I live and work in Arlington, Virginia, and as this hilarious video points out, it is the toughest town West of the Potomac and East of the Beltway.
The funniest part of the video for me was that I was sitting in a Starbucks wearing my brown flip flops when I first watched it. Check out this video if you want to understand the inside humor here. 🙂
I live and work in Arlington, Virginia, and as this hilarious video points out, it is the toughest town West of the Potomac and East of the Beltway.
The funniest part of the video for me was that I was sitting in a Starbucks wearing my brown flip flops when I first watched it. Check out this video if you want to understand the inside humor here. 🙂
First Round Capital’s 2008 Holiday Card (video) proves once again why every early-stage entrepreneur wants to find a way to meet with this terrific investor group. Check it out!
These guys are creative; they have been in the trenches themselves (multiple times!); they have been successful (multiple times!); and most of all, they like working with entrepreneurs because they are entrepreneurs.
I have had the pleasure of working with and knowing lots of technology investors, and along the way, I have learned a thing or two about who you want to try and work with (and what you want to avoid). These guys are good. Period. In addition, their holiday video is brilliant,
low-cost, and fun, and it highlights their strengths in an intangible,
yet powerful manner.
Let me share one quick story that illustrates why I like these guys so much. Although they won’t likely remember it, both Howard Morgan and Josh Kopelman provided me with a helping hand while I was trying to get buySAFE launched back in 2001. I was introduced to Howard via a mutual friend, John Tedesco, and Howard offered to meet with me in NYC and provide me with feedback on my business plan. At the time, the venture was called BondMyAuction. I was not ready for primetime, and yet, Howard spent two hours listening to me and coaching me on how I could improve my plan. Howard also introduced me to Josh Kopelman. At the time, Josh was an executive at eBay because he had recently sold his business, Half.com, to the ecommerce giant. For no reason other than to be helpful to me, Josh also spent almost two hours on the phone giving me feedback and advice on how to proceed.
I will be forever grateful for their assistance since I was no more than an aspiring entrepreneur with a paper napkin business plan. Their help was both gracious and inspiring. In many ways, they (along with a few others like them) gave me the extra motivation and confidence that I needed to stick it out through the inevitable challenges of getting a business launched. Since then, I have tried to return the favor with other aspiring entrepreneurs because of their good example (although I am quite sure that I could never be as helpful as they were for me).
Again, check out First Round Capital’s holiday video, and I think you will agree with me. These guys are authentic, and entrepreneurs clearly have good reason to want to work with them.
Nice job Howard and Josh! For everyone else, enjoy! http://holiday.firstround.com/
The short answer is that you need to be very, very good. There are a lot of terrific, aspiring entrepreneurs out there, and so a bit of luck is useful too. Having said that, winning isn't everything.
buySAFE is actually a product of the 2002 Wharton Business Plan Competition, but the plan was not the winning plan. PayMyBills.com has a similar story. The founders and my good friends, Jeff Grass and John Tedesco, were finalists, but not winners, in the 1999 Wharton Business Plan Competition. However, they went on to raise tens of millions in venture capital and they built a really nice business in the process.
Simply going through the business planning and critique process is the real benefit of these competitions in my opinion. Business plans are funny things. Business planning is a fairly simple exercise, but if you haven't previously developed a plan, the effort can seem very daunting. Business plan competitions typically provide basic advice to the entrepreneurs on how to get started. The competitions also have multiple stages with each stage presenting an opportunity to receive valuable feedback from the experienced entrepreneurs and investors that are judging and/or mentoring in the competition.
The following Business Week video does a nice job of covering the basics regarding what you need to know before submitting your business plan.
Winning a Business Plan Competition | The Businessweek Video Library
In the video, the University of Oregon's Randy Swangard talks about how to win that business plan competition — what to keep in mind before you apply, and why it's sometimes better to come in second.
The Wharton Club of New York is running a business plan competition now, and here is all the information you need to enter as a participant. I highly encourage you to participate if you can.
Also, you might find the following NY Times article interesting. "Beyond Grades: Business Students Put Their Start-up Ideas to the Test" does a nice job of covering the ins and outs of business school business plan competitions.
Have fun, and good luck!
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