More Good Jobs: An Entrepreneur's Action Plan to Create Change in Your Community


Book Description

We hear it from politicians, the media, and just about everyone else: "We need more good jobs!" And yet nobody is telling us how to create good jobs. After successfully starting and growing a multibillion-dollar company in Silicon Valley, Martin Babinec returned to his home in Upstate New York where he then realized there were a number of forces at play in Silicon Valley-forces he hadn't appreciated-that had helped him succeed as an entrepreneur. Since then, he's been on a journey to understand the importance of community dynamics in the creation of new businesses. He's found a growing divergence between magnet cities-brimming with talent and new businesses-and talent exporting cities-where bright young minds leave in search of better opportunities. More Good Jobs is the playbook for turning your community into a magnet city, helping local entrepreneurs to start and grow companies and, in doing so, creating more good jobs for everyone in our communities.




More Good Jobs


Book Description




Why Startups Fail


Book Description

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.




The Great Shift: Catalyzing the Second Renaissance


Book Description

"The Great Shift" is a key contribution toward our ability to evolve consciously. Covering major themes of self, social & systemic evolution, this is a comprehensive plan of action on all levels. Like a Medici of the 21st century, Robin Wood serves as a catalyst for the next Renaissance, for a global dream of a thriving civilization on a thriving planet. Gathering people, knowledge, creativity, innovations, know-how, and new systems, bringing business genius to the business of planetary evolution, he calls each of us to be an evolutionary pioneer. This book is a blueprint for planetary evolution: How to get from "Here," breakdown and collapse, to "There," breakthroughs to an actual new world. In time. You'll develop a 2nd Renaissance perspective, together with a set of practices that enable us to become "world-centric," to create, lead, strategize, engage, design & shift our own life, career & participation in the evolution of the world.




How to Write a Great Business Plan


Book Description

Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture: The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.




Startup Communities


Book Description

An essential guide to building supportive entrepreneurial communities "Startup communities" are popping up everywhere, from cities like Boulder to Boston and even in countries such as Iceland. These types of entrepreneurial ecosystems are driving innovation and small business energy. Startup Communities documents the buzz, strategy, long-term perspective, and dynamics of building communities of entrepreneurs who can feed off of each other's talent, creativity, and support. Based on more than twenty years of Boulder-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist Brad Feld's experience in the field?as well as contributions from other innovative startup communities?this reliable resource skillfully explores what it takes to create an entrepreneurial community in any city, at any time. Along the way, it offers valuable insights into increasing the breadth and depth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by multiplying connections among entrepreneurs and mentors, improving access to entrepreneurial education, and much more. Details the four critical principles needed to form a sustainable startup community Perfect for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists seeking fresh ideas and new opportunities Written by Brad Feld, a thought-leader in this field who has been an early-stage investor and successful entrepreneur for more than twenty years Engaging and informative, this practical guide not only shows you how startup communities work, but it also shows you how to make them work anywhere in the world.




Jesus on Main Street


Book Description

God loves just economies, but sadly the invisible hand of the market has chiseled huge cracks in our communities. Fortunately, Jesus announced freedom for the poor and oppressed, and by taking on his mantle we have a role to play in helping establish just economies here and now! Jesus on Main Street provides church leaders and church planters with a broad overview of Community Economic Development (CED), with practical steps to lead your church in following Jesus into those cracks. You’ll be equipped with the CED “toolkit” including microbusinesses, makerspaces, business incubators, worker cooperatives, workforce development, commercial district revitalization, locality development, anchor institutions, and accountable development. A robust assessment and planning guide specifically for churches will help you create a collaborative CED strategy rooted in God’s love for people and justice. For churches looking to bring healing to their local economies, CED builds capacity for long-term equitable economic growth, catalyzing a movement of business creation, employment, and job creation that does not leave anybody behind. This is the promise and challenge of CED as we follow Jesus down Main Street and explore what good news for local economies looks like!




Communities in Action


Book Description

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.




Sustainability to Social Change


Book Description

Is your company using its talent to create social value? Or is it simply managing risks? To address the problems facing society and business today, sustainability is not good enough. Instead, companies need to do their part to lead social change. In Sustainability to Social Change, leadership and social innovation experts Philip Mirvis and Bradley K. Googins share their hands-on research to reveal how leaders can design and guide their companies to create more inclusive prosperity and become agents of social change. The book reveals the inside story of how socially innovative companies are making the strategic shift from minimizing risk to creating social value. It then outlines the strategies and practices that leaders can use to address the five biggest problems facing companies and society today: Purpose, Prosperity, Products, Planet and People. Filled with real life examples, hands-on guidelines and self-assessments to rate your company's performance, Sustainability to Social Change helps you pivot your company's mindset and practices in order to enhance society and the environment, and fuel its own success. Online resources include a guide to help employees become socially conscious, operate in a purposeful company, become allies for equity and social justice, add social value at work and establish "green" habits.




The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, Revised


Book Description

The self-employment revolution is here. Learn the latest pioneering tactics from real people who are bringing in $1 million a year on their own terms. Join the record number of people who have ended their dependence on traditional employment and embraced entrepreneurship as the ultimate way to control their futures. Determine when, where, and how much you work, and by what values. With up-to-date advice and more real-life success stories, this revised edition of The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business shows the latest strategies you can apply from everyday people who--on their own--are bringing in $1 million a year to live exactly how they want.