eBay in early 2007.
Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to a few hundred business school students at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Michael Beveridge, buySAFE’s VP of Business Intelligence, joined me in speaking at the invitation of Professors Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Peter Weiss, and Mingfeng Lin. The students had previously read “buySAFE – Creating and Profiting From the Bonded Seller Advantage“, a case study on buySAFE authored by Wharton professor, Dr. Eric Clemons. Here is the presentation that Michael and I shared with the students… “eMarket for Lemons – The Economics of an Evolving eCommerce Marketplace“.
As always, it was a terrific experience for me. The students were extremely prepared, and they had definitely done their homework on buySAFE, information asymmetry, and the ecommerce marketplace in general. If you ever want to get an excellent sense of how well your marketing efforts are working or how well you are educating the market about your solution, I highly recommend inviting a couple hundred college students to study your product or service and let them give you feedback. I loved it!
Entrepreneurship is one of the most exciting things that you can choose to do as a profession. It is also tough to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is definitely not for the faint of heart. I ran across this quote recently, and I thought it perfectly describes the attributes of successful entrepreneurs.
"Top people, especially entrepreneurs, seem to have these three qualities: First, they learn more things. Second, they try more things. Third, they persist longer than anyone else."
I can’t source this quote unfortunately because I did not write it down at the time I originally heard it. However, I did find it mentioned on the NVTC website with a quick Google search. The quote is right on point. I could not have said it better myself.
Great entrepreneurs are extremely curious people. They are constantly seeking to learn about new stuff. That is how they innovate and develop new ideas. That is also how they successfully manage their ventures.
Great entrepreneurs know that although the goal is always success, failure is to be expected as well. If you try twice as many things as your competitors, you are twice as likely to hit on the right formula. This requires creativity, speed and action. It also requires a confidence to weather those pesky failures. Again, great entrepreneurs continue working the problem until they find a solution.
Most of all, great entrepreneurs never quit. They keep at it much longer than most folks. They fail, but they get right back up and try again. In my opinion, persistence is by far and away the most important quality that great entrepreneurs possess.
These also happen to be the qualities that I most admire in the folks that I hire to work in my organizations. In start-up ventures, entrepreneurship cannot solely be the role of the founders. Every employee needs to be entrepreneurial. In my opinion, I would take an entrepreneurial employee over others almost any day.
The entrepreneurs thrive in startups. They plow new ground, and take ventures to a place they could not have been imagined before. The "big" resume folks typically do the same things that worked in their last organization. Unfortunately for them, most great startup ventures are doing something completely new. That requires entrepreneurship.
You show me a team of talented entrepreneurs working well together as a team, and you will probably also be showing me an organization that has a great chance at success.
While I am on the subject, let me also recommend a book for you to read that illustrates my last point. "Entrepreneurial Marketing: Lessons From Wharton’s Pioneering MBA Course" by Len Lodish, Wharton professor and marketing guru, is one of my favorite books. For marketers, I believe Entrepreneurial Marketing is required reading. The following article will give you a brief overview of the book as well as an introduction to Len and his philosophies on teaching marketing to the MBA students at Wharton: Cheaper-Better-Faster.
Enjoy and have a great weekend!